Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Smith Emerges

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Welcome to Antwood.

A man loses his wallet, loses his job, loses his mind–and finds so much more. The city he’s inhabited for north of a decade is a reservoir of secrets unknown to most of its residents. There are places no one goes, and neighborhoods of which no one knows. Harlan Smith is about to go–and know–to extremes never thought possible.

The Smith is the first glimpse of Antwood to emerge from the bunker :.smile.: and venture out into the light of day. It’s a place of mystery and magic and wonder. It’s a nexus. It’s a warren. It’s a tumor above a mycelial underground. Above all, it’s a place of possibility. And don’t forget: the river Shellborn runs through it.

The Smith is now AVAILABLE–so avail yourself of the tale and venture forth into Antwood.

Antwood

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Antwood is the title of our first series–or rather the “home” of it. Antwood is a bizarre city rife with guilds and secret societies most inhabitants simply don’t know about. This tends to change, however, for the protagonists the books are centered around.

The “first” book in this series–coming in 2023–is The Smith, which follows the freshly unemployed man, Harlan Smith, as he learns to channel a talent he’s been unwittingly utilizing all these years…

Later will come a work entitled Ed, and then another with the working title, Sanitation Run. All of these works take place within the City of Antwood–a place designed to be the home for many more tales to come.

In the Works

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The next work coming down the pipe is looking to land sometime in 2023. The Smith is a wild venture into magical realism, following the down-on-his-luck, lame-as-a-duck middle-aged man Harlan Smith as he gets mugged, loses his job, and is promptly swept up into an underworld of treasure hunters in the strange city of Antwood.

Harlan Smith discovers that he has a knack for putting things in “order,” unwittingly righting wrongs (or wronging the occasional right), building clues, and conjuring items that shouldn’t–or didn’t previously–exist. But there’s more to the hunt than simply supporting Sanders, the charismatic conman who gets him into this racket, and helping navigate them to the final treasure. There’s a young woman in deep trouble for a heinous misdeed, and while she’s no damsel (she’d be the first to tell you that!), she certainly needs help.

The Smith is on deck.

Following perhaps sometime in 2024 is a rough sequel that also takes place in the strange city of Antwood, Ed, details to be released at a later time.

Lamp Land: Now Available

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A seed planted and roots inked in the summer of 2018 has finally bloomed. It is our utmost pleasure to announce that Lamp Land (I. B. Hippe) is available for purchase in both PRINT and eBOOK.

Lamp Land follows the tale of Verdigris, a young girl who embarks upon an adventure within an ancient djinn’s lamp, side-stepping peril at every turn on her way to the distant wizard’s tower. What sort of world resides within a djinn’s lamp? What ominous power does the girl hold within the scarab talisman strung from her neck? And to what end does she travel? Discover these things and more within.

The work extends beyond text, incorporating several gorgeous illustrations by the great artist Bradley Kachnowicz that really bring the book to life. In this way Lamp Land is a mixed-media work of art–one of which we are rather proud.

Your Price for SHELL

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We want you to see it.

We want you to read it.

We want you to :.feel.: it.

SHELL is available now at Smashwords for your price. Pay what you want for the eBook and discover the foundation :.the veins.: of our oeuvre. Reach out–give it a roll–and pay it forward.

We stride into the future.

Out of the Darkness

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Months pass on the black side of the moon. It’s time to step back into the light.

It’s still no less true that SHELL is but the beginning (of something–but rather the middle or even a caboose of other things). We’ll venture next into a djinn’s lamp for a mostly lighthearted (though rather weighty and grim at times) journey to the Wizard Dremen’s tower–a bare spine wedged in the mountains at the eastern edge of the Lamp Land. This tale, like many before it and after it and alongside it, is one spun by curiosity–that of a young girl–and an equally curious mind with a pen. This reality will come out of the shadows sometime next year.

After that… it may be time to change the window into which we glimpse. For Fantasy and the Great Escape is great and all, loved and desired and needed by many, but the fact of the matter is that the World has forever changed: windows are closing. Doors are being bolted shut. Nefarious “keys” are becoming ever more required – expected – assumed. But the “keys” aren’t cheap. They’re the price of flesh. Of soul. So we might have to talk about that in a roundabout way in the City of Antwood. Or elsewhere, perhaps somewhere more accessible, like the pending Last of the Analogs blog-space.

This is a late night ramble, but one that needed to happen. For sanity. For a spark of light. To betray movement and let it be known that there are rumblings in the underground. To let it be known that the belly hungers and hibernation is coming to an end.

Autumn is the best season. As some things disintegrate and go to sleep, other things awaken. Things like the starving mind. Bless.

Shell: Now Available

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The task was to establish a foundation. To create something truly unique. Niche. Experimental. Well.

Deep, deep in the cosmos, in the core of some inconspicuous, hollowed-out asteroid, sleeps the Subject. Comatose. Seemingly inaccessible. And yet within her mind dwells a great fabrication, architecture stitched together from bits and pieces of her past into a (more or less) hospitable environment: the City. It is inside this City the mystery unfolds.

The laws of physics are failing. There’s a death. There are bad actors :.smile.:. There are those pulled in from afar tasked with making sense of things. There’s an insidious godlike substance driving everything along.

Uncover the godlike substance that makes up our universe. Accompany the inquisitors trying to put things right. Search for a semblance of Home・Place・Normalcy. And experience the dissolution of the City.

Enter the City. Enter Shell.

Get Shell HERE!

Upcoming Release: SHELL

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Shell, the debut novel by writer I. B. Hippe, is set to release on Amazon on August 8th, 2021!

It’s been a long and arduous journey getting to this point. So many rewrites, so many decisions, so many processes to learn and skills to hone, but we’ve finally reached the point where the final product is ready to launch!

8 / 8 / 21

It’s coming.

On the Horizon

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Prototype soon to be in hand, we are on the final stages leading up to the release of Shell — August 8, 2021. That’s 8 / 8 / 21. Significant? Significant in the way that 8s are upright infinities and shell has a tendency toward such a form.

Shell will be available exclusively in PRINT for the foreseeable future. The reasoning behind this is partly due to the time required to learn and implement the E-book formatting process, but mostly due to a deeply-rooted belief in the importance of physical media.

Once Shell goes live, our focus will turn toward our second novel set–ideally–to release in Q4 of 2021, Lamp Land. More on that later.

Interconnectedness

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Though our works span several literary genres (some even pretty darn close to good ol’ plain, present day, present time literature), they are all connected–through characters referenced or appearing in the flesh, concepts, events :.Actions have waves.:, but above all by the substance that flows through the veins of existence itself: shell.

This is why Shell will be our first published work. Its concept is integral in all our works (a lazy literary device we think not!), a means by which all things past, present, and future are linked. In the words of the Sister: Everything stems from shell, returns to shell.