Archived News from the Poison Pie Publishing House.

News Updates From 2014:

 

December 27, 2014
End of the Year Free Story!
The Poison Pie Publishing House is proud to announce the unexpected release of an illustrated short story by Joseph Thomas Keffer, The Story of Poison Pie Jr.. This is Joseph Keffer's first work with the Poison Pie Publishing House since the critically acclaimed work of non-fiction, Facts About Robots.

 

December 15, 2014
Numismatists of the Great Wheel
The Poison Pie Publishing House is proud to announce the release of the third and final module, Numismatists of the Great Wheel, in the Rare Elements trilogy. In this fantasy role-playing module, the players must travel across the planes of existence in order to acquire a set of coins, each corresponding to a particular alignment (LG, LN, LE, NG, N, NE, CG, CN, CE). It is fitting that the campaign is set in the Planescape cosmology, where each plane corresponds to an alignment. Thus the party must brave the hostile environs of the Abyss to obtain the Chaotic Evil coin, overcome adversity while adhering to strict moral precepts in Mount Celestia to obtain the Lawful Good coin, and similarly for the other alignments. The module is unofficially associated with the set of alignment coins minted at the Rare Elements Foundry, from whom the coins are still available for purchase. For those who don't play, the module still may be of interest if for nothing more than a dozen or so entertaining sketches of non-player characters in Appendix II. The module, as well as the two earlier entries in the trilogy, The Seven Wondrously Replicating Elemental Coins and The Shadow Mephit's Coin, are freely available in electronic format via anonymous download here.

 

December 10, 2014
Literary Essays Salvaged from the Sinking of the Scriptorium
As a writer, David Keffer will eagerly admit that he has been influenced by the works of giants of world literature. Significant influences include Kobo Abé, Donald Barthelme, Italo Calvino, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Primo Levi, Philip Levine, Luo Guanzhong, Shi Nai'an and many others. Beyond just reading the works of these writers, Keffer also performed a variety of different kinds of critical studies. For two of these authors, the Japanese existentialist and absurdist, Kobo Abé, and the Italian chemist and Holocaust survivor, Primo Levi, Keffer wrote lengthy critical essays that served as introductions to their works. These essays were published in the Scriptorium of The Modern Word website, an online resource for post-modern fiction. There they remained for well over a decade. In December, 2014, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House was alerted to the demise of the The Modern Word website. Consequently, the Poison Pie Publishing House is now hosting the essays without modification.

Kobo Abé: The Clinical Eye of the Physician
A critical analysis of the fiction of Kobo Abé translated into English, originally published in November, 2000, is now hosted here. This essay investigates eight novels and uniquely evaluates the writing of Kobo Abé through the criteria for literature proposed by Italo Calvino in Six Memos for the Next Millenium. For those interested, we can recommend two novels published by the Poison Pie Publishing House in which one may see the influence of Abé. In The Sutra of Reverse Possession (2012), one finds an examination in the form of a narrative for discovering successful roles in domestic life, which has at least some peripheral relationship with The Face of Another by Abé. In an entirely different vein, the post-existential science fiction novel, june and jitter (the bugs) (1993), is described as the bastard child produced from the unholy union of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and an unrelenting dose of the clinical absurdism of Kobo Abé.

Primo Levi: Mapping Post Modern Fiction Onto the Periodic Table
A critical analysis of the fiction of Primo Levi translated into English, written with Allan B. Ruch and originally published in December, 2001, is now hosted here. This essay introduces Levi to new readers and focuses on six volumes of fictional work with post-modern relevance. The essay does not analyze Levi's important contributions to documenting the Holocaust, such as the nonfiction of Survival in Auschwitz or the novel If Not Now, When?. There is no particular novel published by the Poison Pie Publishing House in which the influence of Levi is keenly apparent. Instead, Levi has more generally informed the sensibilities of the author.

 

November 5, 2014
The Implacable Absence is Published!
The Poison Pie Publishing House is proud to announce the publication of The Implacable Absence, a non-idiomatic improvisational duet by Henry E. Gorton and David J. Keffer. The novel is a post-existential fantasy investigating the juxtaposition of individual destinies across separate timelines. More information on the nature of the creative process employed to generate this work is available. The book can be purchased in paperback or a variety of electronic formats in the shop.

