World Frankenstein Day: An invitation to Gather through Blogging

Remember our old blog days, when we gave each other homework and set strange little challenges just to see what we’d do with them? When comment threads felt like hidden corridors where the real conversations lived? The Very Curious Dr. Z, I know you remember. In that spirit, I’m summoning the circle again.

The world has gone dark, and not in the delicious gothic way. I want connection, something real, something secret and shared even across the distance. So, here’s the triple dog dare: join me in celebrating World Frankenstein Day, on Saturday, August 30th, Mary Shelley’s birthday.

She gave us a tale of creation and rejection, a nameless creature both intelligent and unloved, wandering alone through storm and silence. He has always felt like a companion to me, misunderstood, but still alive with longing. Which is why my own celebration will be solitary.

"The monster was the best friend I ever had." - Boris Karloff

This year, my celebration will look a lot like my usual gothy routines, only charged with the spark of the occasion. I’ll be reading the Kolaj version of Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus that features seventy-six illustrations by International Collage Artists. I'll write poetry under flickering black candles (or most likely the sun), verses stitched from loneliness and lightning. I’ll probably wander into a cemetery. And, I’ll mix myself a cocktail to toast Mary Shelley and her nameless creation.

Frankenstein Cocktail

• 1 ounce Dry Vermouth for smooth, herbaceous gloom

• 1 ounce Gin for sharp botanical clarity

• 1/2 ounce Apricot Brandy for sweetness in the shadows

• 1/2 ounce Triple Sec for citrus lightning

• Garnish with a cherry, red as a borrowed heart

Shaken, strained, and consumed like a pact.

I’m challenging you to take part in your own way. Read a passage from Frankenstein. Watch an old black-and-white horror film. Write something, stitch something, light a candle, pour a drink, summon the storm. Report back. Tell me how you kept the day.

Let’s make it feel like it used to: a secret society scattered across the map, bound together by shared ritual and words. On August 30th, I’ll be celebrating alone, just like the creature. But maybe, just maybe, we won’t be so alone if we do it together.

When you share your ritual, your poem, your candlelit toast, begin or end with these words, as though we are all whispering them into the same night:

“We are the children of Shelley, keepers of the storm. [Okay, I'm feeling a bit dramatic.] We gather though apart, stitched together by ink and shadow. On this night of Frankenstein, we honor the nameless and the misunderstood. Alone, yet not alone, we light the dark with words, with memory, with creation.”

Write it, speak it, or leave it hidden like a charm at the end of your message. Consider it our oath, our flicker of connection in the storm.

Poetry, poets, and books: another day longing for literary trails

I'm currently taking a course, "Twelve Poets to Change Your Life," with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg through TLAN. We started with Emily Dickinson—so naturally, she’s been blooming in my thoughts lately. 

I spent much of my weekend in the garden. I'm happiest when I have dirt under my fingernails. After repotting plants and tending to those friends in the ground, I finished reading the spring sections of Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life by Marta McDowell.

Flowers, poetry, and the quiet joy of digging in the earth. 

The second poet of focus this week is Walt Whitman. I  appreciate his ability to celebrate the individual spirit and the vastness of the American experience through imagery. His poetry inspires a sense of connection and self-reflection that feels timeless. 

I used one of the course prompts to compose my own poem, aiming to capture a personal perspective while honoring the tone that characterizes Whitman’s work.

My 51st Year

After the crest of half a century,


Through fog and flame, the spare seasons, the scattered joys,


My mother’s silence now a constant hum,


My father yearning to breathe free— almost eighty-seven,
gathering the light like bread, breaking it.

A new post— in halls once proud with purpose,


Now flickering, ivy fading, gasping in the marble—


Academia, fallen cold and dying? Or maybe just unvalued,


Scorned by those who forget who first opened the page for them.

The world at war again, though not always declared —


the homeless refused, children buried, cities razed— 

the names change,


but death is always the same.

 

And on Flag Day we’re told


to raise banners for a fool in a suit,


those clapping their own backs while


the hungry, tempest-tost, are hushed. 

Yet still — I lift my lamp beside the coffin door, walking —


through campus corridors, past empty chairs,


through streets that forget themselves,


past memorials that call only in whispers.

I reflect still. I write still.


Reporting in — not to salute, but to stand,


and not in uniform,


but with pen and pulse,


that glows with world-wide welcome.

Of course, literature reminds me of my other place to be—the cemetery. While people complain of humidity, especially this time of year, I long to be soaked in my own sweat in a cemetery on a mission to find a story of an author. How I am daydreaming about visiting Dickinson's grave in West Cemetery in Auborn.

These thoughts draw me back to another book, my copy of Literary Trail of Greater Boston by Susan Wilson, which was published when I lived in Massachusetts. Revisiting its pages reignited my interest in the places that connect writers to the landscapes they inhabited. When I lived there, I was a poor high school English teacher just out of grad school with little income and a hefty student loan, so I did not have much leisure time to visit all the places in Wilson's guidebook but I did walk the streets following the tour paths. I went to Walden Pond walking the path to Thoreau's cabin site. 

Now, sitting here on my porch, I’m itching to return and walk the grounds of Forest Hills Cemetery, pay tribute to the poets buried at Mount Auburn, and stand at Author’s Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery—places where the presence of literary voices still lingers.

Haunting the Page – 5 Writing Prompts for World Dracula Day

This morning, I began World Dracula Day with “Dracula in the Morning” on Reedsy — a quiet ritual to honor the birth of one of literature’s most enduring shadows. First published on May 26, 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula gave us more than a vampire. It gave us a myth about desire, decay, and the lengths we go to for connection. 

It’s about the echo of eternity, the slow rot of time, and the haunting legacy we leave behind. But it’s also about machines — the phonograph, typewriter, telegraph — and how we use technology to preserve memory, reach loved ones, and whisper across centuries. We still do that. Through keyboards and screens, through ink and voice memos. We still try to be heard. 

So today, I offer 5 Writing Prompts for World Dracula Day 

• What do I want to leave behind in this world—what mark, what myth? Consider the difference between a memory and a legend. Are you building something to be remembered... or something to haunt? 

• How do I relate to ruins, old books, forgotten things? Why am I drawn to them? Trace the shape of your attraction to decay. Is it nostalgia, beauty, melancholy, or something deeper—something ancestral? 

• Imagine your journal is found in a crypt 200 years from now. What truth do you want a future stranger to read? Write as if you are the ghost in the paper—what message do you leave behind in ink and dust? 

• If my darker self wrote me a letter today, what would it say? Let the voice of your shadow self emerge—honest, unfiltered, possibly immortal. What wisdom or warning would it offer? 

• What parts of me have already died, and what continues to live on through habit, memory, or myth? Decay isn’t just physical—it can be emotional, spiritual, or symbolic. What remnants of your past self still haunt you? 

These prompts aren’t meant for quick answers. They’re meant to linger, to echo, to open crypts within your soul. On this World Dracula Day, let your words be relics, your journal a tomb, and your thoughts a form of haunting. 

Write like you’ll never die.