What I’ve Been Listening To: Mistletoe Murders (November 2026)

What I’ve Been Listening To: Mistletoe Murders (November 2026)

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Tis the season. Yeah, I know, we just put Halloween to bed. But I got chocolate Little Debbie Christmas tree cakes at the grocery store last week and I’m not complaining about that ONE bit!

I’m about to pitch you an Audible streaming series that has ties to How I Met Your Mother and Marvel’s S.H.I.E.L.D., The Good Witch, and Veronica Mars. Just to whet your interest.

Headspinner Productions created a streaming series for Audible: Mistletoe Murders. Hallmark then adapted it to a TV series. Unless I specify, I’m talking about the Audible streaming show.

Emily Lane runs a year-round Christmas store – Under the Mistletoe – in a small Canadian town. A town that has a hunky, too-good-to-be-true, sheriff; Sam. Who has the perfect teen daughter, Violet (more on her in a bit). Naturally, she works in the store.

But Emily has a secret past. Not just a secret IN her past. A whole other life’s worth. And she’s not a ‘Lori Loughlin or Candace Cameron Bure character solving local deaths.’ Think Kate Beckett/Nikki Heat meets Hallmark here.

Each of the four seasons has had three, two-part episodes. Each pair is a complete story, and one season covers one yuletide. And there’s kind of the whole ‘Emily’s secrets’ over-arching theme to it all. Which adds a thriller vibe.

I REALLY enjoy Mistletoe Murders, which is included with Audible Prime, and season 5 drops this week. Season 3 of the Hallmark TV show also starts this week. For me, the key is Cobie Smulders, who plays Emily. She is one of my favorite audiobook persons (she isn’t quite a narrator, since this is a radio show, not a book. But you get it).

You’ve seen her on-screen as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill. She was Robin on How I Met Your Mother (a show I have never seen. I should check that out). And she’s Sofi on Shrinking. I need to go find Stumptown, where she was tough PI. But man, she makes every single episode of Mistletoe Murders good. Or better than good. She can’t let anything alone, giving that Hallmark vibe of the female business person constantly ‘meddling’ with the rash of killings in the otherwise idyllic little town. But with her background (which we finally get a piece of in the last episode of season two), she’s as good as Sam at cracking cases.

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Weird Times 8: The International Scene

Weird Times 8: The International Scene

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The Canadian Red Ensign as used from 1922 to 1957 (top), and the current flag of Canada, the Maple Leaf or l’Unifolié.
This is the sixth post in a series reflecting on the world of the 1920s as a background to early issues of Weird Tales. Imagine that you’re an American in a big city in 1923, and you’re taking a walk to the newsstand to buy the first issue of a new pulp fiction magazine. What sort of things might you see? What do those things suggest about ways people think? Or about the stories they tell?

Perhaps, just possibly, you’ll walk past a hotel or other building with a display of flags of the world. In which case you might see a flag representing Canada. You won’t find a Canadian consulate or legation, as Canada doesn’t have any of those in 1923. The reason why not will be hinted at by the Canadian flag you’ll see. Officially, the national flag of Canada in 1923 is the Royal Union Flag, also known as the Union Jack. But there is another flag more specifically associated with Canada: the Canadian Red Ensign. The original Red Ensign, flown by British merchantmen, is a field of red with the Union Jack in the upper left corner. The Canadian Red Ensign formerly added the coat of arms of the nine provinces to the red field; in 1922 when King George V granted Canada a coat of arms the new heraldry replaced the provincial insignia. The Red Ensign’s not an official flag, and in fact will only be formally authorised for use on Canadian government buildings outside Canada in 1924, but it’s widely-used nevertheless and during the Great War was a common symbol of Canadian identity. You will certainly not see a red-bordered flag with a red maple leaf against a white background; in 1923, you’re more than 40 years too early for that.

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Some Thoughts on Steven Spielberg’s 2005 War of the Worlds

Some Thoughts on Steven Spielberg’s 2005 War of the Worlds

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Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (Paramount Pictures, June 29, 2005)

H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds has always been a favorite of mine, since reading the excellent Classics Illustrated version, then Wells’ novel, and finally seeing the wonderful 1953 George Pale/Byron Haskins film version on television. I first encountered Wells in grade school, in an anthology of short stories, where I first read his “The Truth About Pyecraft”. That’s where I also first encountered Ray Bradbury and his “There Will Come Soft Rains,” and Poe’s The Raven, my favorite poem. Among a number of other authors in that collection were stories by Jack London, Saki, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Later I read Wells’ The Time Machine, When the Sleeper Wakes, The Island of Dr. Moreau, In the Days of the Comet, and The Shape of Things to Come, to name a few.

The 1953 film version of War of the Worlds is a classic, for sure, and to me it’s the perfect example of what makes for a great science fiction film. Magical special effects that still hold up today, with solid performances by the cast, and lush cinematography that really pops on Blu-Ray. Enough has been written about that film, so today I want to share some thoughts on Steven Spielberg’s 2005 version, without comparing the two films in any way. I don’t consider it a true remake, because both films are based on Wells’ novel. They’re just two different visions.

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Forgotten Authors: Charles W. Diffin

Forgotten Authors: Charles W. Diffin

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Astounding, February 1930, Cover by H.H. Wesso

Charles Willard Diffin was born on March 25, 1884 in Meadville, Pennsylvania to Charles A. Diffin and Julia (nee Benedict). He attended the University of Buffalo, where he graduated with a degree in analytical chemistry.

