Margins | No. 9

The Drek Death and Doom Newsletter

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Attention: This newsletter is not in German. You are not on the wrong page. Last issue was Rome-inspired, hence the Latin—this one just looks a little too German to me, kay? They are only headings. Keep reading.

I. Nachtlied (Editor’s Note)
II. Pressemitteilungen (news)
III. Das Magazin (Magazine)
IV. Im Warten (Progressing)
V. Bücher zu verkaufen (Books)
VI. Unterwirf dich mir (Submit)
VII. Delphischer Stern (Flash Fiction)

I

Wie lieblich ist ihr Lied an die Nacht:

Spring, sunshine, warmth. Will. It shows up like I’m just going to let it back in. Like I can forget it left. My skin flushes under noonday rays. My fingers twitch to life. At night, I drive with my windows down, and the chorus frogs strum, and the crickets and the emerald katydids sing lonesome beneath pinhole stars.

Are they yanked forth from the mud, from the frosthard marsh where brittle cat fronds flake like plastered arches? Do their blister eyes glisten, black like mine—onyx shards enraptured at the drawing of the moon? Revere it, murk-born things—like paint-chipped parishioners; like embattled me, lying prostrate in its light.

Wind, silver-lined with cold, warms after long pressed against my arms. And it roars. So loud, my fingers again twitch to life, stabbing to close the windows to the screaming world and inter me in still-air, lulled by the droning road. I wonder if they’ll ever lower again.

Then the clouds.

And the storms.

And the rains that never cease.

Until rustwater drips from warped trusses, seeps from sodden plank.

And pools.

In the decay slimed together where dammed ice pressed like trucked corpses cold-piled and forgotten, where rats and rabbits starved and froze and died, a pale standard nimbly points its frills through a ribcage stuck with patchy mot. Its billion spores go loose and dust bones for fingerprinted causal chains.

The chorus frogs strum chords of tendon.

The duskblue moon, opaline and crisp, shines wet in their black bubble eyes. Caged as glass-cased cadavers, flesh thin as paper over chipped-bone cheeks.

The crickets and the katydids scream to the painted night.

They scream, and they scream—their music printed black, as ink drying on a canvas white.

Theirs is the story that sings in my caged heart.

That beats against my incandescent blood.

Inspiring these fingers to twitch.

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DB

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II
Press News | Editor’s Note: In Fortsetzung

Just in case you skipped the above note—I’m revving up the ol’ printing press. Hotwiring its stringy heart, black and stiff with frostbite, as its patchwork parts lie in loose assembly upon my desk. Under roiling plumes forked by coruscant retribution, my fingers, they do be twitchin’.

What is it young Victor says, with the lightning ripping and thunder snapping want into will? I must collect the instruments of life, these here meagre beginnings (mine! not Victor’s)—so that I may infuse a spark of being into this lifeless thing…¹

Thing there can stand in for Press, to get right to it.

I have been barren.

This is the fifth month since the last thing we published. (I have the want to say we when referring to the presses—not out of a desire to project some illusory cohort, but that the people I have published help shape my brand, and I consider them in future endeavors; not to mention, there are two publishing brands here and it sounds correct. Also, they (the presses, not authors) are monsters I bore, both now livening with scorn.) Five months! We started with one in July, again in August, then every month, sometimes twice, until November. And then the wind and the swirling abysmal cold. And the white, and the winter, back in my veins.

Excuses, excuses.

It’s already April. Sunday was my son’s birthday. My daughter’s was last Monday. Here is where I always feel that Spring I long for—with bitter and resentful devotion. Why’d your warm touch ever decide to leave?

I’m stimulated, yet bored—so to counteract the long-windedness, here’s succincity in list:

• We got rid of our old store due to inconsistent cart/checkout experiences, slow loading times, and manual burden. We’ve officially moved our store to Shopify:

  

  Enter Store

• Our account was banned from KDP. Their AI flagged a book we published as belonging to someone else, and after a rights request and full compliance, we were still denied account recovery. Sealed with a kiss: We are not required to provide a reason.

  • I don’t think this is a net loss. Amazon is tightening the rope, and plenty of authors and presses no longer utilize their publishing convenience.

• Good News—Since Kindle won’t home us, we’ve moved to Draft2Digital for ebooks. They’ve implemented a new fee if you don’t earn over $100 in twelve months. It’s about 20 ebooks. If it helps the authors I work with and minimally takes from me, I’m good with it, but ideally, we hit that 20 mark.

  • Click the store link above or continue reading for direct links.

    • or go to b&n so I don't have 12 dollars in fees

  • Hallucinations by Hamish Kavanagh and Mars in Retrograde by James Worth are both available at our store, and are populating in all the major online ebook shops.

