Queer Fantasy and Weird Tales for the People
The world is ending, she wants to scream in the man’s face, none of it matters.
The Book of the New Moon Door
Even in the midst of the apocalypse, you still have to deal with people. The latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door is now available on Patreon.
Mourning Ritual, “Bad Moon Rising” (Creedence Clearwater Revival cover)
Good morning!
I had a lovely time at What the Hex yesterday! Hello to everyone I met there. If you signed up for the newsletter, check your inbox for a confirmation email! MailerLite really wants you to consent before it adds you to the mailing list.
That’s going to be my last event of the year, and now I’m focusing on getting The Book of the New Moon Door published and into your hands. If you’re keeping up with the serial version, there will be a new chapter on Patreon tomorrow, and last week’s chapter will be here on the website to read for free on Wednesday.
As always, thanks for being here, and have an excellent week.
Dust
It’s only been a few hours since Berend became acquainted with the wall of bone, but it looks like wind and rain have been battering against it for centuries. The bones have turned the color of old parchment. Pores and cracks have opened up all along the lengths of each rib and femur, each dome of a skull, and all the knobbly ends of joints Berend can’t identify, piled up as they are. Under his feet, fragments of bone crack and crumble into dust.
A thick fog blankets the brief stretch of ground between the street and the wall, and it covers Berend’s good eye and muffles his ears. He’s maybe three steps past the temple when it disappears, lost in the morass of gray. The wall runs east to west, as far as he can remember, so he puts it on his left side and places one tired foot in front of the other. Even the eerie red light that made its home on the western horizon doesn’t penetrate the fog anymore.
How much time do we have? he wonders. It’s a foolish question—no one has the answer, not even the gods, and if he thinks about it, he’ll probably stop stark still and not be able to move again until the world finally does end.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Eighteen”They’re almost certainly gone, and whether that means far away or turned into bloody red paste, he can’t say.
The Book of the New Moon Door
Berend tries to tie up loose ends, and one of them comes looking for him. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon.
The Tallest Man on Earth, “The Sparrow and the Medicine”
Hello! It’s Monday again.
The What the Hex Autumn Witches’ Market is this Sunday! Brooke and I will be at Dresden Castle in Cudahy, WI, and doors open at noon. Admission is free! Here’s a link to the Facebook event for more details.
This market will be the second opportunity to preorder The Book of the New Moon Door. The third and final opportunity will be on this website in late November. More on that next month.
Also, if you signed up for the newsletter, be sure you check your email for the confirmation! You won’t be added to the list unless the mailer program is very sure you consent.
I am still deep in rewrites, so please enjoy a new chapter on Patreon tomorrow and last week’s chapter here on Wednesday.
Have an excellent week!
Knowledge
Around the ruin of Father Pereth’s office, Isabel has constructed a wall of books.
It’s really more of a low fence, three or four books high, depending on thickness. She stacked them haphazardly at first, but that prompted probing investigations from glowing tendrils and many-jointed fingers. Now, church records, illuminated manuscripts, and typeset prayer books stand in neat rows like bricks in a wall. She adds one more at the edge of the gap, a bound copy of the Kalusandr Scrolls, and winces as the already yellowed pages make contact with the heavy, damp air.
If this works, and this defense holds long enough for someone to find a way to send the thing beyond the wall back to the undreamt-of abyss from whence it came, all these books will be ruined. Centuries of church doctrine and millennia of history are only as durable as paper and ink. How can the church rebuild when all their knowledge is covered in mildew and mud?
It’s more important to save the people, she reminds herself. Knowledge survives when people do. What use are books in an empty city?
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Seventeen”Huge, multi-jointed fingers, each as tall as a man and gray as death, reach out ahead and grope blindly at the muddy ground. One swollen knuckle splits open, revealing a green eye with a pinpoint pupil.
The Book of the New Moon Door
Did someone order some body horror? No? Well, here it is anyway. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon.
Basia Bulat, “Already Forgiven”
Good morning!
If you’re here from Bitchcraft Fair, welcome! And if you signed up for the newsletter, be sure to check your inbox for a confirmation email. I’ll be sending them out right after I post this.
While I work on getting The Book of the New Moon Door ready for publication, you can read the serialized version here. There will be a new chapter on my Patreon tomorrow, and last week’s chapter will be up here to read for free on Wednesday. All the previous chapters live under the Stories tab above (under the Menu if you’re on mobile). The published version will differ in several ways from the serial version, but there may still be spoilers.
Whether this is all old news to you, or if it’s your first time here, I appreciate you. Have an excellent week.
Knives
Berend does not want to fight this man. He wants even less to kill him, but he’d rather that than give Hybrook Belisia the satisfaction of prematurely concluding his attempts to keep the world from ending. He’d also like to get back to the Temple District before the city scrambles itself around again.
Scarlet night is falling, but it’s still light enough to see that despite the gunshot, there’s no one else around—or they’re quite wisely hiding indoors. This particular street would have been a quiet one, under normal circumstances, but there isn’t a student in sight. There are no lectures from which to return home, nor philosophical discussions to be had over ale or coffee. Everyone is either crowded around the chasm, arguing over how best to build a bridge, holed up inside, or fled to the Temple of Isra.
Berend had mistaken this man for a student, from a distance, but his mistake is obvious now. The disheveled, hungry look isn’t an aesthetic choice, or the result of late nights peering at mathematical figures by candlelight. It’s only good, old-fashioned poverty. Whether it’s recent, or this would-be assassin spent his childhood cutting purses with a smaller knife, Berend can’t say.
“We can pretend we never saw each other,” Berend offers.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Sixteen”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.
Space Whales Press 