Announcements concerning new things and old favorites
To the followers and fans of Quantum Demonology,
Countless times and occasions and in most of my inboxes, yours truly has been asked where my novel Quantum Demonology is available to b-u-y. For money, for entertainment purposes, for no other reason than the biggest one of all:
You want to read THE BOOK.
For the longest time, the sad answer was – nowhere.
The sad state of affairs at AbeBooks.
The reason for this? The first edition of QD, published in December 2013, is as of this post, available at the Fort Bend public libraries in Richmond, TX, and nowhere else on Earth. Any second-hand copies sold at exorbitant prices are nothing even this writer can do anything about.
But…
At some point in the next month or so – and it will be that fast! – a Kindle version installment will be made available on Amazon and only Amazon. This will be the first 25% of the book. More installments will follow in relative short order. Having said that…
It won’t be the precise same book. I came to discover many changes – most of them small and all-but imperceptible, but glaring to the writer who sweated over every single word. Changes I was not informed about and only came to discover after the fact of publication. Nor – apart from the killer cover by Rosy England-Fisher – did it look entirely like I had hoped it would. Now, apart from the limitations of reflowable text, it will finally be what I hoped for.
Likewise, I’ve also come to realize that the book is too long. So several chapters – none in the beginning 50% – are on the chopping block.
Stay tuned.
More! More! Always more!
In the next few days, a time-travel dyad will be published – these two stories were originally published in Denmark in 2022 and 2023. Both stories have been translated into English and formatted for Kindle. They will be available at a special price for a limited time.
Are YOU excited yet? Let me know – on the QD Facebook page, this blog, or???
Some time ago, I submitted a short story for an upcoming DK anthology titled ‘Kvinder skriver gys’ (Women write horror) to be published on May 19th at DK publisher 2 Feet Entertainment. This particular short story will be translated and published on Amazon as soon as the writer can set up an appointment to recover a lost #SSN so she can put it up for sale.
Back to the short story, which is both short – under 4000 words – and a story.
In actual fact, it is without question the most terrible – in terms of theme – story I have ever written.
Which for a long, long time – since about February 2020, when I first thought it up on a visit to Krákow in Poland – was a big part of The Problem With This Story.
The Problem With This Story
Contrary to popular belief, horror writers, like virtually all writers I have personally ever met, are perfectly ordinary people. We don’t dismember our fellow humans or indulge in cannibalism as a matter of course. We live our lives just like everyone else.
But what if a writer cooks up an idea for a story so horrific, she can’t even write it?
That’s what happened here.
The deadline came and went. I was in an agony writers might recognize. Another contributor told me the ultimate deadline was on January 31st, which was a Monday.
Friday the 27th, I decided I would get out that story come hell or high water. If I did nothing at all else that weekend, I WOULD WRITE THAT STORY, DAMN IT.
Also, the publisher is an awesome human being who has taught THIS writer a lot, he had a lot of faith in the writer, and I was terrified I’d let him down if I didn’t, and that was no way to treat an awesome human being.
Saturday at noon – after I did every single avoidance action any writer can cook up at the drop of a hat or less – I sat myself down. I told myself in advance that I could not get up, I could not do anything at all else until I had at least 2400 words.
Because I had spent three years planning it out, doing my usual insane amount of research, and purloining every digitized map I could find on the location, writing in my head and trying to come to terms with my own sick, demented mind, those 2400 words came, not easily, but well.
By the time it grew dark, I had 2800 words, and called it a day.
Sunday morning, I wrote the rest. By noon, it was finished. By 3 PM, it was proofread and sent to the editor. It was not this writer’s space to judge it and find it wanting. If he liked it, great! If not, well, back to the drawing board.
The sick, demented mind
Obviously, I had no such luck. The publisher was shocked to his core. (Considering his own authorly output, that says something.) The story was accepted.
What I couldn’t accept was my own disgust/contempt that I had even conceived of such a horror.
IRL, I’m a mild-mannered, book fiend semi-recluse with a day job that includes daily sightings of fluffy, happy bunnies. I cry over rescue kitten videos on YouTube. (Don’t ask.)
So what the everloving F was wrong with me, if I could cook up this Sick and Demented idea?
