About
Author. Artist. A little bit Alaskan.
Mary Farnstrom has been a freelance writer and illustrator for over a decade, with a focus on creative works. Her earliest work appeared on Yahoo! Contributors before they dismantled the platform. After realizing her passion for the arts, she pursued them throughout her time at Fullerton College and by 2016 found herself studying indigenous languages, anthropology, and linguistics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
During her schooling she was a member of Phi Theta Kappa and Golden Key International Honor Societies and regularly volunteered her time at the tutoring center to help students refine their own academic and creative writing endeavors. Her writing has appeared in scholarly magazines, such as Chevening, where her stories speculated how the changes of habitats could affect the planet for future generations.
In her spare time, Mary enjoys volunteering at the Fairbanks Art Association, exploring the Last Frontier, and mentoring people who seek her help. Currently she writes at Puzzle Box Horror, where she educates and entertains fans of the horror genre with her articles, short stories, and illustrations.
What’s New With The Unhinged Alaskan?
News: April 07, 2020
Kicking off April with a new Dead Author Dedication, this month’s subject is Bram Stoker, author of the renowned Dracula and many other novels. Next up I wrote another piece highlighting a short horror film by ALTER, where I gave details of the kind of grief that people go through when they lose a child, […]
News: March 31, 2020
In the spirit of all of the panic that has been going around about COVID-19, I wrote a short horror story as if it were the daily diary of someone who was just starting to realize the gravity of what we’re going through on a global level. It’s pure fiction with only one Fairbanks name drop, my favorite watering hole; hopefully, they’re not terribly upset by it. I carried on that theme with an article about the origins of Pandora’s Box and a retelling of the Greek myth that made Pandora famous. The rest of the week I finish up with something we’re all kind of feeling right now, existential dread as well as grave robbing. Interested in seeing more horror related content? Check out Puzzle Box Horror for more great articles!
News: March 24, 2020
This week I dove into ghost ships, both the scientific theories of how they exist (and they do!) as well as the lore that surrounds them, but I also did two more Lovecraft-centric articles, one about the creatures that were made famous years after his death, as well as a sort of send-off to his legacy as an author. There are a lot of less than cheery parts of his personal viewpoints that I purposefully neglected to speak about, as they did little to actually contribute to his work in the realm of horror, so while they may be incredibly relevant when in regards to him as a human being, I didn’t feel as if they were relevant to his body of work.
News: March 17, 2020
Another installment of the Dead Author Dedication for Lovecraft this week, where I wrote about the literary works he completed within his lifetime–this also got me heavily into reading pulp magazines which were popular at the time. After Lovecraft, I discussed how the human race is genetically engineered to have a deeply seated fear of […]
