Uncategorized

Weird, Touching, Agenre Queer Books … on Sale???!!! 

/ . / Leave a comment

Til Feb 1 (well midnight Jan 31), name your own price (suggested $20) and grab tRaum Books’ entire 2022 catalogue!

That’s seven books, ranging from novella to art book to long novel, from a group of various trans/queer indie authors from all over the world. 

covers of some trauma books that you need to read

Darknesses by Lachelle Seville (neogothic homage) Recovering and broken, Oasis falls right into the arms of Bram Stoker’s original inspiration, currently inhabiting the form of Laura. ||  Most Famous Short Film of All Time by Tucker Lieberman (postmodern philosophical) Life takes a sharp turn for the Kafkaesque when Lev gets an anonyominous email at work. ||  Noema by Dael Akkerman (Mesolithic thoughtful) She’s a girl, she’s a bird, she’s a god; a re-imagining of our original cooperation and betrayal story. ||  It Helps with the Blues by Bryan Cebulski (subtle Midwestern) An introspective modern story about five Midwestern teens feeling their way through an unexpected tragedy. ||  Airy Nothing by Clarissa Pattern (Elizabethan daymare) A gentle, touched boy who longs to become a Shakespearean player gets his heart stolen by a pickpocket in seething London. ||  a/e by Ryszard Merey (novella, art uncomfortable) It’s an early 00s friendship mess. || The Pink and the Blue (art book PDF) by R Merey (neonvomit confessional) Created when the author had the worst extended insomnia of HIS LIFE and was possibly legally insane.

Have all our published books at your fingertips! Purchase this to get everything we put out in 2022 (and our one book from the end of 2021), in instantly downloadable digital form. What a mix of short and long, novella and art book; a range of storytelling styles from indie authors Lachelle Seville, Tucker Lieberman, Dael Akkerman, Bryan Cebulski, Clarissa Pattern, and Ryszard Merey. We want our books to be available to all, so for a limited time, there is the option to pay what you want for the entire bundle (suggested reduced price is 20 USD).

Rachel A Rosen’s Author Talk – And More!!!

/ . / Leave a comment
Rachel sitting on a rock which has extremely good taste in Premiers

Rachel A. Rosen talks climate disaster, wizards, Cthulhu, and Canadian politics, and how they all come crashing together in her debut novel Cascade.

Join us on November 11, in Toronto, for an in-person author talk and book signing with Rosen will discuss her genre-blending work – part techno-thriller, part response to “hopepunk”, part urban fantasy – and the inspiration behind it. Sign up here.

Can’t make it to Toronto? Prefer online talks? We got you. 

There’s a talk online at Brighton Public Library on Dec. 6 at 6:30.

Rachel is speaking about book deisgn at FyreCon Nov. 13 at 4 pm.

Can’t make any of them? You can still read Cascade through Amazon, any ebook retailer, or direct from the press.

The Sad Bastard Cover Reveal!

/ . / Leave a comment

It’s here! The time has finally come to share the cover for The Sad Bastard Cookbook with you! Designed by the inimitable Rachel A Rosen, we hope you love it as much as we do.

The cover! It has a chunk of uncooked ramen on a plate next to roses and a box of Kleenex.

The e-book will be free for everyone, because we believe that coping strategies should be as widely accessible as we can make them. But our newsletter subscribers will get access a month before everyone else does, plus sneak peaks of recipes. Sign up here.

Night Beats Betas?

/ . / Leave a comment

We run a feature in our newsletter called Night Beats Betas. Authors submit 500 words of their work in progress, and we respond by cheerleading the parts we love about it. We also offer any suggestions they’ve asked for, whether that’s big picture comments or grammatical edits. And of course we send our comments to the author to approve before anything goes in the newsletter.

Photograph of a person typing on a typewriters.

Our newsletter subscribers love it—they love being exposed to lots of different writers’ work and seeing the writing process. Our authors love it—they get comments from an supportive editor, and we include their socials so they can promote the works to our newsletter subs.

The only thing is, we’re out of things to beta read! We need more!

This is a plea for you to submit 500 whatever you’re working on to us right now. Or later! We won’t be able to keep running this feature without you, and we really love this. So … please submit?

Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash

Book Giveaway!

/ . / Leave a comment

One of our fantastic future Night Beats authors, Nicole Northwood, is having an Instagram giveaway! Her novel, a themed candle, and of course book-themed swag!

The Devil You Know Giveaway

It ends Friday, July 22 at 11:59pm Eastern Time. North American only at this time, but international readers are advised to follow Nicole on Instagram in case of future giveaways!

When the demon of Lust, Cam, decides he needs an overhaul in his ‘life after death’, he leaves the Second Circle of Hell to run an indulgent hotel and club in the heart of New York City. As his lover, Lucifer, bides his time to create a bargain to have Cam return, Cam is permitted to explore the human world, but not without being led into temptation. A group of demon hunters disguised as police set out to send Cam back into the fires of Hell by getting him lost in desire for one of their own, but things very quickly take an unexpected turn—Cam’s fallen in love with the Hedonism Hotel’s night manager, Giselle, and he won’t leave Earth so easily.

Within the liminal space of hotels and their surroundings, paranormal beings and the humans who love them travel together on intimate journeys of self discovery while learning to trust one another with the things that make them unique. Each of the seven stories in the Hotel Heat series takes the reader through a steamy romance with new main characters while featuring fan-favorite major and minor characters who have appeared in earlier novels, and will continue to appear in upcoming books.

Content warnings can be found on Nicole Northwood’s website.

Cascade Book Launches & Signing

/ Rachel / Leave a comment

Rachel A. Rosen hosts the first book signing for her debut novel, Cascade, Friday, July 29th, 2022, 6:00 PM at Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto. Masks absolutely required!

“Rachel A. Rosen is some kind of twisted genius. I wish I had even half her moves.” — Peter Watts, author of Blindsight

If day drinking is more your cup of tea, join us for a launch party at the Imperial Pub at 4 pm on Sunday, July 31st! You can even see the legendary location where the first part of Cascade was written.

Cascade: Writing the Apocalypse

/ Rachel / Leave a comment
Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash

Cascade was never meant to be a work of climate fiction.

My meandering novel of magic, monsters, and machinations grew its themes organically. Not everything, even in a novel about politics, needs to be a political allegory. Sometimes the tentacle of a long-dead god emerging from the bottom of the ocean is just a tentacle of a long-dead god emerging from the bottom of the ocean. But the further I wrote, and the more IPCC reports were released to resounding global silence and inaction, the more it became obvious that the apocalypse that threatened the world of Cascade was a one not dissimilar to the one that imperils our own.

This led to one of my many bouts of soul searching while writing the novel. Could I even finish the book, let alone the series, before reality rendered it irrelevant? Was it selfish to care about that? Was it even ethical to write a book—which, for all its topicality, is a work of entertainment—when our planet is on fire? Surely my time was better spent at a pipeline blockade or, at the very least, marching in the street.

It may disappoint you, gentle reader, that I don’t have those answers. But I have done a fair bit of thinking about the role of artists, and other creators, during a climate apocalypse.

Continue reading →