Grimscribe Press

20/11/2024

Launch day for this magnificent debut collection by LC von Hessen has finally arrived! These stories are wickedly funny, subversive, strange forays into von Hessen's twisted imagination, and the style of their prose is out of this world. Surely one of the best collections of the year.

Get it! Read it! Review it! Support subversive, great weird writers!

Author: LC von Hessen Cover Artist: LC von Hessen Publication Date: November 20, 2024 Published by: Grimscribe Press 242 pp.   Trade Paperback – $20 USD(Shipping and handling included wo…

31/10/2024

Happy Halloween! I've got three, no four, no FIVE recommendations on this grand holiday:

1) GLASS STORIES by Ivy Grimes (Grimscribe Press). A short debut collection of connected stories--some of the most bizarre, absurd, and funny you're ever likely to read. Grimes is an original and quite a new talent, though you wouldn't know it reading her exceptional work. GLASS STORIES is widely available now, everywhere books are sold.

2) SPIRITUS EX MACHINA by LC von Hessen (Grimscribe Press). This is another debut collection (a meaty one) by an incredibly original, newer author of the weird--also one of the very best in the field, in fact, as luminaries like Michael Cisco (who writes the Intro) will attest. These are wickedly funny, subversive, strange forays into von Hessen's twisted imagination, and the style of their prose is out of this world. Limited hardcovers (sold out) are printing and shipping from the distributor as I type. Trade paper and eBook drop November 20th.

3) THE STAY-AWAKE MEN audiobook by Matthew M. Bartlett, available widely. Read by me. Bartlett is one of my favorite authors, full stop. Nobody like him. These stories were a joy to read aloud and lend themselves to being heard as well as read on the page. Gritty, grimy, wildly original, and gloriously funny.

4) THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE: A CONTRIVANCE OF HORROR by Thomas Ligotti, read to you by me, care of Penguin Random House Audio (the second Ligotti book of theirs I've narrated). As pseudo-Ligotti character Rust Cohle observed, this is indeed "heavy s**t." It's also an extraordinary masterpiece--quite likely the best thing this living legend will ever write. It's dark and heady as it gets, but it's also deeply and paradoxically humane and almost continuously hilarious. Reading it from the inside out was inexpressibly awesome, and I loved and was honored to do it. Hearing it is electric and totally a different experience from reading it on the page. This audiobook is widely available

5) NOCTUARY & THE SPECTRAL LINK also by Thomas Ligotti, narrated by me for the always amazing Chiroptera Press. This pairs Ligotti's most underrated collection with perhaps his least read, smaller (and most recent) collection. Both books contain some of Ligotti's very best fiction to date, which is saying something. NOCTUARY itself is perhaps thematically more intertwined piece by piece than any other collection he's published--even GRIMSCRIBE. This one is also widely available.

If you've gotten down this far, thanks for reading this. Hope you have a memorable, creepy, fun night!

30/10/2024

This marvelous review just came out from Kirkus. Here's a tidbit of the review itself. Read it! Limited hardcovers are printing and will soon be shipping. Trade paper and pay-whatever-you-can eBooks drop in less than a month.

"Machines, dolls, and ghastly things animate von Hessen’s debut collection of somber horror tales…Von Hessen’s 14 stories herein tackle such diverse subgenres as the undead, body horror, and something more Lovecraftian…but there’s a discernible theme of identity that runs throughout the book... In every chilling moment and unexpected turn, the author’s prose is nothing short of intoxicating…Razor-sharp writing distinguishes stories that enthrall as often as they unnerve."

Machines, dolls, and ghastly things animate von Hessen’s debut collection of somber horror tales.

28/10/2024

For the night crew...

"Glass can represent many things: clarity, fragility, artificiality, illusion. In these 17 tales, the author forms glass into all manner of ideas to beguile her characters and reflect—darkly—aspects of their off-kilter lives…The stories are united by Grimes’ comic strangeness…the premises are always slightly dreamlike, and the dialogue is oblique, with inevitable intrusions of the humorous and the surreal…Fans of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender will enjoy these original, abstruse folktales and the elusive magic that animates them. A wry and memorable collection of sleek fables."
-Kirkus Reviews

Available in trade paper with free shipping worldwide and pay-whatever-you-can eBook edition. You're going to want this book.

Author: Ivy Grimes Cover Artist: Jesse Peper Publication Date: August 21, 2024 Published by: Grimscribe Press 142 pp.   Trade Paperback – $20 USD(Shipping and handling included worldwide…

28/10/2024

Grimes riffs on the magic of glass objects in this debut fiction collection.

28/10/2024

This debut collection from Ivy Grimes (Grimscribe) has unfortunately run under the radar heretofore, but let me tell you... it's brilliant. Here's part of an excellent review from Kirkus. Click on the link for the whole thing.

"Glass can represent many things: clarity, fragility, artificiality, illusion. In these 17 tales, the author forms glass into all manner of ideas to beguile her characters and reflect—darkly—aspects of their off-kilter lives…The stories are united by Grimes’ comic strangeness…the premises are always slightly dreamlike, and the dialogue is oblique, with inevitable intrusions of the humorous and the surreal…Fans of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender will enjoy these original, abstruse folktales and the elusive magic that animates them. A wry and memorable collection of sleek fables."

Grimes riffs on the magic of glass objects in this debut fiction collection.

27/10/2024

I can dig it.

Ichinono has fewer than 60 residents, so they stitched together their own population of puppets to keep them company.

27/10/2024

Two of the many things I look forward to every Halloween are Halloween-themed cards from Cadabra Records and cards from Dave Felton. Here's one I just received from Cadabra Records... with art by Dave Felton! Bellissimo! Thanks so much, Jonathan!

23/10/2024

Ok!

22/10/2024

First Look: Spiritus Ex Machina by LC von Hessen – Limited Edition Hardcover

The limited edition hardcover (shipping soon) is officially sold out, but you can still experience the dark wonders of Spiritus Ex Machina: Dark Tales of creation when the trade paperback and pay-what-you-can eBook editions drop next month.

In this much-anticipated debut, LC von Hessen explores the grim, sometimes giddy intersection of art and science across 14 stories, from an 18th-century salon to a contemporary Brooklyn apartment. Featuring painters, photographers, dancers, doctors, scholars, engineers, occultists, bureaucrats, plutocrats, restaurateurs, pro-dommes, mad scientists, and various hapless folk--all who become embroiled in the Unknowable.

Critical Praise:

“Dark, lyrical, and grimly charming, Hessen’s prose is marvelous.”
—Laird Barron, author of Not A Speck of Light

“Von Hessen’s much-anticipated collection constructs a machine of strange encounters, twisted folklore, and an industrialized universe, an entrancing experience that injects lightning through your mind.”
—Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth

“What a voice! LC von Hessen is like some perverse antiquarian puppet-master, delivering exacting prose that couples the cadence of Ligotti with the bright irony of a discourse on modern art. Reading Spiritus Ex Machina is a surgical experience. Utterly cold, rich, unflinching, and unforgettable.”
—Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands and Invaginies

Become a human worm, traverse the dreams of an automaton, perform necromancy through antique film reels, join a secret society in the bowels of a Gilded Age factory—and remember to never, ever trust a face.

22/10/2024

Almost!