I have more than 28 in-process projects on the back burner and I need to move these along.
So, I figured I'd set up a serialization tier for novels of varying lengths.
As with all tiers, you can try it for awhile and see if it's for you, and then switch back to the Night Crawlers tier if you find you prefer only the short story.
What Undead Poet's Society offers first up is a narrative novel in verse I've been working on.
The Mermaid Cage is about a town in New England on the coast and what happens when someone finds a mermaid. What could possibly go wrong? I know a novel-in-verse may give you pause but you'll love this if you like supernatural stories of New England, the sea, and of course, the horror side of things.
Not a member yet of Patreon? Check out the offerings: Patreon.com/DouglasClegg
Here's a snippet from an early chapter of The Mermaid Cage:
Sister Bottoms Tells All
It was never just about a mermaid
And what those stupid boys did,
Sister Bottoms says,
It was about my father
Callum Bottoms,
Though Calumny was his nickname
When he was a boy,
For a good reason,
And he was one of four
Disturbing old men
Who built up
Mersey Point
And ruined the prices for
Lobstering folk
And the Portuguese families
And tried to keep the whole place
A big white country club
No Jews, either,
But it was the times
Even though we all knew it was nasty,
And he was nasty,
And I hated him but I was stuck with him
(Don’t argue with me,
I was stuck,
These legs
What was I going to do?
Wheel my way to freedom?
How would I pay for it?
I was stuck, damn you,
In the quicksand
Of this ridiculous
House by the sea,
Well, you can take your opinions
Of my life
And put it where
The sun don’t shine)
My father and his business buddies
Brought all them
Rich New Yorkers up here
We were just a couple hours north of the city
Twenty minutes from the train
And eventually he got the train to lay tracks right to us,
But then it caught up with him
All this wheeling and dealing
Not like that, not like the law,
But a higher law,
It was the justice of whatever is out there,
Once upon a time.
When lightning hits your house
You must have done something
To draw that blazing streak
To your rooftop
Maybe you offended the Almighty
Or Jupiter
Or Buddha
Or hell, even Shiva
Or Quetzalcoatl
(She mispronounces this and other words
Because she only ever saw them
In books
And never heard them spoken out loud so it’s Kwet-zel-coat-el)
Or some such cosmic clockmaker
Of the world
Who gets easily offended,
And if you’re stupid enough
To be standing outside
Telling everyone how beautiful
Lightning is
And all of creation
And something about
The science of humidity
And heat
And storms
And clouds
That you remember
From long ago science class
Mingled with your
Religious upbringing
Which is both on your tongue
And down your gullet,
Then you will
Likely be struck
By that bolt from the heavens
Just as if Jove
Himself were aiming
For your noggin.
This is what Sister Bottoms
Says as she talks about
What happened in the village
Way back when,,,
Copyright 2020 Douglas Clegg