Broken Eye Books is publishing The Obsecration by Matthew Bartlett as an ongoing serial. It’s Leeds. It's 2018. And the patrons in the Look Diner await their meals, drawn by something greater than hunger, something stronger than the need for shelter from the oppressive heat and humidity of summer. Waitresses hustle. Cooks sharpen knives and light burners, giving birth to blue blossoms of flame. Something is happening tonight. Something is stirring in the greased air sliced by whirling ceiling fans. You and I, we have a corner booth. A front row seat.

Abrecan Geist. In Leeds, Massachusetts, the name evokes dangerous magic, unspeakable blasphemies, black rites in the basement of Anne Gare’s notorious book shop. Outsized rumors surround him. He lived a full three hundred fifty-eight years, dying in 1982 and taking to the casket the cadaver of what appeared to be a sixty-year-old man, and he could speak to birds. He and his coven, the Hilltown Ten, were responsible for the notorious priest murders and disappearances of the early 1980s. He could bend reality to suit his will. And in his later years, his dreams took over, warping reality even as he slept.

Something is going to happen tonight, here, in the Look Diner in Leeds, Massachusetts. Something devilish. Something unnatural. All will play a part. You and I? Though we are but observers, we may not live through the night. But we will see something no one has ever seen before. It might be starting soon. Yes . . . the lights are flickering. The ceiling tiles are bulging like brown-stained bellies. The yolks of the eggs on my plate are filling with blood, and my water is boiling in my glass. Don’t look away. Don’t even blink.

What does all this have to do with our favorite occultist, leader of the Hilltown Ten, dreamer, diarist, monster? Sit tight. Soon all will be revealed.

“I’ve referred in passing to Abrecan Geist in several stories," says Matt. "A biographical snippet appears in 'The Witch-Cult in Western Massachusetts.' I envision him as a less annoying, more entertaining Aleister Crowley. I’ve always wanted to explore the character more fully, and in The Obsecration, I do just that—I hope you enjoy him as much as I do.”

The Obsecration will be exclusively offered on the Broken Eye Books Patreon with new chapters released regularly to patrons (every other month or so). The first installment will be released to patrons in September/October. Once the first season of The Obsecration is complete (in 2018), it will be collected and made available to everyone in print and ebook format.

Broken Eye Books is publishing The Dying Empire by Remy Nakamura as an ongoing serial of weird fiction short stories. This is a fungal dieselpunk setting centered in 19th-century Japan. It's a world in which the British fuel their rise to power on fungal biotech instead of on coal, steam, and steel.

"Steampunk makes it easy to glorify the British Empire and to gloss over its abuses," says Remy, "but in The Dying Empire, its fungal-fueled might brings its reliance on plunder and decay to the surface. (Her Majesty’s giant puffball airships and zombie soldiers need to feed, or they won’t last long. China fights back with gunpowder and petroleum-based weapons. And caught in between are the isolationist Japanese.)

"The Dying Empire will follow the adventures of an outcaste woman with forbidden fungal powers, a young secret agent caught between love and country, an aging Kabuki actor turned private investigator, and an intelligent idealistic octopus. They find one another and form an unusual alliance. The story starts close and personal but expands as this team of misfits unwinds the tangle of intrigue within Edo and discovers the secrets that fuel Britain’s technological supremacy.

"On a more personal level, this novella gives me the opportunity to explore the relationship of the living to the dying and the dead. This obsession started when I was younger, after I dressed the cold body of one relative in ritual clothing and carefully picked out the cremated bones of another to place into an ornate urn. Mushrooms and mold abound in this world, and they represent a bridge of sorts between life and death, feeding on decay as they do and clearing the way for new life. " 

The Dying Empire will be exclusively offered on the Broken Eye Books Patreon with new chapters released regularly to patrons (every other month or so). The first installment will be released to patrons in August/September. Once the first season of The Dying Empire is complete (in 2018), it will be collected and made available to everyone in print and ebook format.

Miskatonic Musings has a fun chat with Desirina Boskovich on the latest episode of their podcast. They discuss her new book, Never Now Always, and alien abduction and CS Lewis and freelance writing and dogs v. cats. And why you'll love the book. Desirina reveals that she wrote the book to the "scared, freaked-out child in all of us."

Check it out!

Broken Eye Books is publishing The Night Museum by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. as an ongoing serial of weird fiction short stories and novelettes, interludes and documents. These tales will be given life over the coming months in various narrative styles and structures, reflecting the variety of things to be discovered and encountered in the Night Museum.

What is the Night Museum? It is the boundaryless repository of all things ever thought, experienced, made, imagined—all things dreamed of, discarded, found, won, lied over, both the faraway and nearby, that exist under the labyrinthine, black-shadowed skirts of Mother Night. The Night Museum is the home to the mysterious Boatman, to the writers Loftus and Bori, and to the curator Book, a steampunk projection who sometimes serves as an escort to those who come to the Night Museum without a field guide. And there are creatures aplenty: the Voy and Ogr the cricket, who serves as Mother Night’s eyes and ears, and the nightwolves and a spider that lives in Mortlook, the Janitor of Lunacy--(he and a character named Fable have a long night to share with you)—and a murderous ghost named Hild and many others. You'll see a murder mystery, a mysterious package arriving in the dead of night, and perhaps something from the bestiary and more, all told in the inimitable poetic prose of the author.

"Many times over the past few years," says Joe, "I have thought about returning to the Night Museum, but somehow, despite my mountains of notes, the opportunity never arose. I’ve dusted off my notes for Broken Eye Books and have begun exploring . . .  

"The Night Museum and the character Book first appeared in my novel The Orphan Palace (2011), and it is with great pleasure I return to investigate the contents of its many corridors, salons, balconies, and landscapes."

The Night Museum will be the first title in our new line of serials, exclusively offered on the Broken Eye Books Patreon with new chapters released regularly to patrons (every other month or so). The first installment will be released to patrons in July/August. Once the first season of The Night Museum is complete (in 2018), it will be collected and made available to everyone in print and ebook format.