In 1903, Diffin married Pearl Burnside. Their daughter, Beatrice, was born in 1905. Son Charles followed in 1910 and Douglas in 1915. Charles predeceased his parents, dying in 1938 and Pearl died in 1951.

He began publishing science fiction in the February 1930 issue of Astounding with “Spawn of the Stars,” which was reprinted in Conklin’s The Best of Science Fiction in 1946. His “The Power and the Glory” in the July 1939 issue of Astounding explored the use of nuclear power, questioning whether it would be used to benefit or harm mankind.

From 1931 to 1932, he published four stories in his Harkness Bullard series. The series includes an initial trilogy beginning with “Dark Moon,” continuing with “Brood of the Dark Moon,” (serialized over four issues) and concluding with “The Finding of Haldgren,” all published in Astounding. He followed them with the serialized novel Two Thousand Miles Below, which was set in the same universe, although several years earlier.

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Dark Muse News: Sword & Sorcery Chain Story (#29-#32)

Dark Muse News: Sword & Sorcery Chain Story (#29-#32)

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In August 2025, we hailed the emergence of a second Chain Story project championed by Michael A. Stackpole. This is a Sword & Sorcery-focused, contagious set of connected (“chained”) stories.

Each is:

  • A standalone tale
  • Readable in any order
  • Free to read! (for at least three months from its posting date)
  • Interconnected via a theme involving a Crown

We round up groups every several weeks, but check the Chain Story website for the latest. Here we highlight the latest set of five, Episodes 29-32.

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Pulp Treasures Rediscovered: Tony Rome, Private Eye by Marvin H. Albert

Pulp Treasures Rediscovered: Tony Rome, Private Eye by Marvin H. Albert

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Twelve years ago, I wrote a piece for Black Gate about Marvin H. Albert’s unsung hardboiled private eye, Tony Rome.  The post concluded with my suggestion, some might claim it was a plea, that an enterprising publisher would give these long out-of-print treasures a new lease on life. Here we are a dozen years later and that is exactly what has happened.

The paperback original (PBO to collectors) was the immediate successor to the pulp magazine as the home of pulp fiction. Marvin Albert was one of the bright lights of the paperback original market for detective fiction.

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Nine Years Later – Revisiting Castlevania and Tragic Villains and Heroes

Nine Years Later – Revisiting Castlevania and Tragic Villains and Heroes

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Goodafterevenmorn, Readers!

Being chronically online has revealed some pretty awesome things (as well as absolute nonsense (covered previously)). For example, I discovered an entirely new to me Transformers show – Transformers Prime, which is a lot of fun. Also, fully available on YouTube, if you’re interested. Perhaps one day I’ll go through the show and point out its very funny rebuke of the Bayverse Optimus Prime. It’s probably very basic of me, but Optimus was always my favourite Cybertronian. But we’re not here to talk about that.

What I wanted to talk about was Castlevania. Let’s dive in!

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Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: What If? – The Unchronicled Cases

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: What If? – The Unchronicled Cases

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Two Nero Wolfe posts in one month? What flummery is this? Like most avid readers know, there’s just not enough time to read (and write about) all our interest areas.

I finished a Terry Pratchett novella (last week’s post), while continuing on with a Savage Sword of Conan Omnibus, and starting a first read of Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (I’m never gonna be a poetry fan), AND grabbing an Isaac Bell detective book from the Clive Cussler shelves.

While still working on a couple of Nero Wolfe projects ‘in my other spare time.’ I started this one a year or two ago and finally dialed in to finish it. And man, it was fun. Using every original or alternate title, I came up with a different plot, title, or both. With a minimum of two per.

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Into the Weird: Weird Tales, June 1923 (Volume 1, Number 4), Part 2

Into the Weird: Weird Tales, June 1923 (Volume 1, Number 4), Part 2

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Weird Tales, June 1923
The table of contents of the fourth issue of Weird Tales boasts of sixteen thrilling short stories, two of them two-parters, and “two complete novelettes.” It also promises “Interesting, Odd, and Weird Happenings.” Having dealt with the happenings previously, let’s look at the fiction.

The first story, as advertised on the cover, is Paul Ellsworth Triem’s “The Evening Wolves.” The cover claims it’s a novel, which as short as it is it certainly is not, although it is one of the two-part tales. The conclusion will come in the next issue, but I’ll write about the whole story here for the sake of convenience. Triem was in the previous issue of Weird Tales with his short tale “Vials of Insects,” an interesting if not entirely successful attempt by a white man in the 1920s to present a Chinese hero; “The Evening Wolves” tries something similar, though again I don’t think it entirely works.

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Fresh Blood: Todd Grimson’s Stainless

Fresh Blood: Todd Grimson’s Stainless

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Vampires, of all the residents of the Kingdom of Fright, are uniquely vulnerable to the revisionist impulses of writers and filmmakers. People just don’t turn the same tricks with mummies or werewolves or ghosts that they do with the Nosferatu. I’m not sure why this should be so, but I do think it’s true.

This is a problem for me, though, because with monsters, I’m a traditionalist. (I want a ghoul just like the ghoul that buried dear old dad, as we used to say on the playground.) My stodginess is especially firm when it comes to the undead. When the sun goes down over the Carpathians, give me Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee any day (or should I say, night); I want none of this Near Dark, Lost Boys or True Blood nonsense, and as for Twilight, please – Black Gate is a family-friendly site, and we’re not allowed to use words like that. This is why Salem’s Lot is my favorite Stephen King novel; its steadfast old-fashionedness warms the cockles of my heart, right where the stake would go through. (By the way, what the hell are cockles?)

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