E. H. Lupton

@pretensesoup

Lammy-nominated author (Wisconsin Gothic series, 2023-present), poet, podcaster (Ask a Medievalist), pansexual, psychopomp. She/they. Books:

402 Folgt1.805 Follower3.191 Posts

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E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jul 13

My reading for the first half of the year. "That's very eclectic." Thank you, I often choose audiobooks based on "available now." I also read Renaissance and Dionysus in Wisconsin several times during this period, but they wouldn't fit and anyway I don't really count them.

All the books I read from January–July 2026:
A Bloomy Head
Game Changer
Death in the Spires
Wine for Roses
Rules for Ghosting
Heated Rivalry
After Hours at Dooryard Books
Rivers of London
The Long Game
Stiff
Catching the Big Fish
Oh! You Pretty Things
Post Captain
In the Dream House
Role Model
The Lights on Knock bridge Lane
Roses in Red Wax
Unhallowed

Tough Guy, When the Angels Left the Old Country, River of Teeth, Unfit to Print, Band Sinister, Mr. Milner Gets Divorced, A Study in Scarlet Women, The Bell in the Fog, The Marriage of Mary Russell, A Conspiracy in Belgravia, The Hollow of Fear, Common Goal The Case files of Jay Moriarty, Binti, Star Shipped, Tales from the Folly, My Beautiful Enemy The Joy of Gay Sex (3rd Ed.), Between Two Fires, The Language of Bees.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jul 10

This #fridayFling I don't have "vehicle," but I have cars and planes, which feels okay. This is from The Whole Wide World, which comes out... sometime.

"I don't think it really plays to your strengths." Celeste looked at him thoughtfully. "If I need my blender or car repaired, I will come to you. If we're flying over the Pacific and the plane's engine starts to smoke, I'll put my life in your hands. But helping a five-year-old find emotional equilibrium? Helping anyone do that?" She shook her head.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jul 7

For Wisconsin Gothic fans, this is a photo of the boat house (built in 1915) where a couple of scenes in Dionysus in Wisconsin and Old Time Religion take place.

A very pretty orange yellow pink sunset over Lake Mendota, with the white boathouse on the left side of the frame, somewhat in shadow.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jul 4

Quote of the day. Yesterday when I was driving back from aikido, someone set off one of those bright flash/loud bang fireworks just to my right as I was going through an intersection. It was not a super pleasant experience.

They stared at each other. "What are you doing for the Fourth?"

Laz licked his lower lip. "Getting very drunk, hopefully in a basement somewhere." Eli cleared his throat, and there was a moment of eye contact between them. Laz added, as though as an afterthought, "Eli wants to take me camping up north for the weekend."

Ulysses nodded jerkily. "Sounds like fun."

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jul 1

We had an amazing time last night (people gasped aloud at some revelations) and @janehadleywrites.bsky.social brought me a painting!

A painting of Sam (with stars in his hair) and Ulysses (on a motorcycle) done in a psychedelic style, like a 1968 album cover.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 28

I got overly involved in reading a manuscript I hated when I finished it and I regret to say it is actually extremely charming. I mean, look at this.

The dog followed him into the kitchen and sat obediently while Ewan poured food into his bowl.
When he set the bowl down, Ishtar appeared, leaping down in two quick jumps from on top of the refrigerator. Tristram, halfway to his brekky, saw her and froze.
She sauntered up to the bowl, sniffed the contents, and took one solitary kibble between her teeth. Ewan found himself watching the little gray cat transfixed, as she crunched it up. Then she turned around and left, not looking at either of them.
"Looks like it passed inspection," he told the dog, because he felt like he had to say something. "Bon appetit."

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 27

I think it's vaguely inspired by The Luggage. As they gave it to me, they asked how many pills I have. Me: Uh, four. Sometimes five if I take an allergy pill. 8yo: Huh.

A golden box, no top, swords sticking out of each side, bear feet, and the words Salvator Mundi on the end.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 26

#fridayFling The word is "jaw." Here's a little excerpt from The Whole Wide World in which no one is having a good time. But hey, it's chapter 2 or 3--everything is gonna get way worse.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 23

Last quote of the night, because I have finished proofing the audiobook. I think this is one of my favorite passages I've written.