• I’m in the pre-acceptance phase with a few fantastic books that were submitted. One, officially accepted. This summer/fall season looks like it’s going to be busy for us, so look out for some announcements concerning new signings sometime in the near future.

• We’re starting a magazine. Starting might be a strong word. I am taking a massive post that turned into a complete publishing guide, and I’m printing it as a magazine. The plan is only one issue at the moment, but who knows, I might like it.

• We’re taking submissions for the magazine. Read below to find out what we’re looking for and how to submit.

• I don’t want to sound too forward here, or to assume too much—but, in the past, I’ve turned down a couple interviews and several reading opportunities due to neurological disease flares that sometimes come with numb parts of my jaw, which can cause me to slur my words a little bit. These declinations were and are situational. I’m not always speaking like there is something wrong with me. Even when I am, you probably won’t notice. It’s a personal dissatisfaction with myself, not an unnavigable, constant disability. If I must perform for my writers’ visibility—perform, I must.

!

The only other thing pertinent to this section, less in the way of Nachricht, and more about donning some Persönliche Rüstung, the majority of you won't understand. But those both burned and buried, and those behaving badly know exactly what it's about. And those yet to borrow my graces only to build flammable bridges will know to check themselves before.

1. I'm keenly aware of what circles accept me, what circles pretend to accept me out of use/optics, and what circles tolerate me because mutual friendships/who I know/what I have published. I'm more than aware when cooperative and mutual support and promotion is one sided.

2. The shit I have done for some of you without one fucking ounce of returned grace, without even a pretend fraction of fucking respect in public, ends today. All the amplification and vouching and endorsement and recommendations through blatant disrespect and open, noticeable, public stonewalling and cloaked deligitimizing is over. Don't ask me for a goddamn thing ever again.

3. The “you do so much for this community,” and “know how much you're valued,” and “nobody works as hard as you,” all behind closed doors in DMs with that support consistently nonexistant in public? Those relationships (Ha! Relationfuckingship-) are done. Stamped with: AF.

   Conversely, some of you say that in private AND show it in public. Thank you.

4. I do not enjoy being lied to, and I'm not a fucking idiot. Period. Don't do it.

That being said, I love the fiction community that is about fiction, writing fiction, reading fiction and sharing fiction.

I love cooperating with other writers, readers, editors, etc., and I'm ecstatic to help others (ask all the people I reached out to about advertising, promoting, sponsoring, out of my own pocket and with great loss to what little time I have), but do not fuck with me.

Especially do not fuck with me and think you're pulling one over, or that I think you're in any way sincere or respectable.

This is your warning. If you are questioning if this is about you, it probably is, and it's your own behavior you should reckon with. Not mine. You already know the answer.

Who am I kidding, you don't read this shit.

¡

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III
The Magazine | Der Starttag rückt näher.

First, what is it?

The Margins magazine started as a post where I cross-sectioned and displayed the gooey innards of all things involved when publishing with little, old, me. Truthfully, it started long before, in a separate post for which I’d pasted promotional pratering, nefariously titled: From the Slums of Mount Taygetos - Apothetae strikes again.

I never posted that. The fear was that it would give writers the idea that my standards were possibly universal, or worse, and on the uglier side of that same copper coin, mine alone. When really, although assuredly considered by nearly all acquiring editors, my specific yes and never determiners are mine, wielded with my own fiery hierarchy in manners specific to my stricken aims. Not every editor values everything in exactly the same way. Or dislikes things as others would.

SO. Friends, and nemesi, that editing piece became part of a compendium. Folded onto itself with binders and additives so many times, its product is denser and deadlier than Stalingrad Snow.

Submit:

Both presses are represented in this magazine, so submissions don’t need to be horror. Dark fiction is a requirement, however. (I’m malleable when it comes to whatever “dark” is.)

• Flash 0-500 words (2-3 stories) ($10 minimum)

  Flash 500-1000 words (1-2 stories)

  Short story under 4k words (1-2 stories)

  Non-fiction (reviews, articles, essays—preferably writing/reading/fiction) under 2k words (1-2)

• Send to submissions@drekdeathanddoom.com

• Modern Manuscript Format

• .doc/.docx preferred, .rtf is fine

• No reprints/simuls

• $0.02 per word

• No AI

• Deadline TBD

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IV
Soon | Im Warten:

Street Team:

I asked again and got even more willing to sticker and staple and stab stake out indie shops, and then I sold out of merch.

I reordered the bookmarks and stickers. I’ll update whenever they get here.

Readercon:

I procured some books from some of you. I haven’t made any decisions there yet, and I can’t make it take 100% priority until a bit later. I haven’t said yes or no to anybody, so don’t dwell on it at this point, please.

