A Conversation With an Errant God

I'm very pleased to announce that my story A Conversation With an Errant God: Distorted Reflections on the Kerker-Kreis has been released as a book on Mount Abraxas Press in Bucharest. The book has been printed in a gorgeous hardcover edition, complete with illustrated end-papers and silk ribbon. Limited to 100 copies. 

Copies will be available in the US at Ziesing Books. If you inquire by email, they'll reserve a copy for you. The story is a very perverse response to the German poet Stefan George and his circle of poets, the George-Kries. 

Taken from the pages of Die Nachtigal, issue 77, September 1973, “A Conversation with an Errant God: Distorted Reflections on the Kerker-Kreis”, directly transcribed from tape by the author. Text translated by C.K. Weber. Introduction excised. 

Die Nachtigal: How did you come to be involved with the Kerker-Kreis? I understand you were not a founding member. 

F. Keiner: It started when I was a boy. It was me and my brother, Kaspar. I must have been eleven, so he would have been twelve or thirteen. We’d sneak into our parent’s bedroom while they were in another part of the house and take off all our clothes. It was far more than merely a game between us. We treated it all with the utmost gravity. It would simply be unthinkable that our parents would find us behaving in such an unacceptable way. What, exactly, it was that we were doing, we didn’t really know. Whatever it was, we were genuinely inspired. 

I’m afraid I’m a little confused, Herr Keiner. Are you saying that this is what led to your involvement with the group? 

Excuse me?   

The Kerker-Kreis, Herr Keiner. The poets’ collective. The subject of this interview is your history with them. 

I’m coming to that. Some background details will be necessary. It all happened so long ago, I hardly remember. What I distinctly recall are the routines we acted out, my brother and I—the blindfolds, the punishments, the mock interrogations, the escalating dares and all the complicated dances. It all had very real consequences. 
     The worst was when we took the mantle clock apart. We’d always been fascinated by the faded Roman numerals that circumscribed its face. The curved, walnut casing, the ornate dials—they all came apart like lotus petals. We put it back together, but it was never the same. It didn’t keep time the way it was supposed to. What’s more, it did something to the house. 

The Sleep of the Assassins

I am very pleased to announce The Sleep of the Assassins and Other Stories, a book very much akin to a collection of b-sides and rarities from Mount Abraxas Press in Bucharest, gathering six short pieces from several disparate places along with a new, previously unpublished title story. 

The contents are as follows:

Paraffin

The Bastion Overwhelmed

The Subpoena

Imperium

A Flip-Take in the Heart of Seville

The Sleep of the Assassins

The Immaculate Scrambled Automat

"What I’m about to tell you is of marginal importance. You can regard it as akin to an anecdote. My hope is to provide you with a tentative guide to your expected conduct in the field, yet there’s every possibility that my advice will only lead you into error. You’ll have to seek refuge in uncertainty and guesswork, rely on chance and ambiguity, and find a means to kindle flame from little more than intuition. The very lack of clarity regarding your assignment will reveal far more than anything I can pass on to you. 

The outer layers of the citadel will not be difficult for an agent of your caliber to breach. The enemy won’t make it easy. They possess considerable prowess in the art of misdirection. With a little ingenuity, you’ll slip through their defenses like a sparrow through the hangings of a chandelier. What comes after will prove a more formidable challenge. This is only the first of a series of citadels, each of them nested inside the others and secured with insidious traps and locks. You can expect these to grow progressively more difficult the further you proceed." 

The Sleep of the Assassins and Other Stories can be purchased directly from the publisher by sending an inquiry to exoccidente@gmail.com, or pre-ordered from Ziesing Books in the US. 

The Narcissus Variations

I'm honored to announce the impending release of The Narcissus Variations on Mount Abraxas Press, a novella dedicated to the Kibbo Kift and to the fortuitous ambiguity of memory. 