 

November 4, 2014
A Prayer Book for the Damned
The unknown source of the inexplicable impulse to compose a set of prayers has now fled the Poison Pie Publishing House. Thirty-three prayers were written, starting with "A Prayer for the Suffering" on August 21, 2014 and ending with "A Prayer for Quitters" on October 31, 2014. The staff have selected a subset of the prayers to appear in a collection titled, "A Prayer Book for the Damned", which will be published without unnecessary delay. The original versions of the prayers will remain freely available for viewing on the Poison Pie Publishing House site. More information is available here.

 

October 31, 2014
The Implacable Absence Proofs are in Hand
The Proofs for the forthcoming novel from the Poison Pie Publishing House are now in hand. The Implacable Absence is a non-idiomatic improvisational duet by Henry E. Gorton (he of the famously literary high school vocabulary homework assignments) and David J. Keffer (he of various literary misadventures, all of which end in fortuitous commercial failure). The novel is a post-existential fantasy investigating the juxtaposition of individual destinies across separate timelines. More information on the particular creative process employed to generate this work is here.

 

October 5, 2014
Four Heroic Finger Puppets!
The Poison Pie Publishing House presents a new broadside featuring four heroes from the forthcoming novel Poison Pie vs the Implacable Absence by Henry Gorton & David Keffer. In this broadside each finger puppet is designed by a different member of the staff of the PPPH. We imagine that these puppets and others presented in the broadside page of the gallery are being created for a follow-up illustrated book to the The Faerienomicon. There are early character histories and role-playing statistics for these characters here.

 

October 1, 2014
A Prayer Book for the Damned
Quite unexpectedly, A Prayer Book for the Damned seems to miraculously be filling with poems, almost of its own accord. October begins with a A Prayer for Dementia.

 

September 21, 2014
Numismatist Update & A Prayer Book for the Damned
New content has been added to the sneak peak of the forthcoming fantasy role-playing module Numismatists of the Great Wheel, an adventure set in the Planescape universe, which allows a party to acquire the ten alignment coins minted by the Rare Elements team. The new content includes descriptions of the delves associated with the first two coins and the first several NPC histories. The module in its current state can be freely and anonymously downloaded here.

There is also a new poem posted on the site. Titled, A Prayer Book for the Damned, it is the latest entry in a series of poems for a volume of the same name, requested by the poet's sister, Marie Poonawala. A Prayer Book for the Damned and other poems by David Keffer can be freely accessed here.

 

September 8, 2014
The Shadow Mephit's Coin
The Poison Pie Publishing House announces the publication of a second fantasy role-playing module, The Seven Wondrously Replicating Elemental Coins: The Shadow Mephit's Coin created by David J. Keffer. This module presents a continuation of the first module, The Seven Wondrously Replicating Elemental Coins, which was motivated by the production of seven elemental coins by the Rare Elements team at Osborne Coinage. The first module provides an adventure in the form of seven dungeon delves through which the party can acquire the coins. The The Shadow Mephit's Coin provides an adventure in which the party pursues an eighth elemental coin, the shadow coin, minted by the Rare Elements team at a later date. The module can be freely and anonymously downloaded here. If the module and/or the coins pictured therein look interesting to you, a set of coins can be purchased at the Rare Elements site. There is a Rare Elements Coin Facebook page as well. (Disclaimer: The Poison Pie Publishing House has no official affiliation with Osborne Coinage.)

 

September 1, 2014
Free Press
A new entry in the main menu, free press, has been added. This link goes directly to the eclectic catalog of electronically published products freely available from the Poison Pie Publishing House.

 

August 21, 2014
A Prayer for the Suffering
The Poison Pie Publishing House presents a new poem, A Prayer for the Suffering, which can be freely accessed here.

 

August 8, 2014
Four Robotic Finger Puppets!
From the distant future, at a time when all incandescent bulbs have been replaced by compact fluorescent bulbs (but before compact fluorescent bulbs have been replaced by LEDs), come four robotic finger puppets. In this broadside, presented by the Poison Pie Publishing House, each finger puppet is designed by a different member of the staff of the PPPH. We imagine that these puppets and others presented in the broadside page of the gallery are being created for a follow-up illustrated book to the The Faerienomicon.

