Archived News from the Poison Pie Publishing House.

On-going Blog Series
Proceedings of the International Congress on Exploratory Meta-Living; updated daily in 2018
A Survey of Bestiaries; updated each Saturday in 2018

December 25, 2018
The Augur In the Arbor Inn Paraphernalia
The author of the novel, The Augur In the Arbor Inn received a decorative wooden platter bearing the heraldry of the Arbor Inn. This design was created in 2016 by Ms. Marie Poonawala and has been on display with various other designs in The Experimental Laboratory of Symbology located within the Poison Pie Publishing House. As a note for the curious, each of the eight symbols appearing above the tree represents one of the eight locales from which genetic material was retrieved in the creation of the organism that struck such a mighty blow against Darwin and his laws of evolution.

By coincidence a second wooden object, bearing a design by the same artist, corresponding to a locale in the novel, The Portable Library of Hong Samud was recently featured in the addendum to An Introductory Guide to Cleromancy, also located at the Poison Pie Publishing House.

December 6, 2018
Five Postcards
We have added a page in the gallery, reporting on the release of five postcards, each featuring artwork from the street artist, Ms. Julia K. Keffer of Phoenix, Arizona. Each card advertises a book, either already published or forthcoming, from the Poison Pie Publishing House. These cards were distributed in December, 2018 to patrons of the PPPH.

September 19, 2018
Bus Stop Art Show




Today we feature some new entries in the Bus Stop Art Show by Julia Katherine Keffer. These works are inspired by Daisuke Hayashi.

September 3, 2018
Two Visions of Eugenia




Another character from the novel, The Augur in the Arbor Inn, Eugenia, the witch who sought to reduce the sum total of misery on planet Earth, has been rendered by the Phoenix-based artist, Julia Katherine Keffer. More information on the novel is here. Eugenia has made earlier appearances in several other books published by the Poison Pie Publishing House, including Alton & Eugenia (1999); its sequel, Perhaps (2000); book one of the Hortie Pentalogy, The Horties (2010); and as a child in the illustrated book, Eugenia and the Forest (2000). This last book is available in an electronic format via free, anonymous access Eugenia and the Forest.

July 15, 2018
Presto the Fearless Novice


Another character from the novel, The Augur in the Arbor Inn, Presto the Fearless Novice, has been rendered by the artist, Julia Katherine Keffer. More information on the novel is here.

July 9, 2018
Two Angels




The artist, Julia Katherine Keffer, unknown through-out the Phoenix metropolitan area for her Bus Stop Art Shows, has rendered visions of two angels: the smoldering gnostic angel (top) and the angel of heterodox fantasies (bottom). Both angels appear in the novel, The Augur in the Arbor Inn, A Tautological Myth of Evolution. More information on the novel, which was never made available for sale, is here. For those interested in the hierarchy of angels, the gnostic angel holds the rank of Seraphim and the angel of heterodox fantasies of Virtue.

July 8, 2018
Smoldering Gnostic Angel


The artist, Julia Katherine Keffer, unknown through-out the Phoenix metropolitan area for her Bus Stop Art Shows, has rendered a vision of the smoldering gnostic angel from the novel, The Augur in the Arbor Inn, A Tautological Myth of Evolution. More information on the novel, which was never made available for sale, is here.

June 2, 2018
Wouldn't the Wood Weird
For reasons that remain unclear to us, a page has been uploaded that provides free, anonymous access to an html version of the full text of the novel, Wouldn't the Wood Weird: a post-existential romantic fantasy, or Impractical Prayers from the Spindle of the Void. Paperback and electronic (in file formats other than html) versions remain on sale in the shop. More information on the novel and the link to the html is here.

April 15, 2018
On the Ideomotor Phenomenon
Our esteemed Editor-in-Chief, Hebeloma Crustuliniforme, unabashed Champion of Apophenia, challenged us to improve our communication with the spirit world. To this end, some months ago we commissioned a planchette and board from the workshop of Dark Balaur in Kiev. It recently arrived. While we cannot yet report any amazing revelations from beyond this physics-based reality, we can at least show an image of the board resting in the eldest dogwood tree residing in the front yard of the Poison Pie Publishing House.

March 30, 2018
Cleromancy

The editor of the Poison Pie Publishing House wrote a short treatise on the material tools of cleromancy, intended as an introductory chapter to an instructional monograph entitled, A Practicum on Divination via Cleromancy. After the introduction was completed, the author of the text received a message from afar instructing her to renege, at least for the time being, on the agreement. Thus, it appears that the practicum will not be published. We present the introduction here alone, without the remainder of the text, to prevent our efforts from being entirely wasted.

March 17, 2018
Indefatigable Null_Sets
We have added two new Null_Sets visualizations of work from the Poison Pie Publishing House to the gallery. These visualizations were created by converting the text files of a written work into an image using the Null_Sets script created by Amy Szczepanski and Evan Meaney. The Null_Sets website is located here. The image shown here is the visualization of the novel, The Ornithological Collection of Uwetsiageyv, written by David Keffer in 2016. Also uploaded is the visualization of the novel, 2017: The Year of the Every-Day Magician, written by David Keffer in 2017. These visualizations join a host of other works in the Null_Sets gallery at the Poison Pie Publishing House.