A white rhinoceros, a resurrected king, a river that flows into the heart of night, the amassing of thrushes, the discharge of artillery, a rotating chamber replete with false doors, invisible signals, a cunning sentry, the manipulation of recording tape, an illustrious imposter, the wailing of torches, a desperate man trapped in a hallucinated boudoir—The Narcissus Variations weaves these disparate themes into a narrative thread tied in intricate knots to comprise a novella steeped in labyrinthine intrigues and startling revelations.

The Narcissus Variations can be purchased directly from the publisher by sending an inquiry to exoccidente@gmail.com, or pre-ordered from Ziesing Books in the US. 

Noctifer Ascending

Psalms of the Magistrate is back from the printer, and it turned out every bit as exquisite as expected. Warm, red pages with black type, luxuriously printed end-papers, fine cloth boards with engraved text—it's unlike any other book I've seen before.

(photos by Dan Ghetu)

The book can be purchased directly from the publisher by sending an inquiry to exoccidente@gmail.com, or pre-ordered from Cold Tonnage in the UK or Ziesing Books in the US.

Psalms of the Magistrate

I am honored and more than pleased to announce that my latest novella, Psalms of the Magistrate, will be released on Mount Abraxas Press within the next week. The book, which promises to be the most exquisite of my works released on this fabulous press yet, will be printed entirely in black ink on thick, red paper.

Psalms of the Magistrate is a hallucinatory novella featuring rites of seduction and deception, stolen keys and cryptographic canticles, the oracular pronouncements of a fetishist and the pernicious kiss of the whip, all of which are inextricably bound by threads of innocence and provocation beneath the devastating shadow of a local deity.

The book can be purchased directly from the publisher by sending an inquiry to exoccidente@gmail.com, or pre-ordered from Cold Tonnage in the UK or Ziesing Books in the US. 

Flower Dream Sermon

I am honored to announce that my story, "Flower Dream Sermon", is included in the anthology from Egaeus Press, The Book of Flowering.

The book will feature new tales of strangeness, beauty, impermanence, and exfoliation by Mark Valentine, V. H. Leslie, Charles Schneider, Thomas Strømsholt, Timothy J. Jarvis, Mat Joiner, Ron Weighell, Tiffani Angus, John Gale, Reggie Oliver, Sheryl Humphrey, D. P. Watt, Colin Insole, Alison Littlewood, Jonathan Wood, Rebecca Kuder, N. A. Jackson, and myself.

The book is now available to order from the Egaeus Press website.

The Living Heart of the Panopticon

I am extremely happy and excited to be able to unveil the multiple components of A Spy in the Panopticon, which has just been released by Mount Abraxas Press. Click on the images for larger resolution. 

(Photos by Dan Ghetu)

Artwork by Bethany White, Naked Star, Mikhail Vrubel, and Victor Hugo. For purchase information, contact exoccidente@gmail.com or andy@coldtonnage.com. The book should also be available at Ziesing Books in the US within a couple of weeks. 

A Spy in the Panopticon

Art and Calligraphy by Bethany White

I am honored and very excited to announce A Spy in the Panopticon, a boxed set of my latest work which will be released by Mount Abraxas Press in February, 2018. 

A woman peers through a hidden eyepiece into a bedroom of lavish design in ‘A Spy in the Panopticon’, the title novella. What she observes in the exquisite chamber is progressively unraveled over the course of an intricately woven narrative, the many threads of which converge upon a series of increasingly enigmatic motifs: lenses, mirrors, cameras, and prisms; illicit transmissions and invisible signals; unspeakable passwords and etheric emanations; and the infiltration of an inexplicable ministry replete with intrigues, counter-plots, and duplicitous technologies.

A crucial document is laboriously authenticated beneath the ravages of the wild hunt in ‘The Notary’. ‘Paraffin’ follows the descent of a housemaid into the impossible depths of her employer’s past. Two siblings, in ‘That Holy and Formless Fire’, engage in precarious activities involving a transistor radio and a book of poetry. In ‘Imperium’, an infirmity suffered by the wife of a magistrate reveals an ingenious and well-concealed stratagem.

