Category: literature promotion

My Short Story, ‘Soil,’ is Published in the Anthology, ‘Life, Death, and Transmutation’

I have a short story, ‘Soil,’ that has been published today, fittingly, on Earth Day, in the anthology Life. Death, and Transmutation: A Charity Anthology of Dark Nature Poetry and Fiction, edited by Alison Armstrong and presented by Dark Moon Rising Publications. It’s a  charity anthology of dark fiction and poetry exploring the life, death, and regenerative forces of Nature, with all proceeds donated to Defenders of Wildlife.

My story is about a businessman who has just died, and while he’s in his grave, his soul must reckon with the divinity of the earth for his sinful pollution of the land to maximize profit. He’ll undergo a painful ego death, which will ultimately be a kind of purgatory for him, leading to his ultimate redemption and blissful existence, being interconnected with everything else in the universe.

Other great writers in the anthology are Alison Armstrong, Pixie Bruner, J. Rocky Colavito, Christina Guldi, Elad Haber, Kyle Heger, Kristi Hendricks, Juleigh Howard-Hobson, J.L. Lane, Basile Lebret, LindaAnn LoSchiavo, Shane David Morin, Irena Barbara Nagler, Margo Pecha, Sacha Rosel, Stacy Schonhardt, Tamara Kaye Sellman, Shawn Scott Smith, David L Tamarin, and Tracy Thompson.

So go get yourself a copy of this great book. You can find it here on Amazon.

The Tanah: Troughs–Chapter Three

[The following is the forty-third of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, here is the thirty-first, here is the thirty-second, here is the thirty-third, here is the thirty-fourth, here is the thirty-fifth, here is the thirty-sixth, here is the thirty-seventh, here is the thirty-eighth, here is the thirty-ninth, here is the fortieth, here is the forty-first, and here is the forty-second–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Translator’s Introduction

The last of the “Trough” chapters describes a world without any knowledge of the Crims, let alone how to worship them or use the magic of the Tanah. In the eyes of the ancient tribe that wrote these texts and prophesied this future in their visions, it’s a future world that has totally lost its way, with nothing to give its people any kind of moral guidance.

Accordingly, the trough depicted here is a particularly bleak one. Though a corresponding crest is supposed to follow it, as was mentioned in the translator’s introduction to Troughs, Chapter One, there’s an ambiguity as to whether humanity’s salvation will result in physical survival in a better world, or if it will be only a kind of spiritual survival, a nirvana without physicality.

In any case, this trough also shows a disturbing, uncanny prescience of our modern, capitalist world, or so do some of the researchers in our group believe. Most people will face appalling poverty, state repression, and social alienation, while a small elite own most of the land, money, and property. There’s a description of money-making that reads like a formula from Marx’s Capital–M-C-M’, meaning money-commodity-valorized money (i.e., money with added profit).

Finally, there is a prophesied man who will usher in the end of the world: Christ, or anti-Christ? The text is unclear. Some will think he’s the former; many will think he’s the latter. We researchers think he sounds like a certain contemporary US president.

Chapter Three

O, woe to those in the future who will forget the Crims! We have seen that the people of the world will lose their way, and the punishment of their sins will be too great for most to bear.

These people will know a new kind of slavery, in which the slaves are given wages (though very little), are allowed to change from one master to another of their own accord (if they can find one to give them money and thus save them from total destitution), yet are slaves nonetheless. Exceedingly few have the most, and almost all have almost nothing. The people seem to know or care little about each other, or about themselves. People are not close to each other.

An oppressive state watches the slaves closely, puts them in prisons to work like even more abject slaves, and kills people in other nations through constant war. Wealth is created by transforming money into a product to be sold, which is then made into money again, yet a greater amount of money than before, most of it to be kept by the masters. If too little of this wealth is made in one’s own nation, one goes out to other nations, steals what is in those other nations, and makes the greater amounts of money in those other nations, all to be taken back to the first nation.

Attempts will be made to overthrow these greedy rich men, to establish just and fair societies, but through the clever machinations of those men, who always trick their people into believing that the makers of those just societies are making unjust ones, these attempts will be thwarted, plunging the world into worse oppression and greater despair.

At one point in our vision, when matters seemed to be at their worst, we saw a man emerge and rise to the highest seat of power. Our vision became cloudy and unclear: we could not decide if he was a righteous man avenging the unjust by destroying the world, or an evil man completing the destruction of it.

Some of the people thought him a saviour; many others thought him a demon. Still others thought him a mere fool raised far too high. He saw himself as a saviour; there were pictures depicting him as such. His face was orange. Whatever his intentions were, he assuredly brought on the destruction of many, leading to the end of the trough.

