David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
LightNews LightNews
banner
daviddemchuk.com
David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
@daviddemchuk.com
8.4K followers 2.2K following 6K posts
I put the sewer into connoisseur. 🏳️‍🌈🇨🇦 Sunburst winner; Giller Prize, Amazon, Aurora & Shirley Jackson nominee. The Butcher’s Daughter. RED X. The Bone Mother. Gay/Queer. Cis. Old. https://linktr.ee/ddemchuk
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
daviddemchuk.com
David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚 @daviddemchuk.com · Nov 16
You may know the tale of Sweeney Todd, but what of the tale of Mrs. Lovett? The Butcher’s Daughter, by David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark. Serving customers May 2025 🥧🔪
The US and UK covers for the novel The Butcher’s Daughter, set against a map of Victorian London
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
alixeharrow.bsky.social
beginning my quixotic and privileged campaign to get publishers to pay a per diem rather than asking their touring authors to carry a couple thousand dollars in credit debt and hoard paper receipts, like rats lining their nests for winter 🙏
November 12, 2025 at 3:18 PM
daviddemchuk.com
Why Canadians excel at horror, a thread ⬇️
verybadllama.bsky.social Janel Comeau 🍁 @verybadllama.bsky.social · 15h
American PSA: don't do drugs, kids, they're bad for you!

Canadian PSA: we locked the most insane people we know in a room with a sheet of acid and a box of puppets, here's all the worst deaths they could think of
November 12, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
writeups.org
With alt text.
You know a country by its values. By what a country values. And it turns out thatwhat a country values can change overtime. Sometimes, though, there's a sort of cognitive delay between the country you think you are in, and the country you've actually become. For example, you can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word - but if you then chronically underfund your cultural institutions, and treat your cultural workers with contempt, many people will suspect you of being full of it. And as the decades pass - and fewer and fewer Shakespeares and Austens and Orwells emerge from your little island - even more people will begin to suspect that in truth you do not value culture at all, and are in fact running a giant heritage museum in which the only cultural workers you respect are the dead ones.
November 12, 2025 at 8:55 AM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
psychopomp.com
HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY

to the absolutely BEAUTIFUL

No One To Hold the Distant Dead by @klschroeder.bsky.social!!!!

download instantly OR get a print copy and it ships next week 🖤

psychopomp.com/product/no-o...
No One To Hold The Distant Dead | Psychopomp
As extinction takes species after species, Inga and the people of Nordenmark must find a way to survive, and a reason to live, in the spaces death leaves behind.
psychopomp.com
November 11, 2025 at 6:31 PM
daviddemchuk.com
From THE BONE MOTHER, the first sentence plus a bonus *second* sentence.

Convincing you to read my novel by the first sentence. Share yours if you want!
from the first page of The Bone Mother, a 90 year-old photo of two similar men in their best clothes seated together with a bouquet of flowers between them; the title Borys; then the following sentences: “My brother Sergyi and I were married in a small ceremony in our village church. such things were possible then that now are not.”
November 11, 2025 at 2:44 PM
daviddemchuk.com
Pictured: the members of “IntegrityTO”
anotherglassbox.bsky.social Dan Seljak @anotherglassbox.bsky.social · 1d
The folks at IntegrityTO have finally weighed in on neighbourhood retail with AI generated scenes of creepy faceless loiterers congregating outside a 7-11…

Mind you the recommendation (that didn’t make it past committee) was for *corner lots*. They can’t even prompt right.
November 11, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
romgothsam.bsky.social
If you missed this week's talk on powerful and vulnerable women in supernatural k-dramas... you can find it here

