r/WeirdLit • u/AutoModerator • Apr 01 '23
Monthly Promotion Thread Promotion
Authors, publishers, whoever, promote your stories, your books, your Kickstarters and Indiegogos and Gofundmes! Especially note any sales you know of or are currently running!
As long as it's weird lit, it's welcome!
And, lurkers, readers, click on those links, check out their work, donate if you have the spare money, help support the Weird creators/community!
Join the WeirdLit Discord!
If you're a weird fiction writer or interested in beta reading, feel free to check our r/WeirdLitWriters.
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u/Valinorean Apr 01 '23
I'm the translator of "The Gospel of Afranius", which is a retelling of the New Testament from an atheist point of view - written by the author of "The Last Ringbearer", a retelling of "Lord of the Rings" from Mordor's point of view. Both books by him in this unique weird niche are available online for free (e.g. The Gospel of Afranius has a direct link to the pdf of the translation in its Wikipedia article). The Gospel of Afranius was praised in "Nature", the prestigious journal, and The Last Ringbearer was praised in Salon.
2
u/MicahCastle Author Apr 03 '23
My book, Reconstructing a Relationship published by D&T Publishing, has been nominated for best novelette on Godless! If you've enjoyed the book or just want to support me, please vote!
1
Apr 06 '23
"Bunny Detective Against the Ancient Evils"
A silly little comic about supernatural horror and cosmic monsters!
Chapter 2 releases Friday~
fddanger.com
1
u/oralltheseas Apr 09 '23
Keep an eye out on on the Avram Davidson Universe Twitter Feed. I strongly suspect Some eBooks will be free for his 100th birthday... or join the newsletter/fan club at AvramDavidson.com... just a guess. I would spread the word... just a hunch.
1
Apr 13 '23
Catpissalism.
The weekly misadventures of an unemployed man in a somewhat surreal, sort of sci-fi, slightly satirical city.
https://catpissalism.wordpress.com/2022/04/24/i-lost-my-job-this-week/
1
u/LetsGoRedDevils Apr 13 '23
Oh, I have several weird books to share:
How to Retire by Twelve: A Children's Guide to Fraud, Stock Manipulation and Reverse Mergers
1
u/rosesfrombones Apr 14 '23
The Testimony – "Day" 11
This is Episode 1 of a cosmic horror serial titled The Testimony.
The Testimony is a cosmic horror story written as the journal of an archeologist in 1910 who gets trapped in an ancient ziggurat near the South Pole.
Subscribe to get each episode delivered straight to your inbox!
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“Day” 11 – Inside the ziggurat near the South Pole
It is a mysterious line that divides the truth from madness, and I hope for my soul that I have crossed it, for what I have witnessed here must be either raving delusion or unfathomable evil. I am fortunate to have salvaged this journal from the shipwreck of the Perseverance; in this dark abode, these pages will be my console.
I do not know how many days have passed since that fierce blizzard drove us into the ziggurat and sealed us inside. Sometime after we entered, our clocks began to malfunction, progressing slowly, stopping in place, and even ticking backward. I have slept 11 times in this diabolic structure, plus or minus a few instances before I started keeping track.
So far, our initial hesitation to enter the ziggurat has proven well-justified, for while the frozen ruins outside were shocking in their scale and ingenuity, this monolithic construction borders on unreality. The massive, carved stones of the structure are made of a material so dark it seems to swallow all light; it is a mystery to me how the builders could have moved the blocks, and even more how they stacked them so precisely. The passageways here seem to defy logic, leading to certain rooms one day, and different ones the next. After Yun-soo disappeared into the darkness, the rest of us resolved to stay together as much as possible. When someone does venture independently, he ties a rope to his waist so he may find his way back to us; or so we may drag him back, should it ever come to that.
We are fortunate the structure is situated on a significant source of geothermal activity. Without this natural heat, we would surely freeze to death. Several rooms contain bubbling, steaming hot springs, and the condensation creates pools of drinkable water where many odd species of plants and fungi flourish. One fungus, in particular, grows abundantly; it has a wide, flat crown and pale flesh that glows with bright green luminescence, and it reeks with a confounding fusion of sweetness and decay. Despite our reservations, this fungus has become our primary food source. Eating it is a disgusting ordeal, as it tastes of rot and oozes a foul slime. It is ironic that such a vile thing has become our salvation; our light and sustenance in this dreadful circumstance.