 

July 31, 2014
July Ends with a Robot
The concept of a robotic mushroom was first introduced by the Poison Pie Publishing House in a creature known as Roboshroom, who appeared in the illustrated books, Tales of the Mushroom People and Tales of the Mushroom People II: Call of Cthulhushroom. The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House are revisiting the concept of felt finger puppet representations of robots. One particularly intransigent member of the staff proved either unable or unwilling to construct an entirely new synthetic creature and instead released Roboshroom 2.0, shown in the accompanying image. If past broadsides prove a reliable predictor we can eventually expect a set of diverse robots to emerge.

 

July 23, 2014
The Sutra of the One Who Came Before
The Sutra of the One Who Came Before can now be freely accessed in text form, as a graphical contemplation, narrated by the author and via youtube.

 

July 20, 2014
Four Elemental Finger Puppets!
The Poison Pie Publishing House presents a broadside featuring four elemental finger puppets. All puppets are designed by Joseph Keffer, a co-author of such illustrated books as The Faerienomicon. Other versions of the poster are shown in the broadside page of the gallery.

 

July 13, 2014
Four Angelic Finger Puppets!
The Poison Pie Publishing House presents a broadside featuring four angelic finger puppets. Each puppet is designed by one member (father, mother, sister, brother) of the Keffer family, responsible for such illustrated books as The Faerienomicon. Other versions of the poster are shown in the broadside page of the gallery.

 

July 9, 2014
The Sutra of the One Who Came Before
Today we provide a graphical contemplation on the The Sutra of the One Who Came Before.

 

July 8, 2014
The Sutra of the One Who Came Before
A heavenly host descended into the midst of the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House. They communicated the following message, The Sutra of the One Who Came Before, prior to returning to their sky-borne realm.

When the Monk of Many Faces neared the end of a long and austere life, she called a novice, noted for her kindness and attentiveness, to her side and spoke thus: Amita, I have something I should like to share regarding the One Who Came Before.

Through all kingdoms the passage of time leaves traces. The animals bark and whinny at the echoes of its footfalls; opportunists gather at the prints, pressed deep in the soft earth, hoping to discover a dislodged worm or grub. The grasses whisper secrets to the evening breeze and the trees sough in contentment. The mushrooms and molds continue to practice their patient and ancient arts of decomposition, but they too are aware, if not disturbed, by the visitor that has left signs of its passing. The pervasive single-celled organisms sputter and whirl in tiny spirals and circles, directed it is said by nothing less miraculous than senses compelled entirely by the interaction between proteins and chemicals. All others observe the departure of this visitor in a manner commensurate with their own natures.

Unto all these creatures, I ask the following. Let me not follow the path of the One Who Came Before, though it may be symmetric in stride and perfect in pace. Rather, let me trod my own path, though it takes me down unpaved roads, troubled with beasts and bandits. Let me succumb to error and poor judgment, attributable to none but myself and the limits of my reason.

Let my ears turn away from the music of the masses, for that well-worn melody, no matter how lovely, has been sufficiently adored. Let me seek out songs unheard by other ears. Let me listen and absorb sounds that change me in ways unique to that sequence of chords. Let my actions reflect these voices resonating within me, though no one understands the source or the reason for my discontent.

Let my eyes seek not the well-read books, championed by school teachers, cherished by many, for these books have already performed their work. Let these books rest. Rather, let my eyes discover the unopened tome, forgotten or rejected, deemed unsuitable for any market. Let me internalize this voice, though it possesses no greater insight into the universal mysteries than does my own.

Let not my nose be pleased by the aroma of roses or the comforting smell of freshly baked bread. Rather, let me find repose in the odor of wet earth that circles the base of trees after an autumn rain. Let each subsequent exposure to this scent fill me with the memory of the moment when I lay alone, shivering and vulnerable, on the soil with no thought for the future.

