Don't sleep with your eyes open. Don't sleep with your eyes closed. Sleep and wake simultaneously. Enter realities more real than the one you came from. Realities only a shepherd should access. Be prepared, if you walk among the Dolls and Sleepers, that you will never read the same book twice, or pass an identical reflection, even if you should happen to pass the same mirror. For once you are Awakened, you can’t pretend to forget, even with the lights off.
Excerpt:
"Their cloud of babble couldn’t veil the multiple worlds from Michael's eyes.
But the simple, single, shallow world they clung to ground on, crushing visions and dreams of what else was real around them.
Michael felt the weight of their ignorance, choked on their lies, lived in the flesh of the terror[n1] buried in their bones and in the depths of their inherited memories.
He felt it all, and yet, that weight passed through him. He’d awakened, and could never return to the sweet peace of ignorance.
Just like he never belonged to the realities beyond the one the Awakened like him had constructed and worked so diligently to maintain.
The Dolls, they danced and fought and distracted themselves with the illusion that they were all invited to the party. They were important, in the way cheap tools and flawed materials were crucial in making a house that might stand just long enough to be sold. They were a part of the action, made the little things happen as the Awakened programmed them to do to keep the world grinding on.
And at the periphery of the illusion of life the Dolls sustained, Sleepers still stumbled from one task to another, covering up reality’s holes with their meaningless existences, staring at the screens[n2] surrounding them with eyes reflecting electronic light, too dull to experience real desires or glimpse realities lurking beyond curtains of light and lies. Immune to the comforting caress of electronic tendrils so eager to bless them.
The rest, the ones who crumbled at an Awakened’s touch or under the onslaught of pain, suffering, death and loss, became the mortar holding meaning in place, the fuel for the grand show of history.
And then, there was the Monster of Pain, and the Angel of Mercy, to contend with..."
Praise for Gerard Houarner:
“Houarner is a smart, intelligent talent who has a gift for writ- ing with serene beauty about the most atrocious things.”
—Ed Bryant, Locus
Gerard Houarner is a master storyteller, able to guide the read- er beyond the boundaries of the ordinary and into a world textured with what lurks beneath -- the shadows, the raw and terrible beauty, the variety of human and otherworldly frailty.
—Douglas Clegg
“...real writing ability...is what separates the wheat from the chaff. It is what will enable Gerard Houarner to write horror, soft horror or even a goddam romance novel and make people read it and believe it and follow it to the end.”
—Bentley Little,
author of The Ignored, The Mailman, Evil Deeds, and the Bram Stoker award winning author of The Revelation
Genre: Horror
Excerpt:
"Their cloud of babble couldn’t veil the multiple worlds from Michael's eyes.
But the simple, single, shallow world they clung to ground on, crushing visions and dreams of what else was real around them.
Michael felt the weight of their ignorance, choked on their lies, lived in the flesh of the terror[n1] buried in their bones and in the depths of their inherited memories.
He felt it all, and yet, that weight passed through him. He’d awakened, and could never return to the sweet peace of ignorance.
Just like he never belonged to the realities beyond the one the Awakened like him had constructed and worked so diligently to maintain.
The Dolls, they danced and fought and distracted themselves with the illusion that they were all invited to the party. They were important, in the way cheap tools and flawed materials were crucial in making a house that might stand just long enough to be sold. They were a part of the action, made the little things happen as the Awakened programmed them to do to keep the world grinding on.
And at the periphery of the illusion of life the Dolls sustained, Sleepers still stumbled from one task to another, covering up reality’s holes with their meaningless existences, staring at the screens[n2] surrounding them with eyes reflecting electronic light, too dull to experience real desires or glimpse realities lurking beyond curtains of light and lies. Immune to the comforting caress of electronic tendrils so eager to bless them.
The rest, the ones who crumbled at an Awakened’s touch or under the onslaught of pain, suffering, death and loss, became the mortar holding meaning in place, the fuel for the grand show of history.
And then, there was the Monster of Pain, and the Angel of Mercy, to contend with..."
Praise for Gerard Houarner:
“Houarner is a smart, intelligent talent who has a gift for writ- ing with serene beauty about the most atrocious things.”
—Ed Bryant, Locus
Gerard Houarner is a master storyteller, able to guide the read- er beyond the boundaries of the ordinary and into a world textured with what lurks beneath -- the shadows, the raw and terrible beauty, the variety of human and otherworldly frailty.
—Douglas Clegg
“...real writing ability...is what separates the wheat from the chaff. It is what will enable Gerard Houarner to write horror, soft horror or even a goddam romance novel and make people read it and believe it and follow it to the end.”
—Bentley Little,
author of The Ignored, The Mailman, Evil Deeds, and the Bram Stoker award winning author of The Revelation
Genre: Horror
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Used availability for Gerard Daniel Houarner's Sleepers