Queer Fantasy and Weird Tales for the People
You’ve been in here the whole time, waiting for the gods to save you, and I’m all you have to show for it.
The Book of the New Moon Door
The world continues to crumble, and Isabel is desperately finding ways to stop it. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon! Also, be sure to stop by Bitchcraft Fair at the Wisconsin Center if you’ll be in the Milwaukee area this weekend. I’ll be signing books and offering preorders of The Book of the New Moon Door.
Askew
The sun is a curious blood-orange as it sinks over the university hospital, staining the towering forest a deep brownish black and the river running through it a dull red. Berend makes his way toward the forest’s shadowed underside, where the Orchard District, he hopes, still lies. It should be a short walk, but something’s wrong with the formerly orderly row houses in which the students and a good number of their teachers live several to a room. The neat grid of north-south avenues and east-west streets is all askew, with one line of houses intersecting another in a way that just barely avoids two buildings ending up on top of one another—the occupants of both houses stand outside, hands on hips or scratching at their heads in confusion. The dark wood frame of the farther house touches the red-brick corner of the nearer, and a fringe of splinters coated in reddish dust mark the point where they collided.
Berend crosses a street twice as wide as it should be, and then another that’s about a third too narrow. They intersect at a point far to the south, farther than he estimates the southern wall should be, shrouded in a strange, brown haze that looks like smoke but smells like nothing.
He’s a few blocks east of where the district boundary should lie when the earthquake hits.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Fifteen”“What am I supposed to do?” the erstwhile assassin asks the empty street and the unhearing gods. He looks, suddenly, even younger than Berend had guessed.
The Book of the New Moon Door
Remember when a corrupt noble family tried to have Berend killed? Well, they’re still at it. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon, or wait until next week for the free release.
Books
The air hums like a taut string. Through the fog, Isabel can see the wall of bone buckle outward, femurs knocking against ribcages in a rhythmless clatter as the mass tries to shift and absorb the force pushing behind it. Mist burns away in curls, and scarlet light scorches through to the floor of Pereth’s office.
Beneath her feet, the ground is shaking. Dust rains from the ceiling. Somewhere nearby, there is the terrible crack of breaking stone, louder than the shattering bones. Is it the temple dome, or is the other wall holding back the many-eyed thing also breaking?
Isabel doesn’t have time to answer these questions. She takes two fast steps toward Father Pereth and grabs him by the arm. He doesn’t resist as she drags him across the room to his heavy oaken desk, still beside the office door, and shoves him underneath. She follows, drawing her knees up to her chest and putting her arms over her head. The desk’s wooden legs scrape against the marble floor as the temple shakes as if with a terrible fever.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Fourteen”“The world is ending, mate,” Berend says. “Aren’t there better things you could be doing right now?”
The Book of the New Moon Door
Everyone’s priorities are well-ordered, as demonstrated by how many obstacles Berend is facing on his way back to the Temple District to find Isabel. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon!
I am excited (and a little chagrined) to announce that The Book of the New Moon Door will release, come hell or high water, on December 15, 2023.
I very much wanted to manage an October release, but life circumstances and my inability to estimate how long a task will take got the better of me. I’m just about finished with the rewrites of Part One, which is the longest portion of the book. Parts Two and Three should proceed quickly and comparatively smoothly. I plan to have my files ready to submit by mid-November, giving me a whole month for approval and ordering proofs. (For comparison, I submitted my files two weeks in advance of Beyond the Frost-Cold Sea‘s release date, a window of time I do not recommend in the slightest.)
So, what does that mean for the two markets I’ll be attending next month? The first will be Bitchcraft Fair on Saturday, October 8, and the second is What the Hex on Sunday, October 22. (Links will take you to the Facebook events. I’ll have more information on both as we get closer!) I will have a form for preorders of The Book of the New Moon Door, which will be signed, wrapped, tied up with string, and sealed with my Space Whales Press seal, pictured above. Listen, everyone loves book mail, but book mail in an antiquated package is even better. I’ll have a mockup for you soon, so stay tuned! If you preorder at either of these events, you should receive this package via USPS Media Mail in early December, before the book goes live to online retailers.