Let my tongue not partake in the feast that joins men in shared communion. Let me not even grovel among dogs for scraps from that table. Rather, let me starve. Let my tongue taste only the iron in my blood as I stumble and bite my lip. Let me wander directionless, guided by the taste of the salt of the tears that obscure my vision.

Let my fingers touch nothing; let no one touch my flesh--no handshake, no embrace, no arm draped across the shoulder in solace. Rather, let me stroke the hair only of those children whom no one else will soothe. Let my fingers trace the outline of their dirty jaws as they cry against wrongs for which there is no champion to right. Let me record in my fingertips the tempo of their pulse as they vanish. Let me too find myself alone on my deathbed, untouched, for, in my ignorance, I have not discovered a preferable path.

Let my volition disintegrate and my mind rejoice in oblivion, for I have lived on this Earth and traveled all the other Earths around it, and have found them each to be parceled into a smaller part joy and a greater part misery, with the misery arising from cruel intent and with the joy, precious though it is, arising only from chance.

Let the One Who Came Before come again, for in my stubbornness I have learned nothing all the days of my life. Let another observe its lesson; perhaps they will better make sense of the message that eluded me.

 

July 3, 2014
A Conclave in the Caves
We present an image of some recently crafted finger puppets meeting in a rock formation that we encountered while hiking the Yahoo Falls Trail on the Kentucky side of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. This area held an abundance of unusual features, suggesting a tumultuous past only hinted at in the geological records.

 

July 1, 2014
More Demonic Finger Puppets!
For those of you who expected a poster featuring four angels, based on the pattern of the previous few posts, consider yourself no less surprised than we were that a second poster of four demons appeared next. Mr. H.E. Gorton made his debut in East Tennessee, where he, in an impromptu session, designed four finger puppets, which within the next several days were rendered in felt by the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House. Another version of the poster is shown in the broadside page of the gallery. Whether these puppets will make literary appearances in a forthcoming illustrated book, along the lines of the The Faerienomicon, remains uncertain at the current time.

 

June 23, 2014
Behold the Angelic Herald!
With the passing of the the summer solstice, an angelic herald has appeared, foretelling the arrival of a heavenly host, who shall quell the demonic uprising that has plagued the Poison Pie Publishing House since early June. Will the sequel to the The Faerienomicon feature a battle between angels and demons the likes of which has not been seen since the age of Genesis? Unlikely. The Poison Pie Publishing House rarely engages in activities so lacking in subtlety. However, a more nuanced description of a subsequent book is not yet forthcoming.

 

June 10, 2014
Finger Puppets!
Today we feature a broadside with puppets of four demons of the ancient world. Other versions of the poster are shown in the broadside page of the gallery. Perhaps these puppets will make literary appearances in a forthcoming illustrated book, along the lines of The Faerienomicon created by the Keffer family of East Tennessee and published by the Poison Pie Publishing House in the spring of 2014.

 

June 1, 2014
June begins with a Demon
The nature of the illustrated book to follow The Faerienomicon remains unknown. However, a demon queen has appeared on this the first day of June. The diabolical implications of this portent are not easily disregarded. One can only hope that in shadows where great darkness gathers, there a great light may shine of equal magnitude, if opposite design.

 

May 30, 2014
Demons!
With The Faerienomicon published in the spring of 2014, the Keffer family of East Tennessee have begun to tentatively explore the possible nature of the next collaborative project. As with the previous four books, the process begins with puppet making, which itself begins with the brainstorming of puppet designs. Earlier this week more than two dozen puppet designs were generated. Today we feature designs for four demons of the ancient world. In this poster, each member of the family--father, mother, sister, brother--have contributed a design. Can you guess to whom each design belongs? Other examples showing the transformation from design to puppet are posted in the broadside page of the gallery.

 

May 27, 2014
A Narrated Version of the The Faerienomicon is Available
A narrated version of The Faerienomicon, an illustrated Encyclopedia of Faerie for children and adventurous adults, is now available on YouTube. It clocks in at just over one hour. The paperback version of the book is available in the shop.

 

May 11, 2014
Poetry Recordings
Audio recordings of the author reading two poems, I Feel that Echo and Bicycling in Heavy Morning Fog are now available from the Poison Pie Publishing House.

