Welcome to Office Hours for the Undead
A biweekly lecture series on vampires, shifters, portals, and all things paranormal in media—from a professor who also writes the stuff
Come in, take a seat, the door’s always open—that’s the whole point of office hours. Before we get into the good stuff, let me hand you the syllabus, because I am physically incapable of starting anything without one. Occupational hazard.
Course Description
Office Hours for the Undead is a biweekly publication about paranormal storytelling across every medium—books, yes, but also TV, film, anime, and the costume dramas I am, at this point, medically dependent on. Vampires, shifters, portals, fae, the cursed, the undying, and everything that goes bump in a streaming queue. If it’s paranormal and it’s on a page or a screen, it’s on the syllabus.
This is not a newsletter about my books. (I have other places for that, and you’re welcome there too.) This is a place to think out loud about the genre—why a trope we’ve seen a thousand times still lands the thousand-and-first, why portal fantasy was never actually dead, why a story works the way it works. Some lectures will be about western paranormal TV. A lot will be about the Chinese and Korean dramas I can’t stop watching. Some will be about books, anime, a movie I won’t shut up about. Occasionally I’ll close-read a trope until it confesses.
And about that name—the undead aren’t just the vampires on the syllabus. They’re us. The ones who say “one more episode” at 1am and mean four, who finish a book series at 3am and rise the next day hollow-eyed and reanimated to do it all again. If you’ve ever clawed your way out of a couch like it was a shallow grave because a cliffhanger demanded it, congratulations: you’re enrolled. Dragon people, fae people, werewolf people—at 2am we’re all undead together.
Think of it as a seminar where attendance is optional, the reading—and viewing—list is a suggestion, and nobody is getting graded. Least of all you.
Instructor
I’m your professor for this one. By day—well, on Tuesdays and Thursdays—I teach college Composition I & II. The rest of the week I write paranormal fiction: urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and romantasy, across more than thirty published novels. Werewolves, Norse mythology, phoenixes, dragons, blood mages, fae—if it’s paranormal and it sparks my imagination, I’ve probably written it or I’m about to. I refuse to be pigeonholed, and so does my backlist.
That’s the whole pitch: I sit on both sides of the desk. I’m the person assigning the close reading and the person who has to make the cursed love interest actually work on the page. I’m not reviewing from the cheap seats—I make these decisions for a living, and I’ll show you my work.
How This Works
Twice a month—the 1st and the 15th. Two lectures a month, like clockwork. Frequent enough that you won’t forget I exist, spaced enough that each one is actually worth your time.
Free. No paywall on the lectures. Come as you are.
Two standing features in every post:
Assigned viewing & reading—the dramas, books, films, and shows behind each lecture, so you can do the homework if you want to. You don’t have to. But you will. And you’ll thank me.
Office hours—the comments. This is the part I actually care about. Tell me your gateway story, fight me about a trope, recommend me something I haven’t seen. I read everything, usually from under a blanket at 11pm.
As for what we’ll cover—I’m keeping the syllabus loose on purpose. I’ll follow whatever I get obsessed with, and you’re going to help steer it. Two lectures are already drafted and headed your way; the rest of the semester writes itself based on what’s making me lose sleep that week.
A Note on Your Instructor’s Origins
Fair’s fair—if I’m going to ask where your obsession started, I should tell you mine. For me it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and honestly just about anything during the WB era. I’m talking channel 11, growing up in Queens, parked in front of the TV after school while a blonde girl in a graveyard made monsters look like the most interesting thing in the world. That’s what turned me from a kid who liked stories into someone who needed them. Everything I write now traces back to that couch.
Enrollment Is Open
Subscribe and the lectures come to you—free, twice a month, no late fees, no exams. That’s the whole barrier to entry: an email address and a soft spot for monsters.
Class is in session. Don’t be a stranger.
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