We are shedding the extra layers we have accumulated during the winter and preparing ourselves for another season of light and warmth. As we leap sprightly into this season, we are packing our bags with a number of new titles. The first up is Elad Haber’s debut collection, The World Outside.
We first met Elad in the second year of Underland Arcana, with his story “But My Heart Keeps Watching,” a tale of familial heartbreak. He graced the Arcana again in year three with “A Fiery Lull,” an epistolary tale of a world falling apart just over there. When he approached us about doing a collection, we were delighted at the idea.
The cautionary tales we heard as children were only the beginning. In The World Outside, Elad Haber’s debut collection, you will find stories slippery and surreal, fables full of fantasy and fury, and apocalyptic parables that braid the future with strands of our past. Music becomes a commodity beyond the control of the artist; discover Time as a community-offered service. Classic archetypes shed their skins—like out-of-season leisure wear— looking to find something that lets them express their true selves. Even the things that offer us hope and meaning have unexpected and unforeseen side-effects.
Like all tales told around the fire, Haber’s stories are filled with both wonderment and warning. What we discover as we wander into the shadows will be weird and strange—and it will certainly have teeth—but that doesn’t mean we won’t be prepared.
The World Outside is your guidebook to what lies beyond.
This collection spans a couple of decades of storytelling on the fringes, and there are several tales exclusive to this collection. It comes out in July. You may pre-order copies here.
Later, we’ll have a new collection of horror stories from Texas’s own Josh Rountree. Like Elad, Josh is no stranger to Underland Press. His story of dystopian video store rentals appeared in XVIII, and a ghost story about the archetypes that haunt us appeared in the third issue of Underland Arcana. Death Aesthetic collects eleven tales of endings and beginnings, and it will be out later this summer. We’re also going to experiment with some limited extras with Death Aesthetic, so keep an eye out for more information.
We’ve also got a collection of experimental pieces from Rachel Rodman. These are fragmented fairy tales and myths that have been unspun and respun. Stories where the heartache happens in the silences. Lists that shed all the noise and obfuscation that is our armor against isolation and emptiness. Rachel has a way of closing the loop that contiually astonishes and delights us.
In the fall, Paul Jessup returns with his Antichristical heretical bildungsroman about campus life, death cults, and various derangements of the heart. Your children will feel seen, and that’s okay. We don’t want them to think we don’t still love them after they abandon us.
Additionally, we might—well, we will—be getting cozy again. Plan accordingly. We’ll have more news on that front in a few weeks.
