The Palimpsest At Hook Wood (excerpt)
from Blood In The Yolk
Alongside this story, The Palimpsest At Hook Wood, are six other wildly original tales to unsettle and unnerve you from: EJ Trask, Author Michele Bardsley, A.P. Murphy, Will Boucher,
, and William Pauley IIIPreorder now: Blood in the Yolk. - (these stories are all so very good, you’d be crazy not to get this gem of a book)
Huge thanks to J. Curtis (Tiny Worlds) and Rob Beckstrom (Spare Press / Spareorgan) for getting these birds flyin’
Across history, the stories that endure are not only about battles between armies, but about the forces that drive all living things: hunger, loyalty, ambition, fear.
From The Iliad to The Popol Vuh, to the collapsing structures of our own time, survival is never just survival—it becomes belief, and destiny.
The Palimpsest at Hook Wood is not simply a record of a conflict.
It is a reflection of how survival demands sacrifice, how conviction reshapes the world, and how the will to endure can build empires as easily as it destroys them.
Here, there are no heroes, no villains—only an ancient pattern, unfolding once again.
The following excerpt is a found fragment from a lost civilization:
iii
The peepskins are unimportant for this record other than a convenient reference for epistemological study and kingdom taxonomies. And to note, whatever they call us is a grotesque wrongness. We are not that. As well, songbird and birdsong are misnomers, there is no singing involved in our duties. We are a work-minded kind with business to transact and labour to make. There is no light cheer for the basic course of a daypart. And if we do exalt and bring raucous joy to the canopy, it is for immutable victory and decisive power enacted by our beaks and bones. This we do, to champion futures and stake our eternal claim on this earth, undeterred and undisputed with bountiful foresight and rich systems of resources for all Gen to come.
iv
Indeed it may have always been so, but we cannot abide while squirrelkind spreads chaos and expands their territory with ill intent and quite obvious weak-minded ignorance. They are of a nature to act first and think later, if at all. Our ancestors may have found their unruly and reckless existence tolerable in their generations but the tipping point has tipped and we, in solidarity, have vowed to change the course forever and fight until we have nothing left to fight. And though we do not have to justify our decisions, for the sake of the record we will plainly state the facts and let their inherent incorrectness speak for itself:
The squirrels harvest and hoard with irresponsible abandon, wasting and ruining countless resources of nuts, seeds and berries. These are naturally shared assets but they are blind and greedy to this obvious consideration. Secondly, they build haphazard nests in prime locations, then abandon them for little to no reason at all, leaving behind squirrel-stunk debris and unusable materials. And lastly among the egregious primary assaults on the good nature of the forest, is, the increasingly aggressive and violent skirmishes with our families, sometimes destroying nests and murdering fledglings and unborn alike all over a few meager packets of tree bounty. There are many other objections, among them, their general presence, chattering their nonsensical squirrelspeak, and flinging their spasmodic bodies around, spreading infections and mange furballs, a blight on our blooming beauty.
End of excerpt
Preorder now: Blood in the Yolk.
Ouija Bird by EJ Trask
Palimpsest at Hook Wood by Jon T
The Tasteless Death of Lance Green by
A Feathering by A.P. Murphy
Outnumbed by William Pauley III
Corvus and Crater by Will Boucher
Ravens by Author Michele Bardsley
Waiting to pounce on a physical copy, Jon. I know I'm gonna read that thing to pieces!
Feels like a war is brewing