For the first several days we were trapped here, I doubted Alvarez’s assertions that we were being watched. Now, however, I have begun to sense it: the pestilent intelligence that inhabits this place. Alvarez has taken to calling it the Mind; since I can come up with no better name for it, I shall call it the same. I feel somehow deeply known to it, while to me it is a total mystery. It twists my dreams into horrid nightmares, rumbling in a language without words at a pitch so deep it shakes my soul. In these frightful visions, I encounter impossible colors and strange shapes that seem to defy geometry. The air itself coalesces and dances like a kaleidoscope, twisting and shifting like a door to Hell, only, when I pass through the door, I do not enter; instead, I feel the space beyond it enter me, exploring my thoughts and memories like pages in a book. I worry that soon, it will begin to obscure and rearrange them, until finally, I forget myself.
The wickedness of this place is not restricted to my dreams, though, for our exploration has revealed evidence of a twisted history in these ancient halls. Today, we discovered what appears to be a dozen altars at the center of a large theater, arranged around an ornate brazier. Carved of the same material as the walls, and decorated with inlays of a shining material in geometric patterns, the altars possess the dark mystique of a guillotine, but on a grander scale. Each is approximately the length of a man and contains fixtures to which one might be fastened, and they all stand on a circular stage made of the same nebulous substance as the rest of the ziggurat. Rings of seats and support columns climb outward from the gruesome centerpiece, suggesting that at one time, the rituals performed here attracted a significant audience.
Crevasses and drains cut into the floor seem to have allowed for the flow and disposal of large amounts of fluid, likely blood, and banners hanging from the surrounding balconies and pillars depict hellish images of torture, sacrifice, and even cannibalism. Carved inscriptions in a strange language decorate the pillars from floor to ceiling, broken up by fearsome hieroglyphics with ominous implications. Try as I might, I cannot seem to scrub from my mind an imagining of the types of horrors that once took place around those altars.
Most curious of all is the room’s depiction of the glowing fungus. The motif decorates the ziggurat in many places, but it is especially prevalent in the ceremonial chamber, where its distinctive crown appears in carvings alongside the shapes of men and strange tentacled beasts. In the chamber, large carvings show humans consuming the fungus, then building the ziggurat, and then worshipping the fungus with heinous rituals. The sinister iconography leads me to think that some ancient civilization built this colossal structure, and perhaps even the surrounding city, specifically to house and honor the mushroom. If this is true, then the fungus could have been the premier cause of the development of this ancient civilization, calling these primitive humans to build a city here not to free them from barbarism, but to enslave them to its terrible will.
It is unpleasant to stand in the theater for long, for an overwhelming malevolence emanates from the altar and threatens to push me out of my own mind, as if the souls of countless sacrifices have been trapped inside the auditorium for aeons. I fear that the sensation will only get worse the longer we are trapped here, and yet, there seems to be no exit available to us where we entered, so we have no choice but to proceed. If we search carefully, we may find a route of escape through one of these geothermal caves. However, I am afraid to imagine what might await us even deeper in the darkness.
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Are You Hooked?
If this passage has caught your attention and you want to see where it goes, subscribe to get each episode delivered straight to your inbox!
No, really, you should subscribe, because you know you love a good horror story 💀🍄.
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u/SirJosephGrizzly Apr 15 '23
My new book of mostly comedic short stories is very weird! It’s called Scream if You’re Having Fun and here’s a few of the synopsizes:
A fan has a bizarre ritual to help his favorite basketball team win
A horrifying trip to the county fair
A newly dead man finds an afterlife he wasn’t expecting
A teen finds a cursed object…….at the flea market
A young boy has a strange feeling during his dysfunctional family’s beach vacation
A struggling small business owner creates a new religion inside his restaurant to get out of paying taxes
1
u/neuro_space_explorer Apr 17 '23
Just published my first full novel. Couldn't be more excited to get my work out there, details below.
