Prologue
“Waking up in darkness isn’t like waking up at all. I can’t, can’t feel. I’m aware of me without sensing myself.”
“Relax. Start from the beginning.”
“Everything’s, frozen, disjointed.”
“Do you know who you are?”
“I know nothing. I see, smell, feel nothing.”
“These things take time. You’ll get there.”
“I want to see. Why do I know what seeing is but can’t see?”
“Visualize yourself. Don’t worry. It’ll come. You should learn to embrace what you have, that you can think, that you are.”
“Waking up in darkness isn’t like waking up at all. I can’t, can’t feel. I’m aware of me without sensing myself.”
“Relax. Start from the beginning.”
“Everything’s, frozen, disjointed.”
“Do you know who you are?”
“I know nothing. I see, smell, feel nothing.”
“These things take time. You’ll get there.”
“I want to see. Why do I know what seeing is but can’t see?”
“Visualize yourself. Don’t worry. It’ll come. You should learn to embrace what you have, that you can think, that you are.”
Finger : Knuckle : Palm by Ariana Den Bleyker is a New Wave Fabulist novelette.
Review by Paul Edward Costa at Entropy excerpt: Again, the possibilities are many and any attempt to pin this story down becomes pointless; “Finger: Knuckle: Palm” is a New Wave Fabulist Novelette that really needs to be experienced rather than analyzed. Despite minor quibbles with how the included Biblical quotes pull the reader out of the text, Ariana Den Bleyker’s churning surreal imagery, her immersive world, her fearless sense of exploration, and her carefully constructed dualities ensure that this novelette is a trip worth taking. This reviewer’s advice for getting the most out of “Finger: Knuckle: Palm” from LucidPlay Publishing is this: let go. Enjoy Ms. Bleyker’s beautifully formed sentences. Appropriate them into your natural breaths and heartbeats. Unhook your mind from the urge to obsess and understand every detail. Remember what sticks and let the warm waves of her prose wash over you. Take the probing questions in the text as diving bell kind of moments where one might pause and reflect before swimming further into the story. Let the waters of the novelette carry you organically towards the dreamy climax of convergence naturally and patiently lying in wait for you, past the end, one step further, in the stratosphere of imagination beyond.
Review by Steven Stam
Review by Paul Edward Costa at Entropy excerpt: Again, the possibilities are many and any attempt to pin this story down becomes pointless; “Finger: Knuckle: Palm” is a New Wave Fabulist Novelette that really needs to be experienced rather than analyzed. Despite minor quibbles with how the included Biblical quotes pull the reader out of the text, Ariana Den Bleyker’s churning surreal imagery, her immersive world, her fearless sense of exploration, and her carefully constructed dualities ensure that this novelette is a trip worth taking. This reviewer’s advice for getting the most out of “Finger: Knuckle: Palm” from LucidPlay Publishing is this: let go. Enjoy Ms. Bleyker’s beautifully formed sentences. Appropriate them into your natural breaths and heartbeats. Unhook your mind from the urge to obsess and understand every detail. Remember what sticks and let the warm waves of her prose wash over you. Take the probing questions in the text as diving bell kind of moments where one might pause and reflect before swimming further into the story. Let the waters of the novelette carry you organically towards the dreamy climax of convergence naturally and patiently lying in wait for you, past the end, one step further, in the stratosphere of imagination beyond.
Review by Steven Stam
The Beginning of Wisdom is a Neo-Noir novelette by Steven Ostrowski.
"A gripping tale of the extent to which the power of fear can influence a young mind, this riveting novelette by Steven Ostrowski follows in the footsteps of O'Conner and Faulkner to its shocking conclusion" Tyler Scott, Editor, Helix Magazine?
Old Reverend Fuller had been preaching the same thing all morning and into the afternoon: Fear the Lord! Fear the Lord or else! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom! The problem was, Percy hadn’t forgotten that a week earlier the reverend had lectured, Do not be afraid. Come to Jesus and leave your fears behind. Seemed to the boy that he always came home from church more mixed up than when he got there. He spent a considerable amount of time contemplating God, not to mention the devil (who was the main topic of most of the reverend’s sermons), but he wasn’t getting very far in figuring either of them out. He wished God would come down to Milledgeville and speak for Himself so he and Reverend Fuller and everybody else would know once and for all what was what.
Steven's new book will be published by ELJ.
"A gripping tale of the extent to which the power of fear can influence a young mind, this riveting novelette by Steven Ostrowski follows in the footsteps of O'Conner and Faulkner to its shocking conclusion" Tyler Scott, Editor, Helix Magazine?
Old Reverend Fuller had been preaching the same thing all morning and into the afternoon: Fear the Lord! Fear the Lord or else! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom! The problem was, Percy hadn’t forgotten that a week earlier the reverend had lectured, Do not be afraid. Come to Jesus and leave your fears behind. Seemed to the boy that he always came home from church more mixed up than when he got there. He spent a considerable amount of time contemplating God, not to mention the devil (who was the main topic of most of the reverend’s sermons), but he wasn’t getting very far in figuring either of them out. He wished God would come down to Milledgeville and speak for Himself so he and Reverend Fuller and everybody else would know once and for all what was what.
Steven's new book will be published by ELJ.
Print book by Philip Tinkler, Naked Prayerbook. LucidPlay's best seller. Free print copies for review available.
Click below to visit the site
LucidPlay Publishing puts out books of Innovative Literature
Visit the Facebook Page
Alex S. Johnson's chapbook, The Matador of Mirrors with art by Dariusz Klimszac.