The steps down to the dock were overhung by trees but still icy. If he hadn't been possessed, he wouldn't have risked them. But the view at the bottom was worth it, the flat plane of the frozen lake and so many stars above, the fat moon a few days from full. He thought about the moon landing and the vastness of space around them. Dionysus didn't seem to understand the dizzying feeling of tininess as they looked up, watching the dance of faint northern lights. Dionysus had never been a tiny figure standing on the palm of a god. He'd never really been at the mercy of anything. The idea that he was physically small compared to the vastness of the world didn't seem to correspond in him to a feeling of being unimportant, because people literally worshipped him. But he enjoyed the lights anyway.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 22

Look, I made a new graphic for next week's event! If you're in the Twin Cities area, you should come by Tropes and Trifles and say hi. We're gonna talk about all kinds of groovy things. Details: tropesandtrifles.com/events/54733... #booksky #romancelandia

A brown square with the covers of Dionysus in Wisconsin and Renaissance in the center. Text around the image: Come see E. H. Lupton at Tropes and Trifles! Topics of discussion may include:
- parallels between bookx
- why Wisconsin Gothic?
- cover art
- why do you hate Edina what did it do to you
- [your question here]
- Romance! Communism!
- moral philosophy and other personal failings
- audiobook news
- What about this Dionysus guy anyway?
- book 6 rumors

June 30th at 7pm. Tickets at Tropes and Trifles Website!

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 21

This is the other one.

A palm-size painting of a great horned owl with starry background in a frame with fleur de lies in the corners.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 21

I got my kids some tiny paintings at the market! This is one of them.

A palm-size painting of a hedgehog in a white frame.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 21

Me, listening to the audiobook for errors. ...and then the 8yo walked in. I think he came in just after this paragraph finished, but man. Stay in bed tonight, please, comrade.

“There are
gateways to the underworld all around. Did you know
that when Dionysus descended to hell to retrieve
his mother’s soul, the man who told him where
the entrance was requested to become his lover in
exchange for the information? And Dionysus agreed.
But the man had died by the time he returned, so he
made a dildo out of a fig branch and fucked himself
with it on the man’s tomb.” He shook his head. “You
gotta love a god who keeps his promises.”

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 19

#FridayFling In which everyone is having kind of a bad time of it. Except Obe, who is having fun. (I think Eli is in a horror movie and Obe is having a walk-on part in a romcom.)

"You're the owner of the house," Obe said. He still sounded too cheerful for what he was saying. "We need your blood to complete the ritual."

"What about Laz? Take his blood." Eli knew that he said it too quickly. Laz’s expression was one of confusion, or perhaps incredulity. Eli winced internally, realizing he’d already buggered something up.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 17

The world is still beautiful and someday things will improve.

Large, vibrant orange lilies with drops of rain on them.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 17

Quote of the night.

Ellen looked cross. Ulysses was beginning to realize this was a permanent condition for her and respected it.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 17

Happy Bloomsday! This is from a reproduction of the original 1922 Shakespeare and Co edition.

For what creature was the door of egress a door if ingress?
For a cat.
What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?
The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 14

And these two.

A vampire is wearing a Hawaii shirt. The caption is "it had finally arrived in the mail."

Godzilla petting cows. The caption is "he found that visits to the countryside, and the cows in particular, helped him to calm down."

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 14

Did I show you guys that I framed the art I got myself for my birthday?

A skeleton is floating in a lagoon. There are mountains in the distance and the setting sun. In the foreground is a neon sign that says "dead end." The smoke from the skeleton's cigarette floats up elaborately.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 13

I have to go to Milwaukee, and I have to leave in 40 minutes. No time to write, and this isn't what I am supposed to be working on anyway. But this is the one paragraph I have written today.

Django met Ewan in the quad between the Humanities building and the Historical Society around one o’clock in the afternoon. It was overcast, rain threatening, and Ewan was wearing a new black cowboy hat.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 12

#fridayFling "ring": Laz continues to be Laz, what can I say.

"What were you doing in Singapore in '67?" Eli asked, his fingers straying to a frayed spot on the hem of Laz's jeans.

