Beware the INFERNAL ORGANS!

Infernal Organs, a new horror/comedy novella from yours truly and Atomic Carnival Books, arrives on December 21st, 2023!

That’s right, two weeks from today, on the solstice, I’ll be releasing a new, digital-exclusive book. Because the longest, darkest, coldest night of the year deserves something short, bright, and hot. By which I obviously mean all the unnaturally-pink internal organs crawling and steaming against the snow.

Or maybe I mean the actual e-book itself? Because what better way to spend the solstice than by cozying up in the glow of your devices and reading a brisk and brutal Frankenstein retelling about a stoner screw-up battling mad scientists and man-eating internal organs, capitalism, societal ableism, and her own past — and maybe, just maybe, reanimating herself along the way, too.

Delicious, you’re probably saying. How dost one procure a copy of this tome? you’re surely asking. And I’m so glad you are, because, believe it or not, I’m giving this e-book away! I am literally digitally handing it to you on a metaphorical silver platter. I’m also selling it, too, probably, but that’s another post, for people who aren’t as hip and smart and sexy as you. So let’s get back to the procuring …

Sign up for the Atomic Carnival Books mailing list (or their Substack) and get the e-book of Infernal Organs for free when it comes out!

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Infernal Organs is not so much the book of my heart as the book of my diseased lungs. But also probably my heart, and my soul, too, why not?

As some of you may know — and may, indeed, have read — I’ve been trying to write a transplant book for at least six years now. The first book — the transplant book — was pretty much a straightforward retelling of the entire transplant journey, probably closer to a memoir than fiction. Though we didn’t necessarily see it at the time, the writing of it was a catharsis for my wife and I, helping us to talk through some things we’d buried in the shadows of the experience. A lot of agents expressed interest in the finished manuscript, but, ultimately, it never went anywhere. The most popular response was that people couldn’t “connect” with the characters, didn’t understand the damaging effects of illness and isolation.

Then COVID happened and suddenly everybody could connect, but nobody wanted to. There was enough illness and isolation and slowly going insane from cabin fever that no one wanted to read a book about that. Many still don’t. (Which, OK, I get? But, also, saying “no stories about illness” is kind of fucked up, and, yeah, ableist. You’re telling the disabled and chronically ill that their lives are upsetting to you. That their lived experiences, the unique view they can bring to a story, aren’t trendy.)

Anyway, because I was kind of myopically focused on getting traditionally published, I changed tactics and started rewriting the book, making it more “accessible.” I put that in quotes because I’m not sure how successful I really was. The transplant book was reimagined as a near-future sci-fi tale about identity and expectation, which made it easier to say what I wanted to say without getting bogged down in constantly-changing politics and medical specifics. It also helped me shift focus: the trauma of the surgery wasn’t the big story anymore, both in the book and my own life, but rather everything after.

As I was writing that book, though, I also wrote a few stories and essays that dealt with the same topic and I kind of lost interest halfway through. So, I pivoted once again. This time I was going to write a story about COVID specifically, and the isolation and exclusion felt by the disabled and immunocompromised. A story about anger and dehumanization and all the various failings of our current hypercapitalist society.

But that, up there, is a bummer of a story. And pretentious as gilded shit. You don’t want to read it and I don’t want to write it. So, instead, Infernal Organs. Eliza Duran, bisexual disaster, transplant recipient, and cannabis delivery person, is struggling with the above, yes, but also trying to survive an island overrun with mad scientists and man-eating organs. A story full of slapstick, pop culture references, and a lot of rich assholes getting graphically murdered.

This is, probably, the most me book I’ve written in a very long time. I really let myself go with this one, followed the maxim of first choice, best choice. The writing went quickly, and it felt a lot like the way I wrote the first Exponential Apocalypse, without second-guessing every word choice, without worrying in advance about how it would be received, how I was going to pitch the book to what agent and when. I think the end result is, ironically — or maybe obviously, I don’t know — a tighter, better-crafted, more engaging, and far more anarchic story. I really dig it, and I think you will, too.

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So, why am I and Atomic Carnival Books (which is, full disclosure, also me) giving Infernal Organs away for free? Because I remain my best and only source of free labor. And also because I’m lazy. This seemed like the best way to kill two birds with one stone: promote my book and also shore up ACB’s mailing list. I’ll get into it more on the ACB blog / newsletter tomorrow, but, with social media collapsing and scattering, the future for independent publishing is the past: email. Maybe I’m wildly wrong, but getting a soul-searched splatterpunk novella for the price of an occasional update in your inbox feels like a good deal to me.

So, to reiterate:

Infernal Organs, a new horror/comedy novella from yours truly, arrives on Dec. 21st, 2023! Blood, guts, and scathing social commentary delivered via the literary lovechild of Re-Animator and Gremlins. Sign up for the Atomic Carnival Books mailing list (or their Substack), help ACB avoiding disappearing into the detritus of the internet, and get the e-book for free when it comes out!