The Book of Horrible Stories

Here it is!

The Book of Horrible Stories is available in two formats, the first being the little handmade hardcover that you see above (and that you might have seen being made in the previous blog post). It costs $12 total (ten bucks for the book, two for shipping), and you can purchase it by clicking that PayPal link just to the right there.

Here's a shot of the interior (forgive me, I'm a lousy photographer):

From the "About This Book" section: "The cover is made of handmade lokta paper wrapped around chipboard [along with strips of recycled scrapbooking paper and handmade mulberry bark paper to cover the binding—those I added later]. The interior pages are sheets of 100% recycled Mohawk Color Copy paper sewn together with linen thread. It's all held together with Elmer's Glue-All—good enough for first-grade crafts projects and good enough for me." And if that wasn't enough to sway you toward buying it, doesn't Wes's art look fantastic? I'm incredibly pleased that we were able to print it out in a way that preserved the detail he put into it. If you'd like to see more of the illustrations he did for this book, you can catch them on his blog.

Of course, I did mention that this book was available in two formats. Yup, I'm experimenting with e-publishing this time around! I'm not against e-books; I just don't think that reading one provides the same experience that reading a tangible book does. But e-books are a good solution for the space-conscious or the merry traveler, and assuming that you can afford the initial investment of a computer or reader (which is an issue I do have with them, but that's for another post), they're quite wallet-friendly. So with that in mind, for a mere $0.99, you can get The Book of Horrible Stories on your Kindle device, and again, you can do that by clicking a link you'll find to the right of this post. Or just by clicking here.

I suppose someone reading this post might wonder what exactly the book is about. Well, to put it succinctly, it's a short collection of dark fairy tales for modern times. Or, if you're looking for something more persuasive, here's what I wrote on a sign that I made to bring to readings:

BECAUSE FAIRY TALES WITHOUT

DEATH, CORPSES, OR HUMAN ORGANS
ARE LIKE CIRCUS SHOWS WITHOUT CLOWNS.

AND I KNOW HOW MUCH PEOPLE LOVE CLOWNS.

(DON'T WORRY. THERE ARE NO CLOWNS IN THIS BOOK.)

If that doesn't say "buy my book," I don't know what does!

But to be serious about this, if you do buy this book in either format, thank you. I can write for myself all I want, but without some kind of audience, I know that the act of writing will start to feel hollow. Thank you for providing substance and reason for this thing I love to do.