Vox Terrae: My Weird Occult Horror Chapbook From Dunhams Manor Press

The original title for Vox Terrae was The Alternative Translation. This translation is the foundation for the surreal horror that fills the final third of the tale.  The initial tale started taking shape a few years ago and had reached a dead end. I knew what I wanted to do, or what the tale wanted me to do, but was not prepared properly to deal with it as it needed to be dealt with.  Worse yet, though a necessary part of the process with this tale, was my desire to graft a section from a much older tale, Welcoming The Hell Machine, onto the major transformative/revelatory/utter madness sequence in the tale.  The aforementioned final third. Which caused another dead end.  Fast forward to late summer 2014 and my getting to know Dynatox Ministries, especially the Dunhams Manor Press imprint, and realizing if I could finish this damn thing, it might work well for this excellent small press publisher.  I had had a previous submission accepted (Dandelions), though they had cut it close and perhaps overlapped in the submission timeline. My inspiration to Take This Beast Down led me to dig in hardcore and knock it out. Amid a furious spell of late summer writing, I was able to find the way through the descriptive mayhem toward the grim finale.

An aside: I had written a blog about Dandelions in September and realized soon thereafter my timeline was way off with the origin of that tale.  I remembered a friend who passed away in 2005 or 2006 who had raved about the ending of that one, his favorite of my work. That would put Dandelions origin date perhaps five years earlier than expected, though it had gone through tweaking and shaping all throughout its path to publication.

Another aside: files. I have lots of stories in motion. Many of us do. I lose track in some cases of when a story originated.  Time flies, truly flies.  Some tales are swift to come, taking a week or so, usually a month or three through the whole process.  But others...they start, you know in many cases they might just sit and you'll steal from them for something else--hence, what I did with Welcoming The Hell Machine--while others, like The Alternative Translation/Vox Terrae, you know what's there is good, you just need to find the path or gain the skills to carry it to conclusion.

Anyway...

Here's a little blurb I whipped up to accompany this tale. 

"Rumor was Lorraine Blackthorne had written an alternative translation to notorious necromancer Alessandro Vernielli’s infamous 1841 tome of the black arts, Vox Terrae--The Voice of the Earth.  In a bleak house shadowed by a forest in northern California, occult researchers Kenneth and Ivan discover the translation in question moves beyond words and into pure experience.

Curiosity can lead to harrowing consequences.

Kenneth’s partner, Alicia, already knows this much…"

I've got a fascination with words and language and them being 'living things.' The title story to my collection, Autumn in the Abyss, touches on this.  I can see it cropping up in another tale or three in motion, especially one called...what the hell is it called? "Eouem Cumkpaa."  Yeah...er...that one.

Curious...

Here's the link for Vox Terrae. Limited to 50 copies.  Time is of the essence.  :-)

Lovely cover below. Including insects...