Gothic Life: The Essential Guide to Macabre Style

The New York Times-dubbed "Martha Stewart for Macabre Homemakers," Aurelio Voltaire, presents the definitive guide to revamping your sanctuary to match your eerie vibe.

Are you ready to embrace your dark side? In Gothic Life, Aurelio Voltaire shows you how to do just that, using the expertise honed as founder and host of the show Gothic Homemaking and years of stop-motion animation work to take you on a journey to goth-hood. From DIY design projects to helpful haunted hosting tips and tricks, with this step-by-step reference, you'll transform your domain to capture your spooky essence with lessons on:

• The history and mindset of goths, including gothic icons from Vincent Price to Tim Burton to Wednesday Addams
• Enchanting home décor, making use of spooky color palettes (beyond black!) and all the bats and gargoyles your gothic heart could want
• A gothic dinner party menu featuring the likes of squid ink linguini and charcoal ice cream
• Holiday and party prep to celebrate Halloween and beyond

Whether you are looking for new ways to express your inner goth year-round or seeking brilliantly haunting ideas for your next Halloween bash, Gothic Life reveals the secrets to unleashing your inner goth and transforming the mundane to the macabre.

Author: Aurelio Voltaire
Publisher: Epic Ink Books
Published: 08/13/2024
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.45lbs
ISBN: 9780760388327

About the Author

There's not much that Aurelio Voltaire does not do. He is a full-on goth yet campy, fun, multi-talented, and self-aware. Born in Havana and raised in New Jersey, Aurelio Voltaire's boyhood fascination with horror movies blossomed into a teenage taste for the moody music of British rock bands including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, and the Cure. Along the way, he said, "I slowly started wearing less and less colors until I had, unbeknown to myself, become a goth." Once in New York, he started working in stop-motion animation, a career that led to gigs with TV networks including MTV, Nickelodeon, and Syfy, then known as the Sci-Fi Channel, and to becoming an instructor at the School of Visual Arts, where he taught stop-motion courses from 1996 to 2019.

As a musician, he is a songwriter whose music can best be described as a collection of murder ballads, and tongue-in-cheek exercises in the macabre.
Aurelio Voltaire's live shows, whether solo or with his skeletal orchestra, are full of stories and games. Voltaire has been recording and touring for 20 years. He's released 11 full length albums. The first five were released by Projekt Records. These days, Voltaire self-releases most of his CDs.

He is also the author of the books Paint It Black: A Guide to Gothic Homemaking and What is Goth: Music, Makeup, Attitude, Apparel, Dance, and General Skullduggery.

Aurelio lives in the East Village surrounded by goth paraphernalia and regularly streams his YouTube show, Gothic Homemaking, which follows his home decor projects, goth themed recipes, and shopping tours looking for gothic treasures.