There Might Be Cupcakes Podcast

06/02/2024

Trans Peaks: Happy Pride! Click to read how Agent Denise Bryson quietly made history.

Happy Pride!

06/02/2024

Time, trauma, and autism

05/07/2024

New episode, here at Podchaser or wherever you catch your pods:

From the Pantry: Eclipse: 90 from There Might Be Cupcakes Podcast on Podchaser, aired Sunday, 5th May 2024.Talking about where I have been, plus:From the Pantry, originally episode 19, to honor the recent eclipse: In which Carla starts with Dolores Claiborne and Gerald's Game--Stephen King's plann.....

12/11/2023

12/09/2023

Happy and blessed Hanukkah to my listeners and friends. These lights in the darkness mean more than ever this year. I love you.

12/01/2023

Happy holiday season! My Victorian Yule horror episodes continue to be the fan favorites above all; my most played and downloaded episode this year was 85: Victorian Christmas: Fi*****ng Death, in which I read a horror short story by Ada Buisson from that era. Victorians embraced the darkness and firelight of the Christmas season, and so do I. I plan to fill December and the 12 days of Christmas to Epiphany with these stories. Join me under the gaslights.

♥️♥️♥️🧁🧁🧁

11/26/2023

It’s impossible to overstate how attached we have collectively become to the story of Jamal Hinton and Wanda Dench. In a world that isn’t always filled with the most uplifting stories, Jamal and Wanda have become a beloved reminder of how many good things still exist. Each Thanksgiving, the internet eagerly awaits for the joyful announcement, and the duo didn’t disappoint.

For those of us who are just joining us here on the internet, Jamal and Wanda became an immediate sensation back in 2016 when Wanda texted the wrong number. She meant to text her grandson an invitation to her Thanksgiving dinner, but instead, the recipient of the message was then 17-year-old Jamal. What followed was a hilarious and touching exchange, in which Jamal asked the stranger who she was. She identified herself as his grandma, before sending a photo. Jamal sent a photo back, proving that he was decidedly not the grandson she meant to text. “Can I still get a plate though?” Jamal asked. “Of course you can,” Wanda responded, cementing a tradition that has carried them through the holiday ever since.

Part of what makes the serendipitous story so special is that the duo’s relationship extends far beyond a single day of the year. Jamal and Wanda developed a friendship, one that helped them both through difficult times, including when Wanda lost her late husband Lonnie. A single text led to nearly a decade-long bond, which thankfully shows no signs of slowing down.

This year was no exception, and recently, Jamal and Wanda sat down for their eighth Thanksgiving celebration together. They even rented out a room in Wanda’s home via Airbnb to include a new guest at their Thanksgiving dinner, continuing the tradition of finding meaningful connections in unlikely places. Before you lose any faith in the wholesomeness of this duo, rest assured that the listing was not intended as a money grab. In fact, they rented the room for just $16, representing the 2016 day when they first met. Yes, they somehow keep getting even more wholesome. Until next year, happy Thanksgiving to our very favorite tradition.

11/22/2023

Today is the birthday of Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood (1939), best known for her searing explorations of feminism, s*xuality, and politics in books like The Handmaid’s Tale (1986), a dystopian novel that takes place in a United States, which has become a fundamentalist theocracy where women are forced to have children. She started writing the book on a battered, rented typewriter while on a fellowship in West Berlin. The book became an international best-seller. Atwood’s daughter was nine when it was published; by the time she was in high school, The Handmaid’s Tale was required reading. Atwood once said, “Men often ask me, ‘Why are your female characters so paranoid?’ It’s not paranoia. It’s recognition of their situation.”

Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario. Her father was an entomologist and the family lived for a long time in insect-research stations in the wilderness. She was 11 before she attended a full year of school. About growing up in near isolation, Atwood said: “There were no films or theatres in the North, and the radio didn’t work very well. But there were always books. I learned to read early, was an avid reader and read everything I could get my hands on — no one ever told me I couldn’t read a book. My mother liked quietness in children, and a child who is reading is very quiet.”

One day she was walking across a football field on her way home and began writing a poem in her head and decided to write it down. She says: “After that, writing was the only thing I wanted to do. I didn’t know that this poem of mine wasn’t at all good, and if I had known, I probably wouldn’t have cared.”

