The Beneath the Rain Shadow podcast is baccck!

You've probably heard about Rain Shadows... the collection of PNW gothic horror fiction recently published by Seattle HWA members Clay Vermulm and Tamara Kaye Sellman.

What you might not know is that Rain Shadows is the culmination of a year-long podcast experiment, and another season is gearing up for 2026.

What is Beneath the Rain Shadow?

Beneath the Rain Shadow (BTRS) began as a year-long podcast collaboration between the two authors in late December 2023.

BTRS is an interesting quasi-live experiment for fans of horror fiction, both writers and readers. This Substack/podcast venture features a monthly live critique session between the co-hosts in response to writing challenges based on mystery prompts they unveil live in previous episodes.

The prompts are what make these stories unique to the Pacific Northwest, inspiring short, dark tales which satisfy the theme and vision of the project’s culminating collection: Rain Shadows: Dark Tales from Washington State. 

The first episode dropped January 1, 2024, and the series ran monthly through the end of the year with a postmortem episode in spring 2025.

What's new for 2026 at BTRS?

Clay and Tamara welcome HWA members M. Leigh and Gordon B. White as new co-hosts to the show, knowing they'll add flavor, texture, energy, and their own wonderful gifts as horror writers and thinkers.

Expect all four authors to mine story fodder reflecting all things PNW—settings, monsters, folklore, climate, insider jokes, and other colloquial details. The podcast audience can expect to encounter insider insights about the writing life as well, plus ideas about what horror writing is and isn’t. 

Listeners also get to eavesdrop as the co-hosts observe each others stories and offer live story feedback on these early drafts, revealing a real-world sense of how a critique group functions.

And at the end of it all, there will be a second Rain Shadows collection coming in 2027, when listeners can then read the finished projects after tracking their progress for a year.

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Learn more about the podcast and find the updated schedule and livestream/podcast links (coming in January) at https://tksellman.com/rain-shadows/ or go to www.RainShadowStories.com