Well, I was – among the several other hats – a writer. And gradually, over the course of this winter and spring, I’ve come to accept the fact that the writer and the individual are, if not two separate people, then at least two faces of the multiverse that all humans contain.
Therefore, sick and demented ideas executed as well as the writer can manage are acceptable.
It took a long time and a lot of soul searching to get to that point.
Third time’s a charm
Tomorrow afternoon as of this writing, I have a meeting with that awesome human being, the Publisher.
For the third time in my life, my words will be in hard copy. This story is as far removed from anything I’ve done previously as I can likely get. Few adjectives, short sentences, a simple – if sick and demented – plot, and only three characters to keep track of. Since the anthology isn’t out for another month, no one has reviewed it yet – or called me out for being a waste of ink and paper.
And yet. I’m not worried. Let the rotten tomatoes fall where they may. A writer can control everything except how the story is received, and really – that’s not a writer’s problem, is it?
The writer’s problem lay in accepting that great – if disgusting /horrific/terrible idea.
It’s no surprise at all to the select (very) few readers of this blog that the publication of Quantum Demonology was traumatic in far too many ways. Not for going public and being judged for my words, not for getting a story out that basically gave me a few more reasons to stay among the living as I wrote it, not for whatever bad reviews might come or not. (As of 2021, precisely one.) The evidence is all over this blog. I rest my case.
En Avant!
These days, I’m looking forward. I’m looking forward to rewriting a recently scrapped novel I’ve been wanting to write for years and years, and I can’t wait to get started. The research is mostly done. I’ve safeguarded myself by ordering two books that are very far removed from my source material, and by killing a new book by a favorite author to satisfy my itch for fiction. (I can’t read fiction while writing my own, or someone else’s quirks start to seep in.) If I’m waiting for a sequel, I might as well keep myself busy in the interim.
But one thing about getting published that few writers don’t, to the best of my knowledge, ever tell you about is what you learn from getting your own story out into the world. The original draft of QD might not have been terrible, but it was safe, or should I say, it was as far out on a limb as I could get at that time in my life. By the time I revised it for publication, I was experienced enough as a writer in other arenas that I took much bigger risks, or to quote a famous Stooges song: Gimme Danger! I did try.
Here we are, nearly eight years on, and I have the world’s worst case of the all-out fuckits. I have a favorite deceased author’s portrait on my wall behind my laptop giving me the gimlet eye, a writer who very much wrote a rulebook on writing dangerously, letting rip, letting the words explode on the page and in a reader’s mind.
I also have something else, something that almost means more than I can say, or should that be … someone?
The Importance of Being … Believed In.
We writers are vainglorious souls. Writing is a lonely, solitary business with such a huge potential for heartbreak and soul-crushing suckitude insights that in order to even commit the words to a virtual page, you need titanium gonads and a massivesense of self worth.
If friends and family like what you write, then great! But they’re biased by proximity, love (it is to be hoped) and/or limited exposure to what being a writer really means.
But what truly matters to a writer, what truly matters to this writer, is the validation of your peers. I’ve had the extreme good fortune to receive massive amounts of kudos on my writing in another area – my perfume writing. A select few to such an extent, I’ve had an out-of-body experience. Yet that was my perfume writing.
In 2016, I was invited by my then DK publisher to participate in a prestigious horror/weird fiction anthology called, in English, Project 1900. The concept: Ten writers were each given a decade of the 20th century to choose from. The story had to reflect the feel of its decade, the language, the tone, the atmosphere. Some long, long time later, he had to drop it.
I was bummed. Bad enough that this would have been my Danish debut as a writer. This gave me more hives than even I can count, since English is my first language, and since my dearly beloved sister is a notable DK journalist and writer by profession, and I didn’t want to tread on her turf.
Then, this past spring, it was collectively decided to publish elsewhere. Which it will be in 2022, by DK publisher, fellow contributor and author Steen Langstrup of Two Feet Entertainment.
By the time he had made it through all the contributions to the anthology, he took the trouble to write me, Ms. Nobody Much, about my story. Out-of-body experience, incoming. What I had knocked out for fun and the hell of it in a day and evening had really got his goat in all the best ways.
I was floored.