Advertisements:

For the new magazine, I reached out to a few people about advertising their book/business/whatever for them. Free, obviously. I have a couple more people to ask, but after that, I’ll throw a note out about whether I can insert additional advertisements, and people can let me know if they have something that might fit.

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V.
Books | Bücher zu verkaufen:

VI
Unterwirf dich mir:

1.

I am still attempting to respond with acceptances and rejections within 90 days. If you’ve had something sitting in my inbox longer than that, please reach out. I probably missed it somewhere.

2.

Drek Death and Doom and Nascent Night Press are both about to close for fiction submissions. Novellas, Novels. Collections.

For long fiction submissions, send query letter and first chapter. I will ask for the full thing if I want a closer look.

Submit at submissions@drekdeathanddoom.com.

3.

Drek Death and Doom is seeking original horror fiction that aims to inflict terror while demonstrating dangerous command of craft. We want stories written with intention and artistry, horror that walks with quiet conviction beneath the cold cathedral spires.

Nascent Night is seeking boundary-breaking literary fiction that stabs beyond comfort and convention into new flesh. Voice, structure, colossal imagination—we are interested in manuscripts that carry intellectual and emotional risk, and subvert expectations with gilded persistence.

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That’s it until the magazine. Wait, I forgot the flash:

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Delphischer Stern | Flash Fiction (666 words)

I am collapsing. Folding inward on myself, an ending star if ever I’d brightly shone. I’ll supernova. I’ll send the shrapnel of my life from dark eternity to green and windswept shores—imbedding creation and death as one. And after, in the black gaseous nebula shaped under starlit dust, I’ll leave behind a pure and inescapable void.

Under these pines, the cold. The boughs that hang like witches’ brooms, weighed tip to tine with snow. My heart is a crimson dagger that each night points for your gossamer flesh. A starspun Athame. I feel as glinting salival teeth, so shimmering darkly in hungry mouths. As dark spectral sharks with pearly drawn eyes, oceans away, snuff blood from gaping wounds. That nightflight through black ocean, blind. Teeth or tine, dagger or ditch—pain will find you, God, I swear it—each ocean forever the same! Deep and dark and…

Dearest Clara, where are you?

The sun will poke above the horizon in a few hours. It will spill like a cracked egg, its fertile yolk dousing the dead blue dawn in molten gold.

Where are you now, Clara? This dagger within points nearly through the underside. This carriage that hosts old wounds.

Sing for me, Clara. So that I may hear you once more as I search. As I wither and freeze and die.

Take me back to when we first had met.

Long after the world passed on, you whistled high your woes, high as starlings. There were no starlings. No birds at all. No bees.

When I approached, I no longer cared if a trap waited for me to step through its twine. Stomp its spring plate and send punji sticks into my calves. But you hadn’t noticed. I walked nearly to where you lazily meandered through parted rows of crops. Small patches where cornstalks rose thin and rustling like patchworn scarecrows. Your fountain spurting water, water clearer than I’d seen since before the pipe flow turned brown—brown but filterable, then black, and black where microscopic little creatures birthed and died.

I watched you fill a wooden cup and drink, and when you turned, your startled face told me I had nothing to fear. Though shaky, you offered your hand, and I was the one who flinched. Who startled at the gentle feather of a landed angel. Some mythic being far from what beings my kind had become.

Where black under my nails was thick, black that had once been crimson, had once been life for someone else, you washed it away with moss while your clear water turned red, then pink, then back again. As if nothing had changed it. Nothing tainted it. It, everything, was as once, all had been.

You took my clean hands and scrubbed them pink. Dried them gently and threaded my fingers through yours. We bounded up steps which seemed to have grown from the trees. As if they’d been teased to bend by some lost culture, more lost than whatever mine had been.

I didn’t have calluses before the world had ended, and then, with your supple palm leading my gnarled and leathery paw through towering stories inside trees vast and bottomless, I wished to hide them away. But you held tight, and you didn’t let go for years.

Years, Clara.

Whistle me your goddamn song.

A castle in root systems, chambers more expansive than gypsum caves. Silken things and furnishings raised from enchanted wood. You showed me emerald tunnels, studded and shimmering, and waterfalls warm and sudsy as bathwater. What you planted and grew and reaped tasted more like decadence than the paltry things of my dreams. And the leaves thick enough to climb. The vines where we knitted together lattice work and played at poor Romeo’s lament.

The bump in your belly and the way you cupped it, as if she had already been born.

It wasn’t a dream, Clara.

These snow pines are not our bed.

Where are you, Clara…?

Whistle your thieving woes.

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Thanks as always, so much, for reading. If you can’t tell, I despise winter.

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1. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1818), chap. 5