Mrs Saville is a novel in progress being serially published at Strands Lit Sphere. It is set in London, 1817, and inspired by Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. Like Frankenstein, it is an epistolary novel. The protagonist, Margaret Saville, is writing a series of letters to her long-absent husband. Follow the weekly installments here: http://strandspublishers.weebly.com/mrs-saville-by-ted-morrissey.html. PDFs of the installments are archived here: https://tedmorrissey.com/mrs-saville/.…
"Weeping with an Ancient God" is a novella set in July 1842 in the Marquesas Islands. Melvill, the protagonist, jumps ship from the whaler Acushnet into a wild, savage and exotically beautiful land. Melvill contemplates his dangerous present, sad past and wholly uncertain future on an island teeming with cannibals. The novella, which was named a Best Book of 2015 by Chicago Book Review, is based on the real-life adventures of author Herman Melville ("Moby-Dick") when he was a young seaman. "Weeping with an Ancient God" is also available in print, Kindle and Nook editions from Twelve Winters Press. The print edition includes illustrations by Adam G. Perschbacher and an interview with the author by Beth Gilstrap. Visit tedmorrissey.com and twelvewinters.com for full details, including information about the author's other books of fiction: the novels "Men of Winter" and "An Untimely Frost," and the novelette "Figures in Blue." The cover image for "Weeping" is courtesy photographer Corrie Scott -- visit at corriescott.net. CONTENT WARNING: The story you are about to read is intended for mature readers due to its sexual content and language. It may not be appropriate for all audiences. Read at your own discretion.…
"Primitive Scent" is part of a series of related stories that I spent about four years writing. They are all set in the same unnamed Midwestern village, and nearly all are in the 1950s. They have reoccurring characters, themes, images, and specific locations -- but each is unique in terms of narrative style and/or structure. "Primitive Scent" was the second story written in the series but the first to appear in print, in the Tulane Review. The collection of stories is titled Crowsong for the Stricken, and will be out in 2016 from Twelve Winters Press. (Please note that my novelette Figures in Blue has a significant connection to lesbianism; however, the novelette is not available on Wattpaid. The digital edition is available from Battered Suitcase Press, and the print edition is from Twelve Winters Press.)…
The setting for "Men of Winter" is deliberately vague but seems to be Russia, especially Siberia, in the earliest decades of the twentieth century. The protagonist, Hektr Pastrovich, is a journalist and poet who travels to the front of a war his beleaguered country has been fighting for nine years. He's searching for information about a mysterious vagabond who calls himself the "Prince of Ithaka" and along the way he meets a beautiful and charismatic woman. The novel is a sort of sequel to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Visit tedmorrissey.com.…
"An Untimely Frost" is a novel that's available from Twelve Winters Press (twelvewinters.com) in print, Kindle and Nook editions. It's set in 1830s London and is inspired by author Washington Irving's rumored courtship of Mary Shelley, creator of the novel "Frankenstein." The novel is both historically accurate and stylistically experimental.…
"The Beowulf Poet and His Real Monsters" opens a new line of inquiry into the Old English poem, specifically trauma theory, which attempts to map the psychological typography of an author and his or her culture, that is, when the text appears to be wrought of traumatic experience. Indicators of a “trauma text” are narrative techniques often associated with postmodernism — expressly, intertextuality, repetition, a dispersed or fragmented voice, and a search for powerful language. The anonymous Beowulf poet made extensive use of all four narrative techniques, suggesting he and his culture were suffering from traumatic stress. The author brings together knowledge from myriad disciplines — among them history, anthropology, sociology, biology, and psychology, with special emphases on the branches of psychoanalysis and neuropsychology — and focuses his trauma-theory reading on the poem’s original language. The monograph was awarded the D. Simon Evans Prize for distinguished scholarship, and it has been acquired by major libraries across the globe, including the British Library, the Library of Congress, Australian National University, Qatar National Library, Notre Dame University, Duke University, and Purdue University — to name just a few.…
"Communion with the Dead" first appeared in The Chariton Review in 2008, and it marks a shift in style for the author. It's set in a small village in Italy in the 1950s, which was a very different setting from virtually all of the author's previous stories. It also experiments with narrative style with insertions of stream of consciousness at various points. It's also the only story by the author that references opera.…
"Scent of Darkness" is part of a series of related stories that the author has been writing off and on for three years. They are all set in the same unnamed Midwestern village, and nearly all (so far) are in the 1950s. They have reoccurring characters, themes, images, and specific locations -- but each is unique in terms of narrative style and/or structure. "Scent of Darkness" was written in the fall of 2013 and appeared in Black Denim Lit in March 2014.…
"A Wintering Place" is a sequel to Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein" and is set in the Siberian arctic. The story first appeared in the journal Eleven Eleven.…
"Missing the Earth" features the couple Jon and Lucy Mann, who were the main characters in the author's Master's thesis at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The thesis was part of a novel titled "Nudes in Natural Light," which was never completed. However, the characters appear in two stories that were eventually published. This one was a finalist in Glimmer Train Press's Fiction Open and eventually appeared in Oak Bend Review.…
"An Alabaster Moon" first appeared in PANK #3. It's the only story that the author has written in one sitting, and virtually in one draft. In terms of the structure of the story, Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" may have been an unconscious inspiration.…
"When the Night Is New" is a story that originally appeared in A Summer's Reading, a literary journal that the author edited for seven years. It's inspired by a real bar in Galesburg, Illinois, that the author frequented in his youth.…