Since then, he’s read the first ten chapters of QD. More out-of-body experience feedback. At a book reception for his latest work last week, a non-fiction book of author interviews on all the downsides of writing life, he told my sister without any provocation at all on my part:
“She needs to keep writing!”
I can do miracles, so long as one person believes. Now, a hugely respected someone does.
That means everything. Everything!
Which leads me to…
Sneak Peek
My contribution to Project 1900, a disco erotic horror story titled ‘I feel love’ from the famous Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder 1978 hit, will be published in English on the DK publication day on Amazon as an e-book novella at a super reasonable price for a limited time only. Above, you’ll find a sneak peek of a cover sketch (not the finished cover). Watch this space!
Comments? Questions? Rants? Yes, please, and thank you!
Many people have contacted me through the Quantum Demonology Facebook page to ask where, if possible, they might purchase a copy of Quantum Demonology. The short answer is … nowhere. As of this writing – April 3rd, 2020, at about 10 AM CET – the book is currently out of print.
The longer answer is, if you’re really desperate, you can find second-hand copies here and there, but they will cost you a pretty penny. I saw a copy this morning on eBay for 190 US$, and another on US Amazon for 125 US$. The whopper of all second-hand editions must be one I found that retailed for 795 US$. This was, I’ll have you know, a good deal more than I received in total for the book.
I have nothing against second-hand books. Most of my own book collection is second-hand. But as a content creator, I very much object to not receiving so much as a penny of those sales, and as a destitute teaching student, even more so.
So let me repeat: should you find it, please, for the love of fiction, don’t buy it. However, should you happen to live on the Gold Coast of Australia, their library has a copy to borrow. Wow, was I surprised! I know I have a few virtual friends in Australia, but a public library? Just. Wow.
Now, you know. 😉
I’m currently nearly three quarters of the way through an education as a teacher of Danish – think “Literature”, and you get the idea – history and geography. I’m normally surrounded by sometimes exasperating as well as exhilarating twenty-somethings who keep me on my toes in very many ways, but mainly, working towards a bachelor’s degree in education has not left me a hell of a lot of time or energy for my real dream job – as a writer. Those academic papers don’t write themselves. Neither does the note taking those papers require.
I’ve toyed on several occasions with the idea of typesetting the book (which I would have to do to publish it in hard- or soft cover) or reformatting the manuscript for a digital edition, even to the point of playing with Kindle Creator, only to throw up my hands, mutter expletives and fire up Netflix in despair.
But miracles have been known to happen.
On my left as I write this, you’ll find scintillating reading material: “Historical Method”, “History Didactics”, “Teaching – between craftsmanship and art”, “Citizenship – a place in the world”. All important. All To Be Read. With extensive note-taking.
But in lockdown, in seclusion, in that great void of online life, when the world seems to be going to pieces over COVID-19, it’s spring outside my garret windows. The season of hope, of optimism, of miracles.
My cats are spread out asleep over my unmade bed, in the sunny spots. I’m contemplating baking therapy, just because. And also …
Waiting to hear back from what might become a miracle that involves Quantum Demonology. I’ll keep you posted.
– on the nebulous future of a devil you might know
Ladies, gentlemen, and all other sentient beings,
It’s been four years since the instigation of this website and also, the publication of Quantum Demonology. I’ll spare you the sob story of that debacle – evidence of which can be found elsewhere on this site – and instead tell you this:
Quantum Demonology is returning – if not in print, then as an e-book. I’m currently in the process of updating my Amazon Author Central pages, this site and all other Quantum Demonology-related pages I have.
Why?
Well, why not? Why hoard my literary capital when I could spread it around and make a little noise – or maybe even a lot of noise? If I get very, very lucky.
It will be made available as an e-book rather than print, because 1) I can’t afford to, not even on Lulu and b) distribution. I can do things with an e-book; giveaways, review copies etc. etc. I could never afford on my present student grant. Copies can be had instantly anywhere in the world.
Also – I direly need a new MacBook if I’m ever to finish the prequel currently underway titled The Book of Abaddon, (my old MacBook Pro is falling apart, literally, thanks to Janice Divacat and her propensity to lie down on warm laptops) and this could well be a great way to get one.
If I get lucky.
