Seduction of the Golden Pheasant

It is an honor and a privilege to announce that a second volume of my work will soon be published in the Mount Abraxas series from Ex Occidente Press in Bucharest. Seduction of the Golden Pheasant, a novella, is very similar in length, if not exactly in theme or temperament, to The Imperishable Sacraments. This salacious bird, at once unprincipled and bound to the highest ethic, is expected to be released from the printers in the first week of July, 2016.

Seduction of the Golden Pheasant follows the intrigues and compulsions of a young woman stationed in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire on the outskirts of Tours. Valérie spends the season of her exile in a moderate chateau endowed with tastefully restrained décor. The interiors are embellished with a proclivity for discretion, the furnishings kept simple and refined. The single exception to the modesty of style is the wallpaper, with which Valérie harbors an ever-increasing obsession. A lush and exotic landscape of deep azure on milky white unfolds in an intoxicating arrangement along the many walls of the chateau. Mountainous hills contend with lavish valleys, terraced rice fields give way to forests flush with wild boars; perhaps the most enticing among its manifold motifs are the intricate temples that occasionally appear within the windings of a river or perched upon an elevated plateau. The holy temples depicted on the walls exert a feverish influence over the impressionable tenant. The fires that flame unseen upon their hidden altars beckon to her, drawing her ever further into a rich mosaic of forbidden pleasures both sensual and sublime. At the center of her passion lies the elusive golden pheasant, the celestial bird of Imperial China that dares defy the statutes of a fallen aristocracy. 

As with The Exaltation of the Minotaur, this exceptionally designed and bound volume features artwork at once devastating and sumptuous by Rotton Fantom. It can be pre-ordered, by request, from Cold Tonnage Books and Fantastic Literature in the UK, and from Ziesing Books in the US. 

Seduction of the Golden Pheasant is limited to 81 hand-numbered exemplars.