"Busting an illegal antiquity smuggling ring," Laz said, entirely deadpan. "And solving a murder."

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 12

Quote of the night.

"Ah yes," Sam said. "Your ritual." He said it the same way someone might have said "Your squirrel carcass."

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 11

On the second paragraph, Rictor Norton seems to suggest Americans did prefer oral sex, at least in the early 20th century. But the Cleopatra bit is probably mostly political disparagement (and also the bit that Rome was fine with anyone giving blowjobs is not true I don't think).

Some historians of sexuality argue that oral sex between men and women wasn’t common until the early twentieth century. For example, it wasn’t treated favourably in marriage manuals until the late 1920s. For gay men, the taste for oral sex has grown over the years. In Havelock Ellis’s book Sexual Inversion, published in 1897, nine of the gay men in his case studies preferred anal sex, compared to only three who preferred oral sex. In America, in the late nineteenth century some laws for the first time specifically prohibited oral sex between men, which might indicate that it was a newly popular practice. Herman Melville in his novel Redburn, published in 1849, refers obliquely to oral sex between sailors. It seems possible that oral sex became popular among gay men first in America and was then imported into Europe. Gay Swedish men working on the liners sailing between Gothenburg and New York in the 1930s reported that they got lots of oral sex in New York, while the main sex act in Gothenburg was mutual masturbation. The slang terms "blow" and "blow job" originated in 1930s America. Even in the 1960s and 1970s, it was generally believed that oral sex was more common between American men, while anal sex was more common between British men, and these national preferences are reflected in the pornography of the time.

Source: https://rictornorton.co.uk/gaysex.htm

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 11

From the same book. Citations fuckin needed, my dudes.

Until recently in many European countries, blow jobs were virtually unheard of between men and considered demeaning--they were performed only by women and usually only prostitutes. In the older and non-Judeo-Christian cultures of the East and in societies of Asia, Africa, and South America, blow jobs are acceptable for everyone regardless of gender. Cleopatra of Egypt, for instance, is reputed to have sucked off one hundred Roman noblemen in Rome in one night, and a thousand Roman soldiers back home, but this is probably exaggerated.
It's difficult to say how it happened, exactly, but the United States has become the blow-job capital of the world: Men from all over the world vacation here, often traveling across the country to experience the superb technical prowess of American cocksuckers.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 11

No, Sam, he never does.

"I just need to make it clear this isn't a quid pro quo or anything," Ulysses was saying, his expression annoyingly earnest. "I'll still help you, regardless of what--"
"Do you ever shut up?" Sam grumbled, throwing a leg over the other man's hips.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 10

When you realize this edition came out in 2003... Also, I bet none of you guys will guess what book this is actually from.

Inside chat rooms, there is usually a topic, or topics, though distractions are frequent. There's often a specialized argot or slang—you will quickly notice. There are various shortcuts people use there called "emotions [sic]"; for example, to signal that you're happy with what someone just said, keyboard a colon followed by a closing parenthesis, and you have a smile; do it the opposite way, and it's a frown.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 10

Assuming the storms this week don't wash us away, I'll be at the Read with Pride book fair at the Baird Center in Milwaukee this Saturday, 6/13, from 10am-3pm. My friend who does tarot readings will be along too! Should be a fun time, so come get some books and say hi.

Read with Pride Romance Book Fair
Hosted and Sponsored by
The Well Red Damsel
June 13, 2026
10am to 3pm
Baird Center
400 W. Wisconsin Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53203
Free admission

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 10

Returning to Dionysus in Wisconsin as I listen to the audiobook has been weird. Especially Sam and Ulysses flirting non-stop for about four chapters in a row. You guys are never gonna believe where you end up.

Ulysses grinned. "You like me. Come on, be honest."

Sam looked away, trying to stop the corners of his mouth from turning up. "Please get out of my chair."

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 6

Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive redux. (Blue Mounds 18k, ick conditions.)

Em standing at the top of the tower on Blue Mound. Why is the city Blue Mounds but I think there's only one actual mound? Hmm. Anyway the countryside is incredibly green in the background, and you can't see any of the hideous midges that are buzzing around me.

E. H. Lupton@pretensesoup· Jun 5

A joke I totally forgot I wrote. #fridayFling