Having said that, there will be a few discrete differences between this second edition and the first. For one, some minor changes were added in the text itself. Second, this coming edition will be under my own imprint. I’m registered in the DK publishers’ database, I have my own ISBN-10/13 numbers, and a worldwide copyright is heading my way as I type.
I harbor no illusions as to fame and glory, because the disappointment hurts too damn much. But I have some hopes that a few more people might actually read it.
If I’m lucky.
One thing I do know – you can’t keep a great Devil down.
Especially not this one.
Watch this space.
(Illustration by the Norwegian illustrator Louis Moe)
On such an early summer’s morning, when the growing light made Copenhagen glow, the city was so fucking beautiful. It was as if the cobblestones, the asphalt of the street and even the butter-yellow cemetery wall inhaled the light and exhaled possibilities, dreams and hopes in a chorus with the flowering elder trees behind the wall. Or else he was just yet another drunk poet.
It was the exact perfect time to wobble home to the lemon face and the harsh words that waited, but he was in no hurry to get home this magical summer morning when even the taxis were all gone, when the buses hadn’t started yet and when it seemed as if the entire city held its breath, but for what?
So fucking beautiful. While he stood a moment and enjoyed the sight of dawn breaking over the cobblestones, his nose caught something else. The merest hint, a trail he involuntarily stretched out his neck for and tried to follow. Was it a perfume? It smelled like heaven and the most sublime sex, like an otherworldly flower, like …
He turned to follow the scent trail. It continued down the street. He followed it, and the dizzying, fantastical scent grew stronger, received a brush of other flowers and darker desires, became almost overwhelmingly heavy in the cool pre-dawn air.
What the hell was it that perfumed everything this morning?
When he saw it, at first he thought it was one of the countless art installations that popped up everywhere in Copenhagen in unexpected places. He took a deep breath. For a split second, the street and the dawn span around him in a sickening waltz.
No art hung on the closed wrought iron gate to the cemetery.
It was a man. He was tall, in impeccable shape, young, maybe in his late twenties, with expensively cut blond hair and beard stubble that gave his face a certain romantic air, in sharp contrast to a well-worn t-shirt and a ripped pair of jeans. His arms were spread out like a crucified Jesus, and were tied like his feet to the gate by some vine-like plant that gripped him from head to toe. Here and there, purple-white flowers bloomed that all exhaled that heady, dizzying scent that drifted down the street like an invisible, perfumed fog.
He looked first in one direction, then the other down the street. Not one car, taxi, cyclist or pedestrian in sight. As if all the neighborhood, Copenhagen, Denmark and maybe even the world slept frozen in time on a Thursday morning in June, while a beautiful, dead young man was tied to a wrought-iron gate with this strange vine.
Not even eleven massive beers could kill his curiosity. He crossed the street and stood in front of the gate.
Close up, he could see that the young man was not tied so much as thrown by some colossal force into the gates, where the wrought iron had bent beneath the impact, outlining his body, but where the wrought iron ended and the vine began he couldn’t see if he tried.
There was no suggestion of blood anywhere, no discoloration or anything else that could make it more real, more brutal, more human, and that shocked him most of all. How could … who could? What in the world?
He grabbed for his phone in his jacket, but he had left it at home, along with the cow, the bitch, the wife. And two more phones.
He swayed in front of the dead man for a few long, silent minutes in the growing light, dizzy with the sight, the scent, the likelihood, before he took a deep breath, turned and ran across the street.
Ran like he had the Devil himself on his heels.
________________________________
Photo from Assistens Cemetery, Copenhagen, June 2010, the Jægersborggade gate. (The gate!)
Today, I did a (very!) radical thing. I have reported my former publisher for copyright infringement to Amazon and requested that the sales pages for all editions of Quantum Demonology be removed.
For the longest time, I’ve always hoped it would never come to this, hoped nearly beyond hope that somehow, some day, the publisher of Nigel’s Flight would contact me, if only to say that our contract was presently null and void.
Yet in spite of several rather provocative blog posts, emails, letters, phone calls and direct/private messages delivered through her increasingly limited social media channels, I never heard a word back. Not since May 11th of last year, so you can imagine my horror and mortification when I discovered the announcement and subsequent publication of yet another book by that publisher later last year.
