魔塵鬱圏

Finally, another book!

This is my new book of short stories, 魔塵鬱圏, which is pronounced as “magomiutsuken” (mah go me oo tisoo ken). It means “Magical Garbage Depression Realm”.

This is the cover, which I’m really happy with, it is very absurd. I’ll give you a prize if you can identify every person/character contained in it.

Download it here:

pdf (other formats coming soon, Google Drive is screwing up)

Initially this was supposed to be a sort of “b-sides” for another short story collection I was working on, which would just be for more substantial stories with some thematic links. The idea was that I could collect the other stuff I was working on that didn’t quite fit the main collection here, and be able to quickly and easily knock this one out to hold people over for the next one ha ha not likely. The words “quickly” and “easily” will never, and perhaps should never, reflect the action of writing. Most of the work for most of these stories was done last year, but then school/socializing/work intervened and it’s taken me until now to do the last ten percent. But it happened! It finally happened!

As before, here’s some brief commentary on each story:

Demons/Insects – I tried to explore the “neurotic” voice some more on this one, hopefully you’ll find the ideas relatable.
Click-Clacks/Bulb – This was a composite of several incidents and ideas from my childhood, maybe you had similar incidents too.
Grapes/Miracle – I’ve always been fascinated by cults so I wanted to try writing a story around one. I wanted it to be absurd without going too far in mocking the very real issue of cults in real life.
Responsibility – Magic realism lol. I have a few other ideas in this mode but it’s hard to get the tone right.
Bus Adventure – A very real incident from my real life, please try to sympathize but I’m sorry if you can empathize.
MP3 Player Adventure – Another very real incident from my real life that now I can look back at and laugh at, please laugh at it too.
Two Books Poorly Remembered – Features characters from Youth of the World and some other stories but is mostly just a way to talk about recently read books lol.
Bakuhatsu – Ranting from a very emotional place, I don’t feel like this rn don’t worry.
Soft Movement Exercises – Try them out!
Fall – I released this as a standalone last October, it hasn’t changed much since then. It’s a sequel to “Spring Album” and “Summer Night” from previous books – “Winter Melody” coming “soon”!
People I Could Be – These are also all real. Please try to have such experiences for yourself.

This is my third short story compilation, after LMAX and Hot Summer. Putting together these compilations, figuring out how I’ll arrange them, coming up with the title and cover, it’s all really fun, kinda addictive. I have two more underway now, the aforementioned one that this is the “b-sides” to, and another tightly thematically linked one that is almost done, and then probably another book like this of more stuff that doesn’t really fit in those. I expect to have them take roughly twice as long as I expect even including this caveat. Really tho, I want to release something novel-length again, so I’m trying to push myself for that. I have three candidate stories in various stages of development. That seems like a lot of writing but most of it was done before last fall i.e. when I was a NEET lol. I’ve taken some steps to try to secure productive writing time in my new working world and (since you’re reading this) it seems to be paying off, so please look forward to more soon. Submitting for publication still feels like an insurmountable nightmare but this system of self-release is still very exciting and fun, and I still feel like I’m growing substantially as a writer with each release, so I don’t think it’s a problem. I want to start writing blog posts again too, song of the day and stuff, maybe some lists, but no promises lol. Tbh I’m prioritizing creating content for my Youtube channel over these sorts of posts rn because it’s sorta similar (media discussion) and way easier to make and my Youtube channel is way more popular than the blog lol (ONE KAY BABY), but ideally I’ll find a way to do both.

Okay that’s all for now.