Her first novel was The Edible Woman (1969), about a woman who cannot eat and feels that she is being eaten. Atwood likes to write in longhand, preferably with a Rollerball pen, and is even the co-inventor of the LongPen, a remote signing device that allows a person to write in ink anywhere in the world using a tablet and the internet. Her books include Alias Grace (1996), Oryx and Crake (2003), and The Heart Goes Last (2015).

About the writing life, Margaret Atwood says: “You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.”

11/11/2023

Recorded another episode of Bye, Pumkin with my friend Princess tonight, this time on a Very Special Episode of Flavor of Love, and how well it (didn’t) age. I was able to bust out my master’s degree, and demostrate my (decidely limited) knowledge of rap history that does include Flav. Did you know he has six Grammy nominations and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? He also co-wrote with George Clinton, yes, of the P-Funk. I am super-white (we discuss this) but I was an 80’s teenager and I know things. I was raised on MTV, and I once stayed in the same hotel as Run-DMC, and stalked their penthouse suite like the obnoxious 12-year-old that I was. I am full of surprises.

The episode should be out next week, I’ll post it here when it is. Our next endeavor should be Corey Feldman’s book Coreyography, to follow up on our episode on The Two Coreys.

And she now lives in Virginia near me. Cue the chaos.

11/03/2023

Boo Without Goo is an ongoing list of horror movies for the squeamish, a project that started to help my best friend who burned out his gore receptors. The third episode in the series is forthcoming shortly.

resources and further reading for this podcast episode

10/20/2023

I have been using “book dragon”, but now I claim “ink drinker”, thank you.

Good morning, we are open!

10/13/2023

How I am celebrating this October Friday the 13th:
Seaming my Sunny Tunic.
Watching the first two Friday the 13th steelbooks (and then possibly watching the remake), because ).

Then working on the podcast: next in the House of Leaves series and the third Boo Without Goo episode for your Halloween movie viewing enjoyment.

Plus a general catchup episode, and reading you a scary story or two for . I owe you.

Hope today is lucky and spooky for you! 👻

👻 🎃 ♥️♥️♥️🧁🧁🧁

09/01/2023

BUY IT. .99. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

07/16/2023

https://open.substack.com/pub/theremightbecupcakes/p/who-has-never-killed-an-hour upcoming sixth House of Leaves episode

House of Leaves

07/10/2023

I am so enjoying writing on Substack. Recent updates:
* Book review of the horror anthology Bitter Apples, thanks to the BookSirens site
* my reading plans for the rest of the year (broken into sublists, you know how I love lists, and yes, it includes reading for the podcast)
* what I am knitting, and what I will
* snippets of my novel as I am working on finishing it
* two poems, one inspired by Patton Oswalt (and no, it's probably not what you are thinking)

Plus, I have Notes, which are like my own personal Twitter, but without the trolls, and Chat. Just add those words to the end of https://theremightbecupcakes.substack.com/

Also, some amazing people are on Substack. Just look at my follow list on my page. I follow Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Ellen Hopkins, Courtney Summers (who complimented my poetry, I nearly had a heart attack), Chuck Palahniuk, and the list goes on.

You don't have to receive posts via email at all. You can read everything in your browser, or in the Substack app.

Come join me? No ads, no trolls.

“My life is a reading list.”—John Wheelwright, A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving There Might Be Cupcakes Podcast | 2017- | Books, history, true crime, horror, paranormal, personal stories | finding cupcakes to make each day easier | ♿️ | she/her. Click to read There Might Be Cupcakes Po...

07/01/2023

Thank you, , and for this advance copy of this creepy new mystery by ! It comes out in September, 2023 so keep your eyes open. This is going to be so creepy.

“What would you do if everyone you love disappeared?
What if it was your fault?”
GET TH3M BACK


♥️♥️♥️🧁🧁🧁

06/25/2023

Next episode on House of Leaves by is being pulled through the labyrinth by Ariadne’s thread to the light. 🕷️ Building blocks. Perhaps.
As I quoted Poe on my very first episode, “believe nothing you hear and only one half that you see.” 🔦

Episodes in the series linked in my linktree in bio (linktr.ee/theremightbecupcakes):

🏚️ 68: Bone-Chimes and Primitive Spiders
🏚️ 70: Ergodic
🍎 73: Tangerines to Apples
🏚️ 80: Rooms Full of Indistinguishable Remains
🏚️ 81: In the Spirit of the Staircase


♥️♥️♥️🧁🧁🧁

05/19/2023

😁



Posted • .museum — 👀
If you know, you know

Thanks for for sharing this meme. Share your Dickinson memes by tagging us!

