RDSP Books Published in 2014

2014 was a great year for RDSP! We released a total of 13 books which included: 5 novels (3 were science fiction), 2 poetry books, 1 non-fiction title, 1 story collection and 3 from the “other” category where memoir and satire meet to party. Here’s the list in chronological order:

Corpus Chrome, Inc.Corpus Chrome, Inc. by S. Craig Zahler •  January

Decades in the future Corpus Chrome, Inc. develops a robotic body, dubbed a “mannequin,” that can revive, sustain and interface with a cryonically-preserved human brain. Like all new technology, it is copyrighted. Nobody knows how Corpus Chrome, Inc. determines which individuals should be given a second life, yet myriad people are affected. Among them are Lisanne Breutschen, the composer who invented sequentialism with her twin sister, and Champ Sappline, a garbage man who is entangled in a war between the third, fourth and fifth floors of a New York City apartment building. In the Spring of 2058, Corpus Chrome, Inc. announces that they will revive Derek W.R. Dulande—a serial rapist and murderer who was executed thirty years ago for his crimes. The public is horrified by the decision, and before long, the company’s right to control the lone revolving door between life and death will be violently challenged…


biographizerPublisher’s Note: The author failed to fold my laundry in the proper manner, so I am letting the cat out of the bag—these are not actual biographies. They are closer to maps of the author’s ego than they are texts about the namesakes adorning their covers. So, if you want to read about Freud or Douglass or Hitler I suggest you do so elsewhere.

Hitler: The Terminal Biography by D. Harlan Wilson • February
An icon of true evil, Adolf Hitler is arguably the most important figure of the twentieth century. No one has so patently demonstrated the horrific capabilities of mankind. In Hitler: The Terminal Biography, D. Harlan Wilson tracks the life of the infamous monomaniac from struggling artist to mass murderer.

Freud: The Penultimate Biography by D. Harlan Wilson • February
In this unofficial, unauthorized sequel to Peter Gay’s groundbreaking Freud: A Life of Our Time, D. Harlan Wilson reveals a side of the man that has proven too disturbing and risqué for past biographers.

Douglass: The Lost Autobiography by D. Harlan Wilson • March
During his life, Frederick Douglass published three autobiographies chronicling his struggles nd yet the full narrative contrary to popular belief, has been incomplete … until now. Recently recovered on an archeological dig in Ireland, where Douglass lectured extensively in the 1840s, this heretofore “lost” autobiography marks the fourth and final work in the library of his selfhood.


Wasteland BluesWasteland Blues (Dog Star Books) by Scott Christian Carr & Andrew Conry-Murray • March

Having only ever known the uncivilized wake of nuclear and biological apocalypse, three friends–and their wheelchair-bound hostage–set out on a perilous fool’s mission: to cross from one side of the devastated United States to the other, in the desperate, half-believed hope of finding a rumored haven.

Spurred by a dark vision and the murder of their parents, rageaholic Derek Cane and his oversized, simple-minded brother Teddy flee the only home they’ve ever known, a struggling shantytown on the edge of the vast wasteland. Heading ever eastward, they are accompanied by their friend John, an orphan brought up by a fanatical religious order, and Leggy, a crippled old drunk who brags that, in his youth, he once traversed the wasteland as a scavenger.


BOOKS-ambasadoramarkedbylightAmbasadora Book One Marked by Light (Dog Star Books) by Heidi Ruby Miller • April

Sara Mendoza