A Confession

I've been hiding half of what I write from you

I’ve been writing this Substack for almost five years, now and the essays that get the biggest response from readers aren’t about writing at all. They’re the horror ones — like the Haunting of Hill House piece, or the one where I argued the Boogeyman was just a tidy name for something a lot of us grew up living with, or how blood can symbolize feminine power as much as violence as it does in the film, Perpetrator and Carrie. See, the thing is, you never read those essays as film criticism. You read them as self-recognition. I know because I feel it, too.

Maybe you’ve noticed, but some things changed in me this year. I’ve decided to stop treating horror like a side interest and build it a home of its own.

A separate Substack for horror and fairy tales that read as survival manuals, not entertainment. This is a place for those of us who are in the middle of rebuilding after a version of ourselves has stopped working and are done being handed soft, pastel kinds of healing that don’t match the size of what we’ve survived.

My new Substack is called The Bloody Key. If you know your Bluebeard, you already know why: the key is symbolic. It’s the proof we looked where we’re forbidden to look. That’s the whole point — let’s go open doors we’re told not to open, and learn what the bloody stains have to teach us.

If this is the Jade you’ve been here for, this is your invite to come with me. The doors open July 8th.

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