Blog Archives ~ Raw Dog Screaming Press : Raw Dog Screaming Press

BLOG

COVER REVEAL: The Apocalyptic Mannequin

Cover Reveal for The Apocalyptic Mannequin

We’re releasing a new horror science fiction poetry collection, The Apocalyptic Mannequin, on September 26th from Stephanie Wytovich. Embrace the monsters of your soul, the plagues of your nightmares, and explore your own loss, abandonment, and grief as your breath shallows and doomsday looms. Who will you become when the apocalypse is over?

Today, we’re thrilled to present readers with the beautiful cover by artist Steven Archer for The Apocalyptic Mannequin. We’re now taking pre-orders and the first 30 people who order will receive free personalization from Wytovich.

Pre-Order Available (First 30 receive FREE personalized copy)

The first 30 pre-ordered books will include an extra page with the name you want the book inscribed to along with individual apocalypse survival tips penned by Wytovich herself. Limited to 30 copies. Pre-orders accepted through September 26.

RESERVE YOUR COPY HERE

What Inspired Stephanie?

“Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the body—my body, bodies in general, bodies after death—and I wanted to explore that topic in a way that combined body horror with the apocalypse, and the result that came from that marriage was something that I wasn’t expecting but at the same time, was so happy to see,” said Wytovich. “So this is my mannequin baby, my army of faceless children. I hope they’ll bring you all as many nightmares as they’ve certainly given me.”

About the Cover Artist, Steven Archer

Steven Archer is an artist and musician living in Baltimore, MD. When not recording, DJing, or producing art, he and his wife, author Donna Lynch, tour with their dark electronic rock band Ego Likeness. He has a BFA from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC and has shown his work at galleries and other venues throughout the east coast. His work has also been shown internationally in the form of album art and magazine illustrations. He is the author and illustrator of the children’s book Luna Maris. For more information about Ego Likeness, please visit www.egolikeness.com.

About The Apocalyptic Mannequin

Doomsday is here and the earth is suffering with each breath she takes. Whether it’s from the nuclear meltdown, the wrath of the Four Horsemen, a war with technology, or a consequence of our relationship with the planet, humanity is left buried and hiding, our bones exposed, our hearts beating somewhere in our freshly slit throats.

This is a collection that strips away civilization and throws readers into the lives of its survivors. The poems inside are undelivered letters, tear-soaked whispers, and unanswered prayers. They are every worry you’ve had when your electricity went out, and every pit that grew in your stomach watching the news at night. They are tragedy and trauma, but they are also grief and fear, fear of who—or what—lives inside us once everything is taken away.

These pages hold the teeth of monsters against the faded photographs of family and friends, and here, Wytovich is both plague doctor and midwife, both judge and jury, forever searching through severed limbs and exposed wires as she straddles the line evaluating what’s moral versus what’s necessary to survive.

What’s clear though, is that the world is burning and we don’t remember who we are.

So tell me: who will you become when it’s over?

What They’re Saying

“Like a doomsday clock fast-forwarding to its final self-destruction, Wytovich’s poetry will give you whiplash as you flip through page after page. The writing here is ugly yet beautiful. It reads like a disease greedily eating up vital organs. The apocalypse has arrived and it couldn’t be more intoxicating!”

—Max Booth III, author of Carnivorous Lunar Activities

“In this hauntingly sensuous new collection of poetry, you’ll long to savor every apocalyptic nightmare you have ever feared. Blooming in the beauty of destruction and the terror of delight, Stephanie M. Wytovich’s poems remind us that we feel the world better, love the world better, when we recognize the ephemeral nature of everything achingly alive beyond our mannequin minds. Here, we are captive to our deepest velvet snarls, zombie songs, and radioactive wishes, at the mercy of a neon reaping. Reading this collection is like dancing through Doomsday, intoxicated by the destructive, decadent truth of desire in our very mortality. In these poems, you will find revelry in the ruins of everything you once held dear — and you will love it to the last as you watch the world unravel around you.”

—Saba Syed Razvi, author of Heliophobia and In the Crocodile Gardens

“Beautifully bleak, Stephanie M. Wytovich’s latest collection posits scenarios of the apocalypse and the horrors to come thereafter with language like fragrant hooks in your skin. Vivid, each word a weight on your tongue, these poems taste of metal and ash with a hint of spice, smoke. She reminds us the lucky ones die first, and those who remain must face the horrors of a world painted in blisters and fear. Leave it to Wytovich to show us there’s beauty in the end, just beneath all that peeling, irradiated skin.”

—Todd Keisling, author of Ugly Little Things and Devil’s Creek

“Set in a post-apocalyptic world that at times seems all too near, Wytovich’s poems conjure up frighteningly beautiful and uncomfortably prescient imagery. Populated by a cast of unsettling, compelling characters, this collection is one that stuck with me.”

—Claire C. Holland, author of I Am Not Your Final Girl

“A surreal journey through an apocalyptic wasteland, a world that is terrifyingly reminiscent of our own even as the blare of evacuation alarms drowns out the sizzle of acid rain, smiling mannequins bear witness to a hundred thousand deaths, and “the forest floor grows femurs in the light of a skeletal moon.” Stephanie M. Wytovich’s The Apocalyptic Mannequin is as unsettling as it is lovely, as grotesque as it is exquisite.”

—Christa Carmen, author of Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked

Pre-Order Now!

Stephanie Wytovich, Biography

Stephanie M. Wytovich is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her work has been showcased in numerous venues such as Weird Tales, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Fantastic Tales of Terror, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror: Volume 2, The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 8, as well as many others.

Wytovich is the Poetry Editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press, an adjunct at Western Connecticut State University, Southern New Hampshire University, and Point Park University, and a mentor with Crystal Lake Publishing. She is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, an active member of the Horror Writers Association, and a graduate of Seton Hill University’s MFA program for Writing Popular Fiction. Her Bram Stoker Award-winning poetry collection, Brothel, earned a home with Raw Dog Screaming Press alongside Hysteria: A Collection of Madness, Mourning Jewelry, An Exorcism of Angels, Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare, and The Apocalyptic Mannequin. Her debut novel, The Eighth, is published with Dark Regions Press.

Follow Wytovich on her blog at http://stephaniewytovich.blogspot.com/ and on twitter @SWytovich.