Edgar Allan Poe Gets Punked
A clockwork raven. Two sets of irresistible teeth. A house
brought to life by nanobots. A heart that won't stop beating. All this and much more in the Writerpunk Press version of the beloved suspense stories by Edgar Allan Poe. We’ve pulled out all the stops this time around to bring you the very best punked versions of classic Poe tales, complete with shiny gears and tiny bots! In addition to the more familiar Cyberpunk and Steampunk, we’ve added Bio, Deco, and Dieselpunk genres to the mix. The resulting volume is a dynamic take on horror of which the Master of Macabre himself would be proud. Profits
are to be donated to PAWS Lynnwood, an animal shelter and wildlife rescue located in the Pacific Northwest.
An Excerpt
Red Sky at Morning
~ Jeffrey Cook
A steampunk story inspired by The Masque of the Red Death
Four months passed without a sign of trouble. The noblemen and women, hidden behind their masks, gloves, and fancy clothes, danced, and as the ship moved, and the sun with it, the lights danced with them red in the earliest or latest parts of the day, depending on the ship's facing, and then each of the other shades of the stained glass, sometimes only blue, or only green, or one of the others when the sun hit just so, and sometimes the lights danced and mixed amidst the revelers, moving as if in time to the music.
The call went up one morning, "Red sky by morning." The crew begged the Prince to go below decks, to send the dancers and musicians and all of the crowd to quarters, that they might take down the glass, extend the sails, and try to run as far and as fast as the engines might take them. The Prince would hear none of it, chastising the frightened sailors, insisting that he trusted in their skill, and the sheer size of his airship, and the good fortune they'd enjoyed so far. Instead, as he'd done before when the news seemed worst, the Prince tried to dispel it with the greatest of his parties yet. The entertainers were all called at once, that no part of the deck would be without spectacle, and he called all of his friends to come and enjoy the day. He had the cooks and servers prepare a feast, holding nothing back.
Wine flowed freely, and the Prince looked upon all he had wrought, and was pleased. A shift in the wind moved the ship about, and the blues and whites of the reflections abruptly shifted. The sun struck the uneven red pane, disappearing where the streaks of coal dust marked it, and uneven shadows played amidst the dozen shades of red that danced over the revelers as midday neared.
A singular figure that none could recall joined the dance. The figure was slender, wearing trousers, polished shoes, and a shirt of black. The jacket and top hat, however, were of the richest red crushed velvet, soft to the touch. The mask was the simplest of all the revelers, plain white porcelain, but wherever the figure moved, the light through the red window always caught it, dancing red lights shifting across the reflective surface.
About the Authors
We are a small, somewhat anarchic writers’ collective–a community of authors illustrators, bloggers, poets, artists, graphic designers, and readers from all walks of life who are fans of cyberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, and associated genres. Sound and Fury: Shakespeare Goes Punk, our first anthology of stories based on the Bard's work, was published in March 2015. The second anthology, Once More Unto The Breach: Shakespeare Goes Punk 2, was released in December 2015. We have taken the plays that audiences have enjoyed for hundreds of years and reinvented them as cyberpunk, dieselpunk, Teslapunk, and steampunk tales. Featuring comedies and tragedies as well as a wide variety of punk genres, thesecollections have something for everyone. The anthologies have even been added to high school and college curriculums. Our third collection, Merely This and Nothing More: Poe Goes Punk, will be published on May 31st. In this anthology, we have punked classic tales penned by the Master of the Macabre. In addition to the more familiar cyberpunk and steampunk, we've added bio, deco and diselpunk genres to the mix. As with all our works, a spirit of subversive fun is always encouraged.
LINKS
WEBSITE: http://www.punkwriters.com
TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/punkwriters
ANTHOLOGIES:
Sound & Fury: Shakespeare Goes Punk
Once More Unto the Breach: Shakespeare Goes Punk 2
Merely This & Nothing More drops May 31st
You will find links on this blog's "Book Links" page
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