05/18/2023

Substack chat

Just discovered I know all the words to Eve 6’s “Inside Out”, despite not having heard it in, perhaps, decades. Gen X represent. I feel very Rea…

05/11/2023

Posted • 🥰🥰 ❤️❤️

05/10/2023

I have created a reading challenge on .storygraph from the Top 100 Books List, adding the books’ sequels as bonus prompts. The link to join the challenge is in my linktree, which is in my bio. Join me! This was fun to create, and the list is varied and multicultural. Read the world with me, and some of those old and modern classics you have been meaning to get to! I’ll be adding links to episodes in the challenge to every book mentioned in the podcast.

♥️♥️♥️🧁🧁🧁

04/30/2023

Happy 10th and happy 6th anniversary of the podcast (that was yesterday 🧁). And this commonly banned book has to do with both! Listen to episode 88, published on my (our) 6th anniversary, Library Pirates, recorded with my friend, Princess, and read my latest Substack, to find out how and why.
By the by, this is my first edition, copyright 1975. My parents let me read it. Princess and I talk about our parental attitudes towards our chosen reading materials in the episode. And I bought more Judy Blume…from Judy Blume today. Both Substack and Podchaser links are in my Linktree in my bio.

♥️♥️♥️🧁🧁🧁

04/29/2023

Judy Blume owns a bookstore called Books & Books. I want to beef up my Judy Blume collection that has survived from childhood and adolescence. So what better way to celebrate the day, than to buy Judy Blume directly from her on Independent Bookstore Day! So I ordered the second in the Fudge series, one I loved, Otherwise Known As Sheila the Great…...

Judy Blume owns a bookstore called Books & Books. I want to beef up my Judy Blume collection that has survived from childhood and adolescence. So what better way to celebrate the day, than to buy Judy Blume directly from her on Independent Bookstore Day! So I ordered the second in the Fudge series,....

04/28/2023

Happy anniversary to all of us! Thank you for six years of cupcakes; you are the cupcakes I find on difficult days. I hope I have given you some. Show notes: In which Carla and Princess Jones Curtis from the Bye, Pumkin Podcast talk about being mysteriously early readers, the effect V. C. Andrews ha...

04/25/2023

Show notes: In which Carla tells the fairy tale within Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Sources: “The Fisherman and His Wife”, from Grimm, Wilhelm; Grimm, Jacob. The Complete Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm https://bookshop.org/a/6560/9789176374559 To the Lighthouse by Virginia...

04/21/2023

Letterbox link: 3 1/2 stars Caught a continuity error this time: The hammock bed, during s*x has a homemade quilt, after the shower has a fur blanket. Whoops. Now I have the first three, my favorites out of the series, as steelbooks. I am a happy 80’s teen. The age difference in appearance between Rick and Chris has always struck me as so odd....

Letterbox link: 3 1/2 stars Caught a continuity error this time: The hammock bed, during s*x has a homemade quilt, after the shower has a fur blanket. Whoops. Now I have the first three, my favorites out of the series, as steelbooks. I am a happy 80’s teen. The age difference in appearance between...

04/20/2023

🤦🏻‍♀️

Posted • .museum 🤔... last night

04/16/2023

4 stars. Nina Bawden was one of the authors of my childhood. Greatly enjoyed revisiting her during my Daylight Savings Time hangover/flareup. This would be an excellent gateway to horror for young people--scary without too much peril and no death or bloodshed. Keywords given to The Story Graph for other readers: Africa, England, London, family secrets, secret passageways Category answers for The Story Graph:...

4 stars. Nina Bawden was one of the authors of my childhood. Greatly enjoyed revisiting her during my Daylight Savings Time hangover/flareup. This would be an excellent gateway to horror for young people--scary without too much peril and no death or bloodshed. Keywords given to The Story Graph for o...

04/13/2023

Posted • The game wouldn't exist if not for a minor plot point in a nearly two-century-old story. Link in bio.

♥️♥️♥️🧁🧁🧁

04/11/2023