Arson

A fire is nothing, in an empty building,
compared to that violence of having so
little pay that you cannot afford to live.
David Byrne and his band in the white
suits had the right idea in their old song
and 1980s video. We’re ordinary guys, and nasty weather is coming.

It’s just adventurism, but it’s something.
The fire-starters will just be arrested, so
it won’t in itself be revolution, but it has
started something that has been far too overdue. Build a movement.

We must not just burn buildings; we must
burn the entire system to the very ground.
No longer must the parasites be allowed to steal off workers’ sweat.

With a virgin earth, we can start to build something new, and better.

My Short Story, ‘Scylla,’ in the Upcoming Anthology, ‘Just Beneath Your Boat’

I will have a horror short story called ‘Scylla’ in an upcoming anthology, Just Beneath Your Boat, to be released on May 17th from Dark Moon Rising publications. It’s edited by Thomas Folske, with a foreword by Michael Cole.

My story is about a family going out in a yacht, but the father works in a big company that is polluting the ocean to cut costs and maximize profits. Certain supernatural forces in the ocean, however, want to take their revenge not only on him but also on his whole family, using the plastic dumped in the ocean to construct a huge…abomination…to kill them.

Other great writers in the anthology include the following:

Stephen A. Roddewig
Jeff Parsons 
Lillian Csernica
Rob Tannahill
Claire Davon
LJ Jacobs
Milan Simić
Justin Carlos Alcala
Denise Landry 
Blake Hoss
David McDonald 
CJ Hooper
Pip Pinkerton 
Dino Parenti
Don Anelli
Matthew Chabin
Kasey Hill 
DJ Tyrer 
Miguel Fliguer
Thomas Folske
Michael Mortimer
Margaret Eve

Also, there is artwork from:

Alhiya Hoffman
Amelia Folske
Ben Merk
Blake Hoss
Kelsey Grimmell
Michelle Hanson 
Milan Simić
Olivia Davis
Sidney Shiv 
Todor Gotchkov
Warren Muzak

So when May 17th rolls around, go get yourselves a copy of this great book. When it drops, I’ll post another promo with a link to where you can order a copy on Amazon; but for now, you can per-order it here. It will also be published on Kobo and OverDrive libraries, possibly also even on hoopla. I mention these alternatives for those who’d like to buy the book, but who don’t want to give Jeff Bezos their money. 😉

The Tanah: Troughs–Chapter Two

[The following is the forty-second of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, here is the thirty-first, here is the thirty-second, here is the thirty-third, here is the thirty-fourth, here is the thirty-fifth, here is the thirty-sixth, here is the thirty-seventh, here is the thirty-eighth, here is the thirty-ninth, here is the fortieth, and here is the forty-first–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Translator’s Introduction

This and the next chapter deal with “visions” of the future brought on by the use of drugs made from plants, local ones of the tribe’s area, presumably. Which plants in particular were used, we can’t be sure of, since they are never explicitly named in the text.

This chapter includes visions of a future many hundreds of years past the time of writing. The uncanny thing about this chapter is how, at least in the opinion of a few of the researchers in our team, it seems to be describing a feudal society, long before any of the tribe could have known what such a society would be like! It uses the language of someone trying to depict such a society, while of course not being able to describe it properly and accurately, all the while describing it in a way that the people of his or her own world could understand.

The chapter begins with a vision of how the tribe got liberated from the previous trough of slavery to the Zoyans as dealt with in Chapter One. Apparently, the tribe made a set of bracelets, one for each member, each decorated with personifications of the four Crims of the elements. So, Weleb has the face of a man blowing to represent air, Nevil has a face of fire, Drofurb a face of earth and rock, and Priff a watery face. These are mere suppositions of ours: we cannot describe how such bracelets looked for sure, having not yet found even one among the texts and relics.

In any case, it is the magic power of such bracelets that it is believed helped liberate the tribe, with the understanding that they would wear them with bedrock faith in the Crims. A lack of such faith in the future would result in a reversal of fortune. The liberated tribe passed on the bracelets to the next generation, warning the wearers to keep their faith in the Crims strong. The admonition worked, it seems, for many generations. At some point, though, the new wearers of the bracelets must have thought of them as little more than pretty jewelry, for the people soon enough found themselves in a new kind of servitude.

Chapter Two

Glory be to Drofurb, Crim of the earth, from whose plants we may extract drugs that give us signs of the future! From these visions, we Luminosians now know how we can liberate ourselves from the oppressive rule of the Zoyans!

