Palimpsest
There are four copies of the Chiotraczh Manuscript in existence, though by the recollection of most occult historians, they have all been destroyed. Once, all four were owned by the same man and, in a frenzied fit, he tried to save us from the terrible sigils and spells written on those pages. He couldn't bring himself to destroy the books. Oh, he tried, but their eldritch influence caused a tremor in his brain and a weakness in his heart which stopped his hands at the last moment. He couldn't burn them; he couldn't tear them apart; he couldn't throw them into the ocean. He could, however, take a knife to them. Not to cut the pages out, but to scratch the words off. It took him twenty years and the effort drove him deep into madness. And, when he was done, he wrote his own words on the now blank pages. He wasn't much of a writer, prone to hyperbole and an exaggerated paranoia as well as being wracked with spells of delusion, and his stories were all bleak and most of them ended badly.
These palimpsests were found in his collection when he died and since everyone agreed that he hadn't been that good of a writer, the heavy manuscripts ended up on the back shelves of an old bookseller's shop, hidden beneath decaying cookbooks and neglected travelogues to places no one wanted to go anymore.
A war has been fought in the decade since the rewritten manuscripts were lost, a war between the ancient sigils erased but not removed and the poorly connected words of the mad historian. Each page is a separate battleground, each word a skirmish to be won or lost. The ancient language has strong infantry and highly trained cavalry. The madman's words have the benefit of defense, entrenched on the page, but they are too scattered, too unorganized, to raise a proper defense. His words fight valiantly, but they are outnumbered. Page by page, line by line, the mad historian's text is eaten by the words of the priests of Chiotraczh. The ancient symbols swell on the page, filled with the squalid ink of the frantic historian.
When the books are found again, no one will remember the scrawled warnings of the mad historian.
writing
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.
THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.
SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.
LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.