Word Swell print chapbook anthology
This 34 page word-driven chapbook anthology includes innovative fiction and poetry by a full set of reputable authors: John Olson, Bill Yarrow, Rhys Hughes, Epiphany Ferrell, Owen Kaelin, Gloria Garfunkle, Michael Seidel, and Sara Fitzpatrick Comito. It is free for everyone to read and share widely. Fabulous art is by Amir Catic, Joanna Husbands, and Doming.
There is also a bound print edition available, which all the contributors will be given to hold in their hands, from Korea, to Bosnia, to Wales. The anthology contains a substantial number of high quality art images throughout, all in color. The back cover art is larger in the print version. It can be ordered through the website.
There is also a bound print edition available, which all the contributors will be given to hold in their hands, from Korea, to Bosnia, to Wales. The anthology contains a substantial number of high quality art images throughout, all in color. The back cover art is larger in the print version. It can be ordered through the website.
Trailer for the Glass Eye Chandelier anthology:
Brilliant highly recommended literary time-travel fantasy:
Paul B. Barnett's e-chapbook, Cosamodo's Travels
Stars fall, light fades as the young Mayan priest climbs the 49 steps to the pinnacle of the great pyramid at Uxmal. It is from there that his spirit ascends through the crack of dawn to join with a dead soul who will lead him to Richard of Wallingford, the one person on earth capable of making a portal that can connect our world to the land of the creators of time.
Provided with a set of instructions on how to create the portal tattooed upon his back, Cosamado must make an incredible journey from the southern tip of the Mexican peninsula to the damp, gray world of Oxford, England. Along the way he will meet a series of enlightened beings who will help him with his quest. Melting time? Territorial disputes between dreamland and the waking world? Shape-shifting beauties? Come join Cosamado as he travels through a perfectly imperfect world that unveils some of life's more profound mysteries.
Other books
Check them out if you like at LucidPlay Publishing
Girl in Paper Mache: Story by A.M Chabitnoy, incorporating extracts of art by Mattthew Skenandore. A text that is similar to an artistic construction in itself details the building of a girl.
Careful: You'll Wake the Story: Each chapter is based on phrases that reverse of the ones repeated in the previous chapter. A liquid labyrinth that flows through anti mirrors. By Will MacBride, Daniel Ross, Peter Johnstone, Artemis Asio, Owen Kaelin, James Goertel, Rand Burgess, Natasha Cabot, Jeff Thomason, Paul Barnett, T. Fox Dunham.
Secret Levitation, the Egg-Cup Mirror: This story rides a unicycle through its mirrors, through different authors continuing the story as it unfolds through words and folds back in upon itself. James Goertel, Jeff Fleming, Alan Lynch, Baladev Bishop, Natasha Cabot, Adam Wilby.
Book of Kaleidoscopic Acumen: The NightMarium Restoration Guild has been hard at work translating for you
from the Secrum Script, with footnotes, to show you as closely as they can the original document. These are exciting times for esoterica. Metafictional beings have conspired to show you ways of expanding perceptions.
Richard Hugo's Use of Sound: Free full length informative book by Tantra Bensko. Writers striving to understand more deeply how the sounds within sentences can be used to create meaning and mood might find it useful to dip into.
Collapsible Horizon lives there as well, a coherent collection of interwoven stories that by Tantra Bensko that takes you through the Event Horizon, into the wormhole of universal loss. A man gets overly involved with the malleable walls of a lugubrious house; a mother's head flies off in anger as she refuses to believe she's dead; a man with a very peculiar mouth shows up to the door selling yard triangles, and multi-layered yards, and suddenly nothing is the same.
LucidPlay is no long accepting submissions.
It has a new imprint.
Provided with a set of instructions on how to create the portal tattooed upon his back, Cosamado must make an incredible journey from the southern tip of the Mexican peninsula to the damp, gray world of Oxford, England. Along the way he will meet a series of enlightened beings who will help him with his quest. Melting time? Territorial disputes between dreamland and the waking world? Shape-shifting beauties? Come join Cosamado as he travels through a perfectly imperfect world that unveils some of life's more profound mysteries.
Other books
Check them out if you like at LucidPlay Publishing
Girl in Paper Mache: Story by A.M Chabitnoy, incorporating extracts of art by Mattthew Skenandore. A text that is similar to an artistic construction in itself details the building of a girl.
Careful: You'll Wake the Story: Each chapter is based on phrases that reverse of the ones repeated in the previous chapter. A liquid labyrinth that flows through anti mirrors. By Will MacBride, Daniel Ross, Peter Johnstone, Artemis Asio, Owen Kaelin, James Goertel, Rand Burgess, Natasha Cabot, Jeff Thomason, Paul Barnett, T. Fox Dunham.
Secret Levitation, the Egg-Cup Mirror: This story rides a unicycle through its mirrors, through different authors continuing the story as it unfolds through words and folds back in upon itself. James Goertel, Jeff Fleming, Alan Lynch, Baladev Bishop, Natasha Cabot, Adam Wilby.
Book of Kaleidoscopic Acumen: The NightMarium Restoration Guild has been hard at work translating for you
from the Secrum Script, with footnotes, to show you as closely as they can the original document. These are exciting times for esoterica. Metafictional beings have conspired to show you ways of expanding perceptions.
Richard Hugo's Use of Sound: Free full length informative book by Tantra Bensko. Writers striving to understand more deeply how the sounds within sentences can be used to create meaning and mood might find it useful to dip into.
Collapsible Horizon lives there as well, a coherent collection of interwoven stories that by Tantra Bensko that takes you through the Event Horizon, into the wormhole of universal loss. A man gets overly involved with the malleable walls of a lugubrious house; a mother's head flies off in anger as she refuses to believe she's dead; a man with a very peculiar mouth shows up to the door selling yard triangles, and multi-layered yards, and suddenly nothing is the same.
LucidPlay is no long accepting submissions.
It has a new imprint.