Apokrupha Books

Category: Newsletter

  • PREORDER Mitchcraft: Vacation Magic School by Patrick Freivald

    PREORDER Mitchcraft: Vacation Magic School by Patrick Freivald

    Coming this October from Apokrupha Books a new mid-grade horror novel from Patrick Freivald!

    (This amazing cover by Carly A-F!)

    Mitch Hayes is terrible at magic. His parents are great at it. His sister. His friends. But not Mitch. In a last-ditch effort to keep him on the Wizard Track as he enters eighth grade, his parents enroll him in Vacation Magic School.

    Two weeks of summer vacation, gone. Two weeks without his friends. Two weeks of studying and grueling work under the merciless instruction of Miss Janice. And worse, two weeks sharing a bunkhouse with the vicious bully Ted Flynn.

    But as misbehaving kids in the camp disappear one by one only to come back the next day as eager, model students, Mitch suspects there’s something very, very wrong at Vacation Magic School.

    Pre-Order ebook TODAY!

    Kobo
    Nook
    Bookshop
    Kindle

    Print preorders are coming! and we’ll let you know when they are live!

    Don’t take our word for it!

    Drole with trolls! Patrick Freivald’s Mitchcraft: Vacation Magic School is funny, fast, and deliciously frightening. Summer camp will never be the same.

    —Lee Murray, Bram Stoker Award®-winner, author of Dawn of the Zombie Apocalypse

    Equal parts school adventure and heartfelt underdog story, Mitchcraft Vacation Magic School casts an irresistible spell. Author Patrick Freivald delivers humor, imagination, and emotional resonance in a tale for middle graders (of any age) that proves being different is its own brand of magic. Highly recommend!

    —Gaby Triana, author of Moon Child and Wake the Hollow

    An indelible young hero leads this fun, creepy urban fantasy.

    —Kirkus Review

  • Out Now! My Eyes Are Just Holograms by John Boden

    Out Now! My Eyes Are Just Holograms by John Boden

    The new poetry collection by John Boden is here! The amazing collection of poetry by John Boden shows his mastery of language and sound.

    Amazon
    Bookshop
    Kobo
    Barnes and Noble

     But you don’t have to believe us, see what others are saying:

    “John Boden’s, MY EYES ARE JUST HOLOGRAMS, is a visceral barrage of unflinching examinations apropos of love, heartache, and lust. With the lyrical rhythm of Lord Byron and the cruel honesty of Bukowski, Boden proves yet again that he is in a poetic class of his own.”

    ~ Christina Pfeiffer of Uncomfortably Dark

    “Slivers of delicious hurt and otherness to be carefully rationed out. Don’t rush. Savour this. Let the images and feelings settle inside you. Make it last. Line for line, give yourself permission to be uncomfortable in the most transcendent of ways, awed. Perfect poetry for the end of the world, or new beginnings. There is nothing John Boden can’t do.”

    ~ Aaron Dries, author of DIRTY HEADS and HOUSE OF SIGHS

    “John Boden’s My Eyes Are Just Holograms explores identity, faith, and the violent grotesquerie of existence through razor-sharp wit and wordplay that sears his evocative voice into your brain, in the best way possible.”

    ~ Jessica McHugh, 3X Bram Stoker Award nominated author of The Quiet Ways I Destroy You

    The same gift of unique storytelling that comes through in his books, explodes in short verse throughout, My Eyes Are Just Holograms. His Bodenish style, splatters every page with ugly loveliness’! Who other than John Boden could come up with lines like, “I’ve got souls under my fingernails.” or “teeth like dry rotten floor boards,” and make it sound perfectly reasonable? No one. A poetry collection you won’t soon forget.”

    ~ Cindy O’Quinn, Bram Stoker Award® winning writer and Elgin nominated poet.

    MY EYES ARE JUST HOLOGRAMS is out in PRINT and EBOOK Get your copy today and see for yourself!

    Available on: Bookshop.org – Amazon – Kobo – Barnes and Noble

    Cover by Robert Ford

  • Pre-Order My Eyes Are Just Holograms by John Boden

    The all new poetry collection from John Boden, author of Dominoes and Snarl is coming 22 July from Apokrupha Books! 

    Amazon
    Bookshop
    Kobo
    Barnes and Noble

    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.

    and that fantastic cover is by Robert Ford.

    Pre-order on Bookshop.org – Amazon – Kobo – Barnes and Noble

  • Apokrupha Newsletter April 2024

    Hello everyone! it has been a busy month here! so let’s start with the release! 

    Dominoes

    by John Boden

    Print on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dominoes-John-Boden/dp/B0CZ3Q5WY2/

    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. 

    Follow Along!

    Subscribe by email, or follow us on the Fediverse: 

    @newsletter@apokrupha.com

  • Apokrupha Newsletter February 2024

    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!

    Amazon – Bookshop – Kindle – Kobo

    (And if you think that covers by Lynne Hansen is amazing, wait to you see the photography by B. Saunders inside)

    Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

    The Sunday Morning Horror News is here! 

    http://SundayMorningHorrorNews.com

    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

  • Apokrupha Newsletter – January 2024

    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.

    J.F. Gonzalez’s Shadows in the Attic

    An Unfinished History of Horror

    cover for J. F. Gonzalez's Shadows in the Attic - Cover shows a stylistic house with shadow figures in the attic

    Amazon – Bookshop – Kindle

    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.

    The Shadows in the Attic Reader

    Foundational Classic Horror

    cover for Shadows in the Attic Reader, artwork is a stylistic basement of a house with a lamp on one side and the shadow of a large spider on the other

    Amazon – Bookshop

    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.

    Church Fire and Redemption

    Based on the story by T.M Morgan, found in Volume 7, Issue 2—A storm hits a small island on the Chesapeake, awakening something from the past.

    check out all the episodes of the podcast here

    Final Words

    I’m still working on the tone for a newsletter that is also a blog post that is also a social media post, but we will get there.

    Speaking of, if you are reading this on the site, don’t forget you can sign up to get this in your email or follow us on the Fediverse:

    @newsletter@apokrupha.com

    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

  • Apokrupha Newsletter December 2023

    WE ARE DOING THIS LIVE PEOPLE

    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:

    https://apokrupha.com/feed

    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.

    (Sales? Probably those too)

    You can, of course, just bookmark our blog page.

    apokrupha.com/news

    Assuming this live test goes well, the first edition will be out in a few weeks to start catching everyone up on the titles we’ve released in 2023!