The all new poetry collection from John Boden, author of Dominoes and Snarl is coming 22 July from Apokrupha Books!
Words. Simple and necessary. Like blood vessels or bricks. They keep us alive and beat us to death.
They lumber and stalk when stitched together like Frankensteinian creations, when the slither and skirt like timid vermin or scared children.
Epics and lectures and litanies and lies are nothing but combinations of words. Twist them up and scratch out their meaning, ascribe a new one, over and over.
In this book, I have fun with words, I catch them in calloused palm and pin them to cork for all to gander at.
I glue them together in impossible angles and bend and fold, spin and mutilate and somehow, they continue to do their job, they tirelessly work. To be words.
Originally published by our old friends, Shock Totem back in 2013, we are so excited to have this book back in print. This dark, but beautiful tale of the coming apocalypse is illustrated by Yannick Bouchard.
This is one you’ll want on your bookshelves, but don’t take our word for it:
There’s a level of wordsmithing happening with John that is unparalleled. Images that are shocking and beautiful, and you see the way he has arranged his words and they are these intricate configurations that are just….wow.
— Kristi DeMeester, Author of BENEATH and SUCH A PRETTY SMILE
Gorgeous. Stunning. Bizarre and strange. It’s literary and visual porn, that’s what it is. Not a lot of people will “get it”. But I don’t think it’s to be got. It’s to be experienced.
— Mercedes Murdock Yardley, Author of DARLING and BEAUTIFUL SORROWS
I’ve long been in awe of John Boden’s capacity for distilling profound dread into a single line. Reading this book is like watching someone who has not only pulled back the veil separating our world from the nightmares, but burned it, stomped out the embers, and pissed on the ashes. If I ever had a piece of advice to give, it would be “Don’t let John Boden into your head.”?
— Bracken MacLeod, Author of CLOSING COSTS and STRANDED
Cons Galore!
Two cons, back to back in April. Authorcon III in Williamsburg and Creature Feature Weekend in Gettysburg. Both were fantastic weekends of books, writers and horror. While I may be biased, I recommend adding both to your calendars for next year.
Also I collected a lot of cards, bookmarks and web URLs to add more blogs to the Sunday Morning Horror News… Expect a large update next month.
Two more events planned for the year:
Horror on Main
Authorcon IV (St Louis)
We hope to see some of you there!
Coming SOON!
We’ve been working on something for those of you who want to try out this blackout poetry thing. Keep an eye on Jessica McHugh’s Instagram for a sneak peek. 0_0
Final Thoughts
It was a busy month, back to back cons is a lot. I got home from Authorcon, opened my suit case and dumped clothes into the washer. Pulled them from the dryer and put them back in the suit case. It was fun, but I am also glad I don’t do it often.
We did get a new addition to our table at Creature Feature.
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This month we have some news about the news! Jessica McHugh makes the Stoker ballot and an announcement about a poetry collection by John Boden!
Quiet Ways I Destroy You
Is on the Stoker ballet!
Released in 2023, this is the third collection of blackout poetry by Jessica McHugh, and by far the most ambitious. At 155 pieces based on Little Women this book is a tome of poetry, art and photography.
Comes with a free set of paper dolls! (Not appropriate for children…)
Get it in print and ebook!
and congradulations to everyone on the Stoker ballet this year, it is an amazing list of titles!
To often the news is coming by at the speed of social media. Miss a post? Was it lost in the river, or a ‘friendly’ refresh from your app?
The Sunday Morning Horror News is a site designed to help slow down some. Bringing you news every Sunday morning from all over the web.
This is an aggregator of blog RSS feeds. What does that mean? It means it goes and gets the recent posts from all over the horror internet, and brings them together for an easy read.
You can subscribe via your own RSS reader as well! Or even better, go to the bottom and grab the links and follow them directly.
No ads. No trackers. No auto-play anything. And it is even open source, because we are those kinds of nerds here.
My Eyes Are Just Holograms
We are going to publish a book of poems by John Boden, entitled My Eyes Are Just Holograms
Dark and emotional, Boden has a way with words hard to explain. And I can’t wait to show off these poems.
We will have more to announce later this year with covers and pre-orders, but we are so excited we needed to share.
Final Words
As a teaser for the future, I want to say I’ve been working on two titles that will be out this year that are not yet ready for a full announcement, but I cannot wait to show them to you.
Maybe spend some time finding your favorite pens, just in case.
Planned Appearances
Here are the events you’ll find an Apokrupha booth this year. This will be updated as we add onto it!
April 19–21 2024 – Creature Feature Weekend, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
April 12–14 2024 – AuthorCon III, Williamsburg, Virginia
June 28–30 2024 – Horror on Main, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
October 4–6 2024 – AuthorCon IV, St Louis, Missouri
Hi folks! Welcome to the first real new newsletter from us. We are going to start off by showcasing some of the things we published in 2023 that you may have missed!
We’ve got some exciting things coming this year too, so don’t worry about that. More poetry, art and weirdness is on the way.
Come and dig beneath the cobwebs, under the dust and through the forgotten boxes with horror historian J. F. Gonzalez.
Collecting non-fiction works from J.F. Gonzalez, Shadows in the Attic takes the reader from Ancient times to the mid-40’s weaving a tale of the history of horror—all the while discussing writers and stories that influenced, that captivated, and cultivated the genre through the centuries.
Includes articles from LampLight, Afraid, Hellnotes and a never before published history of Splatterpunk, with a list of related works.
This companion anthology to J. F. Gonzalez’s Shadows in the Attic collects dark tales that inspired, frightened and made new ground in the horror genre.
Including writers like M. R. James, Francis Stevens, and Robert W. Chambers, the stories here compliment the rich history, a guided tour through horror’s past.
So come, let us head to the third floor, and dig through the boxes and trunks stored in the attic and see what darkness we can find.
OMG those covers
The Shadows and Reader covers were made by the amazing Lynne Hansen, and look just as amazing in print as they do here.
LampLight RadioPlay
The radio play had its final episode released in January. All good things, and the radio play was such a good thing. An amazing showcase of talent, from the actors to the writers from LampLight Magazine.
We have a new newsletter, two new ways of getting it! Two old ways sticking around. This post is mostly a test post to make sure those ways work.
But since it is a public post, let’s talk about what’s new!
We are moving to WordPress Newsletters. The advantage is that it integrates with our site with no changes.
The old list is gone. Which means if you were subscribed to it, you are no longer. Sign up again if you want, or maybe take a break from newsletters after that Black Friday gauntlet.
Fediverse
Most commonly known as Mastodon for the moment, this blog is also now on the Fediverse. Which means if you have a Mastodon account, a Firefish, Plemora, Friendrica or any number of accounts on the Fediverse, just follow this account, and you’ll get these posts there:
@newsletter@apokrupha.com
What’s a Fediverse? I’m glad you asked. Here is a great resource, but the TL;DR, what if Twitter, Facebook, Instagram were all connected, so you only needed on account to see all the accounts?
(And none were corporate owned)
RSS
And, lastly, this site, as all WordPress sites, still uses RSS. You can subscribe to the RSS feed of this site using this URL:
Three ways to get Apokrupha news delivered to you. Three ways to get updates and announcements about indie horror, strange poetry, submission guidelines and more.
