Queer Fantasy and Weird Tales for the People
She closes her eyes, takes one last breath of dust and damp paper, and waits for the thing beyond the wall to devour her.
The Book of the New Moon Door
What’s left of the world is crumbling, and all Isabel has is a library. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon.
Hozier, “De Selby (Part 1)”
Good morning!
I’m continuing to work on The Book of the New Moon Door. I’ll be back at the end of this week with an update on an estimated release date. The short version: this is a big book (not Wheel of Time doorstopper big, but about twice as long as Beyond the Frost-Cold Sea), and an October release date is probably out of reach, but I plan to prepare some extremely fancy signed preorders for my two events in October.
In the meantime, I’ll have a new chapter on Patreon tomorrow and last week’s chapter here for free reading on Wednesday. I hope you’re enjoying the serial version, and I hope you’ll enjoy the published version more.
Thanks for being here! Have an excellent week.
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.
Dessa, “Call Off Your Ghost”
Good morning and happy Labor Day! I hope you have a rest from your labors today.
First, the usual suspects: new chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door on Patreon tomorrow, and last week’s chapter will be up here on Wednesday.
I am plugging along on rewrites, and they continue to go slowly. I did finally get my meds, thanks to the combined efforts of my husband and a very nice pharmacist, so my brain is much more functional and my writing pace is increasing. Time is running out, but I’m not quite ready to officially call an October release out of the realm of possibility. Give me another couple of weeks, and I’ll make the call then. I have two events in October (Bitchcraft Fair and the Autumn edition of What the Hex), so I really want to have a new book in stock, but I can offer preorders if I don’t make it.
Thanks for reading, enjoy the holiday, and stop by again soon!
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”“I’m sorry,” she says to the ghosts, stopping at the edge where the iron grass gives way to greenery. “I wish you had someone better.”
The Book of the New Moon Door
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and it’s full of ghosts? You can read this new chapter on Patreon right now!
Ryan Amon/ The SIE Sound Team, “The Night Unfurls” (from Bloodborne)
Good morning! Here’s a horror soundtrack to get you in the mood for more of The Book of the New Moon Door.
A new chapter will be on Patreon tomorrow, and last week’s chapter will make its appearance here on Wednesday. It’s also the end of the month, so the newsletter is going out (noonish my time on the 31st). If you haven’t signed up yet, and you’re interested in bonus cat pictures, garden updates, and event announcements, you can put your email address in the box at this link.
I am hoping to bring you good news about publication soon, but it’s slow going. I will bring you an update as soon as I can.
Thanks for being here, and have an excellent week.
Bridges
Berend wanders back the way he came, down the hill past the temple of Ondir. The doors are shut, and the low dome sits like the carcass of an enormous beetle, hollow and still. Presumably, there are still people inside, but they don’t show their faces.
Maybe all of Ondir’s holy men are hiding. The ghosts lingering around the Temple District followed Isabel when she left, but Berend is sure there are more—there certainly will be, if the world shifts again and the district falls into a chasm, or if either of the walls holding back the many-eyed thing (or is it a place? Berend can’t keep it straight) finally fall.
He’d feel better if there were four walls, but at this point, he’s taking what he can get. It probably doesn’t matter, either way, because the walls are just ideas. Or something.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Ten”Of course the end of the world has to come around now,when he’s a little over a year shy of forty, and not when he was twenty-two, had both eyes, and had never had so much as a hangover to slow him down.
The Book of the New Moon Door
The apocalypse happens on no one’s schedule. You can read this latest chapter on Patreon.
Space Whales Press 