 

May 10, 2014
Smashwords Sale
All ebooks* from the Poison Pie Publishing House available on Smashwords are on sale for $0.99 for an undetermined time.

*Excluding Symptoms of the Lunatic, which is not a good starting point, but is, as the disclaimers make clear, made available exclusively for die-hard readers of the Poison Pie Publishing House.

 

April 30, 2014
An International Journal of Exploratory Meta-Living
The inaugural issue of An International Journal of Exploratory Meta-Living has been published. It features a lengthy interview with the Editor-In-Chief of the Poison Pie Publishing House. An electronic version of the issue can be anonymously downloaded free-of-charge here.

 

April 23, 2014
Fantasy Role-Playing Alignment-based Coins
The first fantasy role-playing module, The Seven Wondrously Replicating Elemental Coins published by the Poison Pie Publishing House was created in response to a set of gorgeous fantasy role-playing coins minted by Osborne Coinage and funded in December, 2013 through Kickstarter.

A second set of coins, featuring mythical creatures of various alignments, is now available for support through a new Kickstarter campaign running through May 25, 2014. Interested parties should check it out. Who know? Perhaps a follow-up module is in order.

(Disclaimer: The Poison Pie Publishing House has no official affiliation with Osborne Coinage.)

 

April 15, 2014
The Faerienomicon is Published
The Faerienomicon, an illustrated Encyclopedia of Faerie for children and adventurous adults, is published. The paperback version of the book is now available in the shop. The free electronic version of the book is now available at the Poison Pie Publishing House.

 

April 2, 2014
A Literature of Non-Idiomatic Improvisation: A Condensed Statement

With the publication of The Faerienomicon by the Poison Pie Publishing House and the corresponding claim that the writing within the book was generated via a non-idiomatic, improvisational process, we at the Poison Pie Publishing House have been virtually inundated with virtual requests for clarification of the term. While a lengthy article on the subject written in a scholarly style is available, most folks want a short and to-the-point description.

Non-idiomatic, improvisational writing is a creative process by which a writer generates passages outside existing genres of literature without the aid of either a previously written draft or extensive post-editing.

Non-idiomatic, improvisation originated in music and the musical analogy remains useful in understanding its application to literature. Music is generated via both improvisation and composition, two forms that typically have readily identifiable differences and relative strengths and weaknesses. So too can writing be generated via improvisation and more traditional composition. The same characteristics, both thematic and stylistic, that distinguish improvised music from composed music are apparent in the comparison of the analogous literatures. There exists a freedom and spontaneity in improvised writing, which attracts those with "an impatience for the gruesomely predictable" (D. Bailey). At the same time, improvised writing may be vulnerable to a lack of complexity, unless the writer engages in an intensive regimen of practice, which maintains the improvisational creative faculties at the ready. Such a model is again taken from the explicitly stated practice habits of non-idiomatic, improvisational musicians.

Some musicologists eschew the term, "non-idiomatic improvisation", since, once a non-generic style is created and invoked multiple times, it becomes a new idiom. The Poison Pie Publishing House embraces the term "non-idiomatic improvisation" as an ideal toward which one strives, an endless process in which each subsequent creative act is disconnected from the previous. An appealing way to think of non-idiomatic improvisation is as a Zen riddle. Once you create a non-idiomatic process, it no longer exists.

This condensed explanation is also available via free, anonymous download here (pdf file).

 

March 15, 2014
Commas, spliced commas, serial commas, and more commas
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House now has the proofs of the The Faerienomicon in hand. The book itself, its layout and graphic design, meets our expectations. The photographs and fingerpuppets have admirably kept up their side of the bargain. Of the 36 pieces of text, all are complete and read well. There are only two persistent issues.

First, due to the authors' obstinate insistence on a non-idiomatic improvisational writing technique, in which sections of the book were written in arbitrary order over the period of many months, the integration of the pieces read in sequence as a whole is, once or twice, troubling as one encounters odd words, words that the conscientious reader has every right to expect only once every blue moon, but here they appear back to back. The authors insist that such a situation is only a natural manifestation of the improbable nature of Faerie. As such, there seems little the editorial staff can do about it.

