You know how a song or fragment of a song can get stuck in your head? It plays on repeat, whether you like it or not, a personal soundtrack that no one else can hear. I tend to have a number of things haunting my mind at any given time - music, poetry, lines from a book, echoes of previously thought or spoken words or phrases, other thoughts circling in a holding pattern, waiting to be written down.

They coalesce into a dynamic mental kaleidoscope of language and sound. Emily Dickinson's evocative poetry is often part of it. A flickering rhythmic phantom, sometimes a select stanza or two, sometimes an entire poem, always a harmonious element of the protean inner pattern.

In this special mini episode we offer up a few shadowy wisps of my mental atmosphere for your listening pleasure: one of Emily Dickinson's bewitching poems, amended to be gender-inclusive, along with a New Year's announcement about Liminal Flares.

As always, we recommend using your headphones to get the most out of Mer's audio witchery.

New here and wondering what this podcast is all about? Listen to our first episode, "A Prelude at the Threshold."

Please support Liminal Flares by leaving your rating and (where possible) a review on your preferred podcast streaming service!

Writing/Editing & Narration by Maika

Music by The Parlour Trick

Audio Engineering by Meredith Yayanos

Cover photo by Maika

To learn more about Liminal Flares visit our website liminalflares.com

Follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, TikTok, or Facebook @liminaflares

And on Mastodon @LiminalFlares@mastodon.lol

We're pausing our release schedule for a few weeks. Regular episodes resume in February!

Did you know that Bram Stoker's Dracula (the 1897 Gothic horror novel, not the swoonworthy 1992 Coppola film) originally began with a chapter that was cut from the book before it was published?

That lost chapter was posthumously published as a short story entitled "Dracula's Guest." And today we bring you part 2 of our gender-inclusive revision of that spine-tingling tale.

As always, use your headphones if you've got 'em! Mer bedecked this episode in a heady coalescence of hauntingly beautiful fragments of "Mare Desiderii" from A Blessed Unrest by The Parlour Trick.

And trust me, you do not want to miss out on the full unsettling and titillating impact of an unexpected piece of correspondence at the very end of our tale.

Please support Liminal Flares by rating and (where possible) reviewing the show on your preferred podcast streaming service.

New here and wondering what this podcast is all about? Check out our first episode, "A Prelude at the Threshold."

Writing/Editing & Narration by Maika

Music by The Parlour Trick

Piano composition in "Mare Desiderii" by Dan Cantrell, theremin and violin arrangement by Mer.

Audio Engineering by Meredith Yayanos

Cover photo by Maika

To learn more about Liminal Flares visit our website liminalflares.com

Follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, TikTok, or Facebook @liminaflares

Or Mastodon @LiminalFlares@mastodon.lol

New episodes every Thursday!

Time to lose ourselves in the wintry wilds of Gothic horror courtesy of the one and only Bram Stoker. Nothing says cozy winter listening (or cool summer listening, for our friends in the Southern Hemisphere) like gender-inclusive Gothic fiction.

If you like your hygge haunted, haunting, and NOT heteronormative, then you're already home.

Use your headphones if you've got 'em. This week's show is swathed in heady, unearthly theremin. Mer used isolated theremin tracks from achingly beautiful track "Mare Desiderii" (from A Blessed Unrest by The Parlour Trick) as a sort of sonic collage that culminates in sharing part of the song itself near the end of the episode.

Piano composition in "Mare Desiderii" by Dan Cantrell, theremin and violin arrangement by Mer)

There's more of this phantasmal auditory goodness to come when we conclude "Dracula's Guest" next week! In the meantime, after you listen to this week's show, check out A Blessed Unrest in its preternatural entirety. You can also read my rhapsodizing about it on the Liminal Flares blog.

Please support Liminal Flares by rating and (where possible) reviewing the show on your preferred podcast streaming service.

New here and wondering what this podcast is all about? Check out our first episode, "A Prelude at the Threshold."

Writing/Editing & Narration by Maika

Music by The Parlour Trick

Audio Engineering by Meredith Yayanos

Cover photo by Maika

To learn more about Liminal Flares visit our website liminalflares.com

Follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, TikTok, or Facebook @liminaflares

Or Mastodon @LiminalFlares@mastodon.lol

New episodes every Thursday!