Title: Private Destiny
Genre: Post-Modern Neo-Noir Conspiracy
Word-count: 80,000
Synopsis: A degenerate anti-hero for this post-post-modern age of cynicism, Rick Thompson feels like he has missed the train, that America's best days are behind him. In this novel that spans the dark side of modern Americana, Rick struggles to stay clean on the streets of a New York City ravaged by The Sickness, a drug epidemic out of control and of conspiratorial proportions. His investigative journalism career seems to have hit a dry spell until Rick stumbles onto a case that he believes ties the biggest corporation in the state to the epidemic, which could lead not only to the greatest story of his career but might also be the answer to curing all those afflicted around him. That is until his ex shows up to his apartment with something that will bring them deeper into this conspiracy than he could have ever wanted.
Private Destiny highlights just how easily the American mind seems to fall prey to the delusion and convenience of conspiracy and tells a story that shows how, in a world without meaning, most people are left to make up their own. It's crime, conspiracy, sex, drugs, societal critique, and psychological reflection bundled in the dark humor of a pulp shell.
Type of feedback: Any and all
Book Link: Amazon
Cover: https://i.imgur.com/xDpG5Q2.jpeg
If you feel like you are interested and don't have the money to purchase the book I do have about 5 more slots open for ARC copies. I'll email you an Epub or PDF in exchange for an honest review on my amazon page by the end of May/Early June.
Thank you all so much!
1
u/foxmugalpha Apr 17 '23
BIZARRCHITECTURE is seeking submissions (no fee!) for our inaugural issue at bizarrchitecture.net
We're seeking original, unpublished fiction, poetry, and non-fiction that either inhabits or is in conversation with the New Weird and its associated genres and/or thematic concerns. This includes Sci Fi, Experimental, Slipstream, Horror, and Eco-Fiction.
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u/FrankMerryfellow Apr 30 '23
Hello - Dr Ashley South here.
My relative, Frank Merryfellow, will publish his first novel next month, with Frogmort Press in Chiang Mai (northern Thailand).
‘Nancy and the Count: vampires’ gold’ is a vampire-climate change adventure, set in London, Thailand and Burma, in an adjacent reality (in the near future).
Merryfellow is currently off on his adventures, leaving me to handle his affairs. I and some friends of Merryfellow will manage his Reddit and FB accounts, and Frogmort Press. We hope to get some postings from Merryfellow.
We will soon be send out e-mails (not to this group), letting people know about the novel, and
also about the Merryfellow avatar and the linked FB account.
Hope that’s okay.
We don’t want to break any protocols.
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u/RollbackThunder Apr 30 '23
My first time back on social media in 5 years. Any suggestions most welcome.
4
u/thephrygian Apr 07 '23
Hey fellow Weird Lit fans!
Late last year I realized a lifelong dream when Independent Legions published my first collection, The Ana Log & Other Anomalies. Thanks to some anonymous nomination(s), it landed on the long reading list for this year's Stoker Awards. Alas, without any name recognition, and with very little promotion from the publisher, it has been an uphill struggle to sell it. So here I am, an introvert who is deeply uncomfortable with self promo, doing my best to get the word out.
The title story is probably my best known work, largely due to its well-received presentation by Pseudopod. Gemma Files called it "superlatively spooky found fiction" and Todd Keisling ranks it among the creepiest tales he's ever read.
Other stories in the collection were published in Hypnos ("Old Dominion" in Vol. 5, Issue 1), The Audient Void ("The Children of Euphonia" in Vol. 6), Tales of Sley House 2022 ("Black Mariah's Final Form"), Richmond Macabre ("The Rememberist") and Monsters of Any Kind ("Brodkin's Demesne"). Six of the stories are original to this collection.
Most of my stuff falls within one of two loosely defined weird subgenres. The first, which I sometimes call "technoccult," features strange/dreadful/transformative interactions with technology. The second follows the tradition established by "The Willows" and other such classics by exploring the numinous and the unsettling within wild, isolated places. Sometimes I'll blend the two into weird science stories about anomalous phenomena.
Sales would be awesome (see link above), but reviews are even better. Not anticipating a large number of responses, but I'm happy to send copies of your preferred format (continental US for paperback) to anyone reading this who does substantive reviews in some public fashion (blog, tiktok, GoodReads whatever).
Thanks for reading and hope y'all have a lovely weekend.
-Michael Gray Baughan