If you can’t make it to either market, and you’d like to receive Fantasy Bookmail that must be unsealed like a secret missive, I should have extra copies toward the end of November or beginning of December that I will make available here on the website. I’ll have more information on that once my files are formatted and approved.
I hope that these special preorders will delight you. I truly appreciate your patience with me, and I am working hard to make The Book of the New Moon Door worth the wait. Thanks for being here, and stay tuned for more updates.
Abandoned
She’s not alone here, on what was once the most holy of streets. People have gathered from all around the city, some carrying their belongings stuffed into sacks or tied in rolls of blankets, others empty-handed. A few of the watch’s broken barricades have been cleared away, but the street is still littered with them, and no one has touched the bodies. An old man sits beside a fire on the side of the road, and sharpened points emerge from the embers. Whatever drove him to build the fire has since departed, and he stares with burning light in his eyes, his lips moving without a sound.
Isra’s temple has acquired a huge gathering, pressing up against the main doors, surging around both sides, and smothering the kitchen door as well. They’re common folk, mostly, dressed in plain clothes. If there are any green-clad nuns among them, Isabel can’t see them. Two men support a third between them at the bottom of the stairs; the injured one’s head hangs down to his chest, and a festering wound on his shoulder leaks blood and pus into what’s left of his shirt. The wound still has the shape of the rotting, dead teeth that made it.
Across the street, a priest in a red robe stands on a box in the doorway of the temple of Alcos. He stretches his arms wide, as if he can quell the clamor around him by pressing it down. “Good people,” he calls out, “let us pray. We will seek the Father’s guidance.”
The crowd ripples. A few have taken to their knees, following his instructions. Others wander, restless, as much as the press of people allows. “Have the gods abandoned us?” someone shouts, but even the priest cannot answer.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Thirteen”Weathered
It isn’t until Isabel has passed through the iron village once more that the eerie dirge her following of ghosts is singing begins to form words. “It’s coming,” they chant. “Stone crumbles and bone turns to dust.”
They repeat this in rising and falling cadences, their hollow eyes wide with fear. They’ve abandoned their more or less orderly queue and now crowd around her in a semicircular mass, their mist-colored shoulders overlapping and their feet an indistinguishable mass a few inches above the rutted, metal road.
Isabel wraps her coat tighter around her and puts her hands over her ears. They’ve become so loud, her ghosts, and there are more of them than ever. Somewhere, people are dying, and their spirits are making their way here. Flashes of tortured, twisting motion tell her that a few of them are broken from contact with the thing beyond the wall.
“Why are you following me?” she asks again.
“It’s coming,” is their only answer. “It’s coming.”
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Twelve”He folds his hands inside his sleeves and turns toward the door, putting his back to her. “Your arrogance, Miss Rainier, knows no bounds. The council is to blame, for their barbaric decision to allow the dead to be cut apart and sewn back together instead of resting peacefully. One faithless Sentinel did nothing but leave us without someone who could quiet the ghosts.”
The Book of the New Moon Door
The world is crumbling around Isabel’s ears, but help is hard to come by. You can read this chapter on Patreon, or visit the Stories tab above (under the Menu if you’re on mobile) to catch up for free.
Thankful
The upper half of the University District, as Berend has taken to calling it, is more or less intact—surprising, considering the earth beneath it can’t be stable anymore. On the street leading up to Emryn Marner’s red-brick house, the cobbles are loose, sitting in hollows too large for them and shifting under Berend’s feet. He could be imagining things, but each house looks a little farther from its neighbors than he remembers.
A crack splits the steps leading up to the painted door. Berend places one foot on the first stair, lowering his weight slowly. It’s sturdy enough. He won’t have to be here long.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Eleven”
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