The second problem is an issue of commas. The authors tend toward lengthy, meandering sentences, designed (so they claim) to reflect the wandering sensation one experiences when in Faerie. The consequence of this style is an abundance of commas. We feel confident that there are several instances of commas where they do not belong and even some cases of missing commas. However, due to the convoluted messages being expressed in these sentences, it will likely take some time to fully address this issue.

It is a relatively minor issue for the majority who do not harbor an abhorrence for the gentle misuse of commas. For those readers, the Editor-In-Chief of the Poison Pie Publishing House made the executive decision to release the book in its current state, with the warning that within the next several weeks a comma-revised edition may replace this deluxe, original, limited-time-only, comma-spliced edition. This version is now available in the shop.

 

March 11, 2014
The Proofs Have Been Printed
Certain intrepid members of the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House ventured through extraplanar portals and spent several months abroad completing work on The Faerienomicon. Due to the differential in the rate of temporal evolution of the two planes, only slightly more than a week passed here on Earth before they returned with a completed manuscript, which has been promptly sent to the printers. Proofs have been printed. Due to this unanticipated sequence of events, the release of The Faerienomicon will likely occur earlier than original estimates, conceivably this spring. Oh, the wonders of Faerie!

 

March 1, 2014
The Faerienomicon
The Poison Pie Publishing House is proud to unveil the title and working cover art for the forthcoming illustrated story, The Faerienomicon, "An Account of Faerie: Its Substance and Curiosities, Its Architectures and Landscapes, Its Hitherto Unsubstantiated Histories, And the Habits of Living Of the Diverse Creatures Dwelling Therein". A page with sample artwork is available here. The Faerienomicon will be published in paperback and electronic formats sometime in 2014.

 

February 16, 2014
Faeries!
A new broadside, 4 faeries, has been posted in the broadside page of the gallery. These puppets were designed by Miss Ruth Keffer and will appear in her sequel to the The Mushroomnomicon, which will be published sometime in late 2014.

 

February 10, 2014
The Seven Wondrously Replicating Elemental Coins
The Poison Pie Publishing House proudly announces the publication of its first fantasy role-playing module, The Seven Wondrously Replicating Elemental Coins created by David J. Keffer. The module was motivated by the acquisition of a set of gorgeous fantasy role-playing coins minted by Osborne Coinage and funded in December, 2013 through Kickstarter. The module provides an adventure in the form of seven dungeon delves through which the party can acquire the coins. The module can be freely and anonymously downloaded here. If the module and/or the coins pictured therein look interesting to you, a set of coins can be purchased at the Rare Elements Coin Store. (Disclaimer: The Poison Pie Publishing House has no official affiliation with Osborne Coinage.)

 

January 27, 2014
Dragons!
With The Mushroomnomicon unleashed upon the world, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House turns their attention to the next installment of illustrated stories. While the name of this new endeavor has not yet been made public, certain broadsides have been released that hint at creatures that may reside within its covers. A new broadside, 4 dragons, has been posted in the broadside page of the gallery. Readers familiar with the The Mushroomnomicon will recognize only one of these dragons. Each dragon was designed by one of the four authors of The Mushroomnomicon. Can you make a one-to-one correspondence between dragons and father, mother, sister & brother?

 

January 5, 2014
A New Year's Message
Looking back, 2013 was another productive year for the Poison Pie Publishing House. We published seven novels in 2013, written between 1993 and 2013, including The Ruins of My Daughter's Cities: An Imaginary Travelogue. These novels helped us surpass our goal of publishing twelve novels in the first twelve months of our existence, September, 2012-August, 2013, (we actually published fourteen novels in this time period). We also published another illustrated book, The Mushroomnomicon, to critical acclaim. We also released our first published essay, A Literature of Non-Idiomatic Improvisation.

Looking forward there are at least five potential projects for the coming year, including a new novel of non-idiomatic improvisation, a new illustrated story and the the tinkering with of an archival novel, as well as two pending projects with new authors. 2014 should be an exciting time for the Poison Pie Publishing House. Details will be provided as arrangements coalesce.

Here at the Poison Pie Publishing House, we wish you all the best intentions for the upcoming new year.