We must make a bracelet for each member of the tribe; of what material each is to be made, we do not know, but we will try many kinds until we know which is correct. The bracelets are to be decorated each with an image of the four Crims, presented as if men. Weleb’s face will huff and puff and blow air; Nevil will have a fiery face; Drofurb, a face of earth and rock, with plants for hair; and Priff will have a wavy, watery face.

The most important thing of all, upon making and wearing the bracelets, is that every member of the tribe have an unshakable faith in the Crims and their ability to sustain a happy life for us all. If ever the wearer’s faith should falter, ill fortune will come back to us.

Our visions have shown that when we finish making the bracelets with the correct material, all of the tribe, fully motivated in their hatred of slavery to the Zoyans, will wear the bracelets with perfect faith. The visions show that we will be liberated; furthermore, many generations in the future will wear the bracelets faithfully, and so will continue to live well in a long, great crest. Bur our visions also show that one day, when the tribe is self-satisfied, they will grow proud, lose their faith, and treat the bracelets as if mere adornments. Then will come the next terrible trough.

Our vision of the trough to be endured was as follows. We saw wide, flat, grassy fields with men and women living off the land. Their crops yielded much food, yet the people were often hungry, for they had to give most of this food to the men who owned the land, those far richer than they.

These poor, wretched workers descended from us Luminosians, who after our liberation from the Zoyans would marry and mix with other peoples. None of these people could read or write; they were all filthy and often suffering or dying of disease at young ages. Many had few teeth, with little to eat or to grin about.

We saw no hope for any of them to rise out of their poverty and squalor. They could only raise crops and give most of the yield to their wealthy lords, who gave hollow promises of protection in exchange for food so desperately needed to fill their bellies with.

No kindness did the lords show their drudges: only an insistence that they know their place, and never try to rise from it, for pain of violence from the lords’ standing armies. We also saw the bracelets on the people’s wrists, never to be removed until passed onto the next generation, for until such a time, the bracelets were stuck to their skin; attempts to tear them off would be intolerably painful, until the Crims forced them to give them to their sons and daughters.

In time, though, one generation would rise up, conquer the evil lords, kings, and queens through bloody violence, which included the severing of heads with devices that had dropping blades. The people would then be free…if only for a short time, for the next trough would be soon to come.

The Tanah: Troughs–Chapter One

[The following is the forty-first of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, here is the thirty-first, here is the thirty-second, here is the thirty-third, here is the thirty-fourth, here is the thirty-fifth, here is the thirty-sixth, here is the thirty-seventh, here is the thirty-eighth, here is the thirty-ninth, and here is the fortieth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Translator’s Introduction

The ancient tribe that wrote the books of the Tanah conceived of history as a series of crests and troughs, the former being periods of good fortune, and the latter being periods of bad fortune. The writers chose to collect the major troughs of their sacred history and narrate the happenings of each in the chapters of this book, and to collect the major crests of that history and tell of them in the chapters of the next book.

The beginnings of these books of crests and troughs deal with those current to the writers at the time of writing; that is, the first chapters of each deal with the enslavement of the Luminosians by the Zoyans (Troughs), and their prophesied liberation (Crests).

Subsequent chapters in each book deal with scenarios believed to happen hundreds of years after the writing: a trough of servitude to wealthy owners of land, what reads like a prophecy of feudalism; then, a crest will come, liberating the people from this servitude. A final trough concerns a world with increasing and extreme wealth inequality, with authoritarian states that use violence to keep the masses in check, and various methods of lulling the masses into docility and complacency, again, to keep them in check–that is, breads and circuses. It prophesies a world disturbingly close to our own, so accurate is its prescience.

As for the corresponding crest meant to lift the world out of that distant, dystopian future, there is an ambiguity to it as to whether the future world will be saved by the leadership of some messiah-like figure, or if the Earth’s only salvation will be a kind of Armageddon, killing and wiping out all of human, animal, and plant life, leading to a far-off, gradual regeneration of life in a completely new form. Again, the prophecy seems chillingly prescient.

Chapter One

Woe to us Luminosians! Our punishment is just!

We have been under the yoke of the Zoyans for ten years now, and no end to our misery is in sight! We only know that a crest will one day come to liberate us, yet it seems so far away from us.

We toil, we dig, we build, we break up rock, we serve meals to and clean for our betters, the Zoyans. We do all of these tasks as just punishment for our wicked and selfish use of magic, turning the once-benevolent Crims against us! We deserve our suffering!

The Zoyans degrade us because we degraded others. They conquered us because we conquered others. They make us slaves because we made slaves of others. They use our women for their sexual sport because we used the women of others for our sexual sport. The Echo Effect taught us of these dangers, but we would not listen.

