I hope you’ve had a merry May, my friends, dear men and women of the crepuscular realms, where the music lugubrious is heavy with dark mysticism and the tomes tell of terrors most macabre. Welcome, and happy World Goth Day, assuming it’s 22 May where you are. (At the time when I first began writing this post, that event was only about four days away, but celebrating early can be fun, and why not honor Goth all month, all year?) Anyway, this holiday should be for celebrating all the best of Goth and the Gothic.

So, we shall once again eulogize Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, The Monk: A Romance by Matthew Gregory Lewis, and all the oldest masterpieces of Gothic literature. Let us applaud any contemporary artists who may have recently created new and interesting works of Goth/Gothic/neo-Gothic. Look back at some of your favorite stories of dark fantasy, dark romanticism, sword and sorcery, the weird, and horror, and search for any Gothic elements therein. Consider Poe, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert W. Chambers.

If you like stories that have Gothic traits, I hope you will read my stories in DMR Books’ Samhain Sorceries as well as Walpurgis Witcheries.

Please leave reviews; your honest opinion matters, and it does help.

Personally, I would like to know what you did or did not like about my works. Criticism is valuable to me when it is cordial and constructive. I should think many artists might feel the same way.

If you would like to learn more about my thoughts on Goth and the Gothic, and you wouldn’t mind reading a much longer article, getting a deeper, lengthy reflection filled also with my opinions on society in general, check out my post “My Appreciation for Goth; or, a Tragicomedy Reflection on Society.”

I’d also suggest you read my other guest posts on the DMR Books blog.

Before we part, good reader, place your answers to these four questions in the comments-section below: (I) Do you consider yourself Goth? (II) Are you too a Gothic artist? (III) How do you yourself discover new Gothic art/artists/writers? (IV) What are your favorite works of Gothic fiction, the old and the new?

Thank you for your time.

Yours truly,
Matthew Pungitore
5/18/2026

Matthew Pungitore is a writer, poet, painter, and author of The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers and other stories.