March 13, 2018
Kickstarter: We Failed!
The deadline for the Kickstarter project for a hardcover version of 2017: The Year of the Every-Day Magician passed without reaching the funding target. The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House are not too upset about this. It was an experiment and the possibility of failure is essential for a genuine experimental process. Furthermore, typically, failure is a more ready gateway to wisdom than is success. Did we learn anything from this experiment? We confirmed only a joyful hypothesis of ambivalence. In any case, we have a limited stock of hardcover books. If a reader in the United States is interested, contact the PPPH editor and we should be able to come to an agreement to get you a copy at virtually the cost of the book and shipping.

February 14, 2018
United at the Rock Against Racism
A column appeared in the Knoxville New Sentinel today by the PPPH author, David Keffer, highlighting the many efforts at the University of Tennessee to rise above the turmoil, attempting to be fomented by the on-going graffiti and upcoming visit of a white supremacist group. The column is here.

February 10, 2018
Kickstarter: 2017: The Year of the Every-Day Magician

Without undue fanfare, the Poison Pie Publishing House has launched its first Kickstarter project. If funded, this project would result in the publication of a hardcover version of 2017: The Year of the Every-Day Magician, a post-existential fantasy generated through a non-idiomatic improvisational creative process.

The novel follows two neighborhood boys, Oscar and Omar. Oscar is a member of a white working class family, whose fortunes are in decline. Omar is the son of first-generation immigrants, professionals from Iran. These two boys navigate a friendship in the social landscape reflecting the political events of 2017 as they happen and the social tensions created by the current president and his policies.

The novel is subtitled, The Rise and Fall of the Renegades of the American Muslim Registry. It responds directly to the president's suggestion, voiced during his campaign, to create a list of all Muslims in the United States, citizens or otherwise. That such a registry has not come to pass is a result only of the vigilance of those who reject such a list as inherently immoral.

The purpose of this Kickstarter project is to provide a high quality hardcover book to bibliophiles, who would like to hold a physical copy of the novel in their hands. The book will be six by nine inches in dimension and approximately 395 pages in length (365 pages of story plus indices and front matter). The book will feature a hardcover binding with cream interior paper (60# weight). The dustjacket will be made of paper (80# weight) with full-color exterior ink and a matte finish. Beneath the dust jacket the book will be bound in a black linen material with gold foil stamping on the spine. The project runs through Monday morning, March 12, 2018. The full text of the novel remains online via free, anonymous access at the Poison Pie Publishing House (link).

January 1, 2018
2017: The Year in Review at the Poison Pie Publishing House
In the year 2017, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House produced three books: two novels and one illustrated grimoire.

• 2017: The Year of the Every-Day Magician
• An Ornithological Grimoire of East Tennessee
• The Ornithological Collection of Uwetsiageyv

2017: The Year of the Every-Day Magician, subtitled A Second-Hand Account of the Rise and Fall of the Renegades of the American Muslim Registry was recorded in real time. It is a post-existential fantasy generated through a non-idiomatic improvisational creative process. It was serially published on a daily basis in 2017, resulting in a novel composed of 365 passages each nominally three hundred words in length. The full text of the novel remains online via free, anonymous access.

The novel follows two neighborhood boys, Oscar and Omar. Oscar is a member of a white working class family, whose fortunes are in decline. Omar is the son of first-generation immigrants, professionals from Iran. These two boys navigate a friendship in the social landscape reflecting in real-time the political events of 2017 and the social tensions created by the current president and his policies.

Much of the inspiration behind a literature of non-idiomatic improvisation comes from non-idiomatic improvised music. The novel was improvised in the following manner. The author wrote a passage each day while listening to a different album. For the curious, several indices were generated, noting the artists, labels, countries and years of the recordings. The page numbers in the index correspond to a book, which currently does not exist, in which each page contains the writing from a single day of the year. Thus an entry of "1" in the index corresponds to January 1, 2017 and an entry of "365" corresponds to December 31, 2017. The index is posted as a pdf file here.

An Ornithological Grimoire of East Tennessee is a book of spells derived from birds dwelling in East Tennessee, illustrated in felt, featuring bird-themed finger puppets designed by Ms. Ruth Marie Keffer. More information on this book can be found here. A full-color, perfect-bound paperback version of the book is available from lulu.com.

The Ornithological Collection of Uwetsiageyv is a flight of fancy in two hundred and one parts, in which a girl, orphaned by crows, explores the various islands of the Sea of Birds with the intention of populating a library of her own design entirely with bird-shaped books. It is a post-existential fantasy generated through a non-idiomatic improvisational creative process from March 16, 2016 to December 21, 2016 in Knoxville, Tennessee. At the beginning of 2017, a private printing of a limited hardcover edition was produced. The author reputedly sold not a single copy of this lovely, little novel, opting instead to give them all away exclusively to people who had not asked for them.

Also of note in 2017, An International Journal of Exploratory Meta-Living published two interviews, one with the American pedal steel guitarist, Ms. Susan Alcorn and one with the new Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Ms. Hebeloma Crustuliniforme.

The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House is no longer setting annual goals. Even with this much lower standard, namely thinking, idly if possible, about potential activities in the following year, we are somewhat dismayed to report that they have nothing to offer as to what they might do with the next year.

To our readers, we, the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House, thank you for your patronage and support and we look forward to another mutually creative and unpredictable year.