These hard times that we must endure are a trough. A trough is part of a wave, and therefore a crest will come. Ill fortune is no more permanent than good fortune is. A trough will move up into a crest just as surely as a crest will move down into another trough.

We cannot know how long this trough will last. We only know that, one day, the wave will begin to rise again. Will that day come tomorrow? Will it come next week? Next month? Next year? In how many years will it come? In how many decades will it come?

We do not know any of this. We only know that the wave will rise again into a crest. We must therefore be patient, have faith, and endure.

So for now, we must continue to do our work, as hateful as it is. We must continue to toil, to dig, to build, to break up rock, to serve meals and clean for our betters, the Zoyans. We must do all of these tasks as penance for having made others do these tasks for us one time in the past, what had been a crest for us.

We must remember: if the beginning of a new crest has not come yet, it is because our penance for our own sins is not yet complete. It will be complete one day: we must have faith, and be patient. The Crims know when that day will be, and we know that they are faithful to us.

Manna

T
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a
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n

f
a
l
l

o
f

b
a
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l
s

o
f

f
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e

o
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Z
i
o
s

will empty their
apartments, will
tell Aviv to leave
and give the land
back to those who
were promised it.
Weeping Israelis’
children should be
asking their moms
and dads why they
were taken here, &
why they laughed
at weeping Gazan
children. Iranian
rain is a shower to
respond to bombs
rained on Lebanon and the like. The exodus will cry, “I ran so far away from Iran.”

The Tanah: Amores–Four More Spells for Attractiveness

[The following is the thirty-ninth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, here is the thirty-first, here is the thirty-second, here is the thirty-third, here is the thirty-fourth, here is the thirty-fifth, here is the thirty-sixth, here is the thirty-seventh, and here is the thirty-eighth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Physical Attractiveness Spell

[Take a ritual bath in the manner described in previous spells. Recite the following verse over and over again as the lather is spread on your body and rinsed off.]

Weleb, blow on me a flower’s fragrance.
Nevil, make whom I love burn for me.
Drofurb, make his love as strong as stone.
Priff, give me long and flowing, lovely hair.

Comment: this spell was meant for women to use on men.

Spell for Knowing and Being Another’s Fantasy Lover

[Burn a flame in a pile of twigs surrounded in a mound of dirt. Do this on a windy day. As you hold a small pot of water just over the fire, to heat the water, stare into the flame and recite the verse below, over and over. When the water is hot enough–not so hot as to burn the skin–pour it on your arm and continue repeatedly chanting the verse.]

Weleb, blow on me the secrets of his dreams.
Nevil, teach me all of his desires.
Drofurb, make me the ground of what he wants.
Priff, pour on me the scent of all his lusts.

Comment: again, this is a spell meant for women to use on men, not vice versa.

Weight Loss Spell

[Dig holes large enough to fit your feet in, holes in a circle around a large fire. Fill the holes with water, enough to go up to your ankles. Do this on a windy day. As you recite the following verse, go around the fire with your bare feet going in the holes and splashing in the water. Make sure never to miss the holes. Continue to do so until there is no more splashing water, only mud, always repeating the verse.]

Weleb, blow thinness on me!
Nevil, burn my fat off me!
Drofurb, make my fat sink into you!
Priff, wash my fat off me!

Comment: the desired weight loss was expected to be achieved within a week or two.

Spell for Sculpting the Desired Body Shape

[Take a ritual bath as described previously. As you spread the lather all over your body, move your hands in shapes that accurately imitate the contours you wish your body to have, pushing in or pulling out wherever you want the curves to go in or out, all while repeatedly chanting the verse below.]

Weleb, blow on me the shape I want!
Nevil, burn away the curves I hate!
Drofurb, set my wanted shape in stone!
Priff, make my wanted curves flow like waves!

Comment: this, too, is a spell meant for women–usually. It was rare that men ever used it. The desired body shape was expected to come within a few days, at most.

Even though these four spells were thought to be relatively harmless as far as the elders were concerned, reliance on them to make one–usually, a woman–more attractive was still frowned on by the elders, who wished their people wouldn’t base their worth on their physical attractiveness alone.

Two Buildings

I rack my brain
thinking…How
are we going to
get out of this?

I ran so far away
from what I once
believed, but now
I know no escape.

Two Tehran
buildings have been blown up,
smoke floating up in all directions.
A leader has been charred to cinders.
Two other buildings were toppled
twenty-five years ago.
So many more reduced to rubble since.

How many
more societies must die?
How many more bombing birds
must fly south for their winters of
discontent? How about
burning down a white building, for a change?