It's finally time! Voting for the Spooktober VN Jam has opened. Our new VN, A Trick and a Treat, won't take you long to play; so if you enjoyed it, feel free to give it a rating/vote! Now that voting has begun, Sadie and I thought we'd talk a little bit more about our project. First, Sadie's going to talk about her short story, Dead Letters! Take it away, love!

"Dead Letters is my tribute to 1920/30s style weird fiction. I find the kind of pulp, hard-boiled with a side of purple prose style extremely fun to write in. Probably the biggest inspiration for Dead Letters is H. F. Arnold's The Night Wire from 1926, a deliciously creepy little tale. If you liked this, be sure to check that one out. 

The other big pulp inspiration is from that great font of inspired horror and insipid opinions, H. P. Lovecraft and his great early story The Statement of Randolph Carter. This is a style I definitely intend to revisit in the future. Like the opening says, Weird Tales is a problematic fave, but there's real magic in those yellowed old pages, and I hope I resurrected some of those old spells for you here. Happy Halloween."

- Sadie DeForest

And now, I wanna talk about my short story, Vamp Me! There's some light spoilers for the title below, so you may want to finish it before continuing.

We found out about the Spooktober VN Jam pretty late. About two weeks after it started, in fact! But it sounded so fun that we had to make SOMETHING for it. We decided to do separate short stories as a sort of compilation title, and Sadie figured out hers pretty quickly. I struggled with my idea at first. Did I want to do something serious, or something lighter?

Some of the ideas I had included a darker story about a trans woman's dysphoria manifesting itself into a physical form, and a lighter story about a "cis boy" caught summoning a demon to "become a girl". I wasn't sure if I wanted to make something dark for the jam; to me, Halloween is something that's happy and fun, so I ended up going with the second idea. But it was still missing a key bit of Halloween spirit. This was where Girl Dracula came in.

Who is Girl Dracula? Well, she's actually a character I played for a tabletop game. When I thought about the idea I had, and replaced the "Summoning a demon" with "Summoning a Girl Dracula to trans your gender", it added a sort of playfulness that I felt was essential to the project. And so I wrote my first primarily comedic piece of writing! I was very nervous about it, but it made all my friends I showed the early draft to smile!

Some of you who've read Vamp Me might feel the ending was abrupt... but don't worry! That cast of characters is going to be making a comeback in another title we have planned, so stay tuned! ;)

That's about it! I hope that you give our little VN a read on a cold, windy October night, just as a little treat before bed. I think you'll find it'll give you both of those essential Halloween flavors; something eerie, and something sweet!

- Crystal DeForest