New Fiction: NIGHTJAR
A Gramsci quote is making the rounds as of late:
"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters."
Half of it is true. A new world defined by anthropogenic climate change and mass extinction, where the odds are ever against the human experiment, is indeed being invoked.
But our tormentors aren't monsters. They're machines. Incapable of thought, feeling, imagination the most powerful people in the world are just the cogs and wheels of an utterly inhuman system. One giant bulldozer, directed by the pluses and minuses of profit. It's all so dire, and so dull.
Real monsters are indomitable. They are the unknowable, the bad numinous as China Miéville writes in his marvelous Theses on Monsters. They are not our self-destructing civilization but what prowls outside its gates: Lucifer against God's Kingdom, Grendel against Hrothgar's hall, King Kong against New York, Frankenstein's creature against its creator. Theirs is a unique kind of beauty: disquieting, dangerous, and so alluring. Monsters are mystery and darkness. They are dreams – and they are more than dreams.
We long for monsters.
In this spirit, my friends and fellow ghouls, I am finally pleased to announce my fiction debut, Nightjar. It will be published by Lanternfish Press this November.
Nightjar is a novella that blends climate breakdown with cosmic horror. It is my way of screaming at the flames of the climate crisis, and making the fire my own. I've been working on this book for quite some time now. I'm very impatient to share it with you.
You can read more about Nightjar at my publisher's site:
Feliza Casano
I'll be sharing more details soon. Until then, pleasant dreams.