BOOK I
A Spy in the Panopticon

i. The Spyhole
ii. The Mirror
iii. The Camera
iv. The Prism
v. Signal/Transmission
vi. Blackout
vii. The Spy in the Panopticon

BOOK II
The Notary

BOOK III
That Holy and Formless Fire
Imperium

BOOK IV
Paraffin

Purchase information coming soon. 

The Scandal of the First Act of Creation

Wound of Wounds: An Ovation for Emil Cioran is back from the printers at last. 

Shipping begins mid-next week. The book will still be available from Fantastic Literature in the UK, and Ziesings in the US as soon as they receive their copies. After three months from today's date, a free PDF copy of the book will be available on request from myself or from the publisher at exoccidente@gmail.com. 

Wound of Wounds

WOUND OF WOUNDS

An Ovation for Emil Cioran

I am extremely pleased, humbled, honored, and exalted to announce the latest anthology from Mount Abraxas Press in Bucharest, edited by D.T. Ghetu and myself. Wound of Wounds will be published as two deluxe volumes in a single slipcase, and is expected to be released in early December. 

Misanthropos  

Eugene Thacker

Bach’s Marionettes

Douglas Thompson

The Aristocracy of Weak Nerves

Justin Isis

This Disquiet Demiurge

Alcebiades Diniz Miguel

He is Heading Your Way Already

Rhys Hughes

The Translator of God's Silence

Thomas Strømsholt

Saint Severina's Fire

Damian Murphy

Horrill Hill

Karim Ghahwagi

Dead Engrained Skin

Jonathan Wood

The Funeral Cry

Stephan Friedman 

Obsolete Systems

Adam Golaski

The Genealogy of Night

Andrew Condous

The Infinite Error

Jon Padgett

The Treasons of the Rue de L'Odeon

Colin Insole

Pay No Worship to the Garish Sun

D.P. Watt 

The European Monster Part II

Adam S. Cantwell 

Writing Instructions

Charles Schneider 

We will proceed with fiery sermons and scathing condemnations, written over the course of a single sleepless night, scribed beneath the light of our afflictions and sealed with the blood of our iniquities; we’ll pen testaments to the intoxication of the exile, the self-abnegation of the poet, the secret narcissism of the mystic, and the immolation of the saint in the intolerable fires of perfection; what is needed is nothing less than a full-scale assault upon the bastions of fate and servitude—black epistles written on discarded cigarettes, smuggled in the broken hearts of the defectors, on the merits and the tedium of the labor of abandonment. 

Emil Cioran, you have a lot to answer for.

Purchase information coming soon. 

For inquires and details, write to: exoccidente@gmail.com 

Abyssinia

I could not be more pleased to announce the release of my new book, Abyssinia, on the Mount Abraxas imprint of Ex Occidente Press in Bucharest. The book is printed in a new format, which is, in my opinion, the most exquisite style yet from this most exquisite of presses.

Abyssinia follows the intrigues and deceptions of two women, each of which are staying in one of seven luxury suites in the Hotel Argentum. The suites are named after former European territories whose boundaries have since been subsumed. Petra has checked into Fiume, whose final days were spent beneath the deranged auspices of the poet and dictator Gabriele D’Annunzio. Celia is staying in Galicia, whose fate was sealed soon after the First World War. Between the women stands Karl Reginald von Lobkowicz, an antiquated doll which Celia is seldom seen without. Petra’s fascination vacillates between the cracked and blemished figure and its eccentric owner. The matter is further complicated by the appearance of an eighth suite, which appears to be concealed somewhere within the Hotel grounds.

Abyssinia draws its intoxicating atmosphere from Robert Altman's Three Women, Claude Chabrol’s Les Biches, and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona.


More info here:
http://www.i-m.mx/Thessarether1941/proba2/abyssinia.html

Copies can be reserved with Ziesing Books in the US by emailing info@ziesings.com, and with Fantastic Literature and Cold Tonnage in the UK. For more info, email exoccidente@gmail.com.

The Pride of the Peacock is the Glory of God!

All is Full of Hell: A Panegyric For William Blake is back from the printers at last. As can be seen, it is no less than an emanation of the uttermost divinity. 

For more info, email exoccidente@gmail.com