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| The original cover for "The Dread Harvester." |
My day job is kind of boring when you compare it to battlewitches and ancient gods, so let's talk about that, yeah?
So, I mentioned back in early February that the novella "Dread Harvester" was going to be coming out soon on Amazon, free-for-download. This has been a deeply profound labor of love, I've re-written and ripped apart this beast a dozen times now, and I'm genuinely as excited for you to read it as I am to be done with it.
Some history. The "Dread Harvester" novella is based on an older short-story called "The Dread Harvester," which was given away as a 'thank you' gift in the days when "The Bruja" was crowd-sourcing on Inkshares under the older title, "Seeking the Elephant." It had been distributed to people who'd pre-purchased "Seeking the Elephant" Microsoft Word format (.DOC,) and was roughly 7 pages long. It existed to create a backstory around Aubree Harvester, the woman who would become arch-nemesis to Maggi Lopez. A lot of that story failed as a narrative because so much time was spent wrapped up in how Aubree's life impacted Maggi's. Wouldn't a better question be, how did Maggi's life impact Aubree's?
There was one other problem. Michael Molisani sucks at short story length fiction. Yeah, you heard me, I said it, and I believe it. The guy who waxes endlessly about whether or not a story is too long also can't a very short piece of fiction. The irony abounds, am I right?
I digress. "Dread Harvester" was born a few months ago. It's 65 pages long and is just now leaving the content editing phase. After that, it will go to copy editing, and before getting married to its own ISBN number, and released on Amazon. "Dread Harvester" will retail for $0.00. Here are some things you can look forward to in this new novella:
1) Brand new cover, artwork supplied by Juan Carlos Mamani. He's a Bolivian painter who does a lot of really interesting, really creepy horror-adjacent work. I'm thrilled to be partnering with on this project.
2) You'll get to know more about the Collapse. What was it like? How did it progress in certain areas? How did people survive it, and what did the end of the Veil mean?
3) You will absolutely learn more about Aubree Harvester, as well as her ownership of San Francisco at the end of "The Bruja." A lot of questions you may have had will be answered.
Last -- but not least -- I am thrilled with the dark twist that "Dread Harvester" will leave you with. I can't give it away here, but I am in love with the idea that all actions of have consequences. Sometimes the mistakes we make in life damn us beyond that grave. Sometimes those mistakes are very small, and we never realize their scope until its well past too late.
