In my personal life I go by Dani Ashes. I’m gender queer and use they/them pronouns. I was first exposed to the goth scene via the song Dark Romantics when I was 14, and I've been exploring the social and academic aspect of the subculture I call home ever since.

I was a live goth and industrial DJ for a number of years, beginning when I was 19. I went by the moniker DJ Count, and was known as "The Count" for many years. I DJ'd a number of concerts and club events from 2007 - 2009. In February of 2008 I started The Requiem Industrial Club Podcast, after having been uploading DJ mixes to P2P servers a year before hand. As the years went on I added more DJ's to the podcast, but I found myself wanting something more, some form of goth talk show that I felt was sorely missing from existing goth content spaces like youtube and blogs. So in February 2014 I launched Cemetery Confessions, as the world’s first and only goth talk podcast. Since then I've created The Belfry Network, a collective of podcasts focused on subcultural issues, in an effort to promote quality content aimed at goths.

I have been married since late 2012, and am a parent to a beautiful baby bat named Link.

Aside from having a passion for the goth community, I am spend much of my time keeping up with sociology, cognitive science, and philosophy . I am a nerd, a gamer (video and tabletop), nature lover, an atheistic pagan, and lover of learning. You can e-mail me at, Cemetery Confessions [at] gmail [dot] com