Well, I’ve cut the deadwood, clocked it all up to experience and… moved on.
What does the future hold for that strange, erotic story, Quantum Demonology? A few things… some of which I’m not currently at liberty to say since I don’t want to jinx anything, and some of which are definitely cooking.
Including a planned sequel I might have called Lilith’s Revenge (although that sounds like a very bad romance novel!), and a prequel – nothing less than the history of that fascinating entity, Dev – currently underway titled The Abaddon Yarn.
But before I dance off into cyberspace, should you, dear reader, be among those who bought the book in either Kindle or hardcover (and thank you if you are!), know that your edition is soon to be very rare indeed! 😉 If you haven’t and wish you did, you have 7-10 business days to remedy that oversight. Go!
As for the future – it might be so bright, I’ll have to wear shades! Stay tuned!
My awfully wedded wife had finally discovered how to utterly destroy humanity. It was a plan so simple, so elegant it couldn’t possibly fail, and being who I am, it couldn’t possibly succeed, either. Repercussions, logistics to sort out and questions we all wanted to avoid.
A nightmare enchilada of global proportion. She had to be stopped.
“You don’t think you’re going to stop me, do you? I’d handle your job so much better than you. You’ve gone far too soft these past few years. I’ve been here long enough by now, I know all the technicalities no matter what Saint Peter thinks, and poor Asmodeus needs something constructive to do, he gets bored so easily….”
Lilith paced the floor in front of my chair and thought out loud, but I had already tuned her out. Four thousand years of a miserable marriage will have that effect. As she kept talking and pacing, I just sat back and watched her, watched that long, leggy stride eat up the rug in six steps, watched her turn as elegant as any runway model, blonde hair swinging, before pacing back again.
She was flawless. Flawlessly beautiful in that twenty-first century porn-star manner that left no room for imperfections, quirks or doubts, and flawless bored me.
Besides, any woman who begins every single sentence with ‘I’ is nothing but trouble. Trust me. I know.
“You don’t understand at all, do you?” I finally said. “For you, it’s all so simple, all so black-and-white, all so nicely categorized into tidy little boxes that say it must be a cinch to do my job. Nothing is that simple, Lilith.”
“Four thousand years, and you still sound like a scratched vinyl LP, don’t you? ‘Nothing is that simple’ ” she taunted. “Bullshit. Just more male chauvinist pseudo-philosophical cant from someone who thinks he’s better than me simply for having a penis…”
Did I tell you that my lovely wife became a screaming lesbian just to spite me? Nothing against lesbians, but spite. Really.
She’s Queen of the Succubi. No coincidence.
The instant before I tuned her out again, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a text message from Saint Peter.
“God’s study. All done. Wait for it!”
If she only knew what I was planning.
I stood up to leave.
Surprised at the names? The truth would surprise you even more.
Once, you needed to give the personification of evil an evil face, needed to dehumanize and externalize it to make it easier to identify. If your history has taught you anything, it’s that true evil can wear any face at all. Including your own.
Forget the lies you’ve been force-fed since childhood. Forget that I am supposed to be God’s adversary. Like all dogma and most religion, it’s nothing but a select few shining truths wrapped around a hundred million incandescent, mind-controlling lies.
I’ve been called so many different names I can’t take them seriously any longer. Satan, The Devil, Lucifer, Apollyon, The Fallen One, Evil Incarnate, Mephistopheles, Son of the Morning Star, Shaitan, The Adversary – you humans have never lacked imagination. I don’t have cloven feet, do not in fact look or function much different than you should I choose.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I had a wife I needed to destroy before she destroyed humanity. I needed a little human help. Once upon a time the present Queen of the Succubi was human, before she forced herself upon me and refused to let me go.
So Saint Peter was given an assignment. To find a human intelligent enough to do the job, someone amenable to the benefits we could provide, who could handle the inevitable horrors that came with it. Over six billion humans on Earth, and we only needed one.
A woman. Since nothing destroys a woman like another one.
But if I have to put myself on the line here Saint Peter, I thought to myself as I left Hell behind me and climbed the stairs to God’s study, make sure she’s got a nice pair of tits.
Quantum Demonology 