Queer Fantasy and Weird Tales for the People
Anaïs Mitchell, “Wilderland”
It’s Monday again. Summer has packed up and gone, and October has arrived with its thin gray mornings and rich, sunny afternoons.
There is less than a month between us and the election in the US. Have you checked your registration? Do you have a plan to vote and keep yourself and others safe?
If all goes well, I should have another chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door up this week. See you then!
Belisia
To place the box in which Mikhail’s corpse currently resides into the temple’s extensive graveyard, Berend will have to pay one hundred silver pennies.
He is informed of this by Father Reeves, the priest in charge of funerary services, a tall man with a shaved head and an aquiline nose. He is paternally comforting and coldly distant, often at the same time, and it’s an unsettling effect. Long brown fingers make notes with a quill in a yellowing ledger.
We all end up as numbers. Berend hands over the money. It’s most of what he has. He’ll need more if he’s going to continue sleeping in a bed until his next job.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Three”London Grammar, “Oh Woman, Oh Man”
Good morning.
I’m planning on getting the next chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door up this week, hopefully Wednesday, but there’s been a family medical emergency. I will try to update as I learn more.
Have an excellent week.
Warder
Isabel sits at the small table across from Brother Risoven, her tea growing cold and a piece of bloody-colored fungus lying on a scrap of paper beside it. It’s stained the paper a wet reddish brown, and it’s shriveled a bit, but otherwise it hasn’t changed noticeably from when she pulled it off the side of a shack in the Shell District last night. In the thin early morning light from the high, narrow windows of the chapel’s living quarters, it looks rather like a severed finger, dark and twisted from putrefaction.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Two”Chapter Two of The Book of the New Moon Door will be posted tomorrow, due to my poor time management. See you then!
Loreena McKennitt, “Dante’s Prayer”
It’s Monday again.
With the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a lot of bad things are about to happen in America.
But they haven’t happened yet. Contact your senators and demand they do everything in their power to prevent another Trump appointee to a lifelong seat. Phone calls are the most effective; the Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121.
Be prepared to march and keep an eye out for events in your area. Wear your mask!
Check your voter registration even if you’re pretty sure you’re registered. If you’re not, you can register here. At this stage, the best defense against voter suppression is overwhelming numbers. Due to Coronavirus, there will be a shortage of poll workers, so if you’re low-risk you can volunteer (and even get paid in some places): more information here.
I’ll compile more resources as I find them. I’ll also be back on Wednesday with the next chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door, for a bit of escapism.
Keep fighting the good fight.
Mikhail
The gods weep when a Son of Galaser dies.
Berend would know. It rained for five days straight after the battle on Braenach Hill, when nine Sons out of every ten were slaughtered in the grass, seven years ago. He stood in the mud, afterward, water pouring down on his bandaged head, and listened to the announcement that he and the handful of others still standing would be out of work, as part of the terms of their employer’s surrender.
Not many walked off that hill. Even fewer are still around.
And now one of them is lying in six pieces on an embalming table.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter One”Evanescence, “Even in Death” (Demo and 2016 Versions)
Happy Monday! I’ve been revisiting my high-school music choices, and discovered that “Even in Death” was updated in 2016! It’s lovely and I am very excited.
My new story, The Book of the New Moon Door, will be starting on Wednesday! Click here for a blurb if you haven’t already, and stop back for the first chapter.
Are you registered to vote? You should check, even if you think you’re already registered, because you may have been purged from the rolls. It happened to me back in April, even though I had voted in the February primary.
Have an excellent week.
Next week, I’ll be starting a new multi-chapter story, The Book of the New Moon Door. As always, it’ll be completely free to read, and released one chapter a week on Wednesdays until further notice.
The world is changing.
The old orders of the world fade away. The church’s power wanes, replaced by secular states. Magic gives way to science.
Berend was once a member of the Sons of Galaser, the most prestigious mercenary company on the continent. Now, the Sons are no more, and only a handful of his former companions remain, one of whom was dismembered last night in what appears to be a demon-summoning ritual out of an old legend.
Isabel is a Sentinel of Ondir, the god of death. Armed with bell, book, and candle, her job is to send restless spirits to the afterlife–and there has been much need of that, of late. Asking the ghost of a murdered ex-mercenary if he saw his killer before he died is a simple task, but she soon finds that things will not be so easy: though everything Isabel knows tells her it’s impossible, it appears his soul has been damaged.
As Berend and Isabel search for a murderer who can dismember a soul, and navigate their places in the changing world, they discover the terrible secrets hidden behind the veil of progress.
Doomtree, “If & When”
Good morning! Happy Labor Day, to all my worker siblings.
My day job was particularly taxing last week, so I didn’t get around to organizing my notes and making an announcement for my next project, but I am planning on doing it this week. It will be a multi-chapter story!
Have an excellent week.
Space Whales Press 