youtu.be/sBnTwqRdX3Q
Women from Nightmares: Vulnerability and Powerful Women in K-dramas with Soumili Hazra
YouTube video by Romancing the Gothic
youtu.be
November 11, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
samthielman.com
“whatever club he’s invited to join has been devalued by the invitation”
Tweet by Joyce Carol Oates: "wherever he goes, he wants to leave"--that's because when he gets there, he has brought his own self along; & whatever club he's invited to join has been devalued by the invitation. QT of @avidreader1000 Wherever he goes, he wants to leave: SA, Canada, ultimately the U.S. in the long run, based on his behavior. This also includes Earth. A continuous disavowal of your home is odd, to say the least. He seems to have no c...
November 11, 2025 at 3:05 AM
daviddemchuk.com
Musk should just hand the whole of twitter over to Joyce Carol Oates, lock stock and barrel, and walk away like in an old timey poker game.
November 11, 2025 at 12:56 PM
daviddemchuk.com
That’s me I am girlfriend
November 10, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
ryneismean.bsky.social
WE ARE SAVED
November 10, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
wrongtom.bsky.social
The scene in which the kid composes 'Ben' is perhaps one of the greatest fake composition scenes in cinema. Certainly better than Jeremy Allen White dicking around with his 4 track www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfCL...
Ben (1972) - Ben's Song
YouTube video by Tobey Maguire (Peter Parker)
www.youtube.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:51 AM
daviddemchuk.com
When the foghorn starts to wail and the mists draw closer to shore, you know it must be time for another Sunday Scaries. buttondown.com/daviddemchuk...
It's in the seas! It's coming!
Phantoms in the fog, babies washed ashore, one-eyed gulls with attitude, and 111,000 spiders in the dark. This must be the Sunday Scaries!
buttondown.com
November 10, 2025 at 4:17 AM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
undertow.bsky.social
I've made @thomasha.bsky.social's original novelette "Uncertain Sons" - from his debut collection - available to read for those catching up on year-end reading, for awards eligibility and recommendations. Enjoy!

We appreciate your kind consideration.

undertowpublications.com/uncertain-sons
Web page showing partial text of UNCERTAIN SONS.
November 9, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
sophiefrommars.bsky.social
Frankenstein is the ultimate cautionary tale against making up a guy to get mad at
November 9, 2025 at 1:22 AM
daviddemchuk.com
Hi everyone, award-winning horror writer here. So here’s the thing: No. Absolutely not. Not a fucking chance.
rvbdrm.com Ravin Boodram @rvbdrm.com · 4d
World's biggest spiderweb discovered inside 'Sulfur Cave' with 111,000 arachnids living in pitch black.

www.livescience.com/animals/spid...
November 9, 2025 at 12:24 PM
daviddemchuk.com
Don’t you for get about me
November 8, 2025 at 10:29 PM
daviddemchuk.com
She smiles and says “I will always love you”
the title character grabs a bite in The Taking of Deborah Logan
November 8, 2025 at 10:16 PM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
peterbcounter.com
HALIFAX! In just over two hours I will be at Cafe Lara reading and discussing post-traumatic narratives. It is free to attend! I'm looking forward to seeing you!
afterwordsliteraryfestival.com/product/refr...
Reframing Narratives For The Post-Traumatic Experience - Afterwords Literary Festival
With Peter Counter
afterwordsliteraryfestival.com
November 8, 2025 at 7:46 PM
daviddemchuk.com
@philnelson.bsky.social
willowcatelyn.bsky.social Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 4d
There should be 33 1/3 style books about specific wrestling feuds/stories/matches
November 8, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
exceedhergrasp1.bsky.social
This is fucking brilliant, and you should read it: lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...
Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani
It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…
lithub.com
November 8, 2025 at 3:24 PM
daviddemchuk.com
Done.
dansinker.com dan sinker @dansinker.com · 4d
I sure would appreciate it if you spent about 20 seconds of your Friday signing up to get my writing sent straight to you. It's free, it's fun (sometimes), and it would mean a lot: dansinker.com/follow/
November 8, 2025 at 1:49 AM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
romgothsam.bsky.social
If you enjoy watching talks by experts in Gothic and horror that are free to access and made internationally available... why not support the project so I can keep running it and keep paying people to participate.

www.patreon.com/c/romancingt...
Get more from Romancing the Gothic on Patreon
creating Free online classes, days of creation, books groups and
www.patreon.com
November 7, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
duckprintspress.com
Anyway I hadn't heard anyone talking about this, so I guess I'm gonna talk about it. Spread the word if you're thinking about doing an nsfw KS project, Stripe apparently might pull your funding at literally any step of the process, with zero warning!
the "myth of consensual sex" meme, remade. Entitled, "The myth of artistic freedom," It shows a man and a woman lying together, mostly naked, with speech bubbles that say "I want to draw it" and "I want to see it," and next to them are the Mastercard and Visa logos with a speech bubble that reads "I don't!" Bottom text says, "Isn't there some random payment processor you forgot to ask?"
November 6, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Reposted by David Demchuk 👻 (he/him) 📚
leavittalone.bsky.social
NOPE (2022) on one hand a Speilbergesque thriller-metaphor about how Hollywood literally chews peple up and spits them out and they only way to survive is to be literally indigestible and also the best thing inspired by a treehouse of horror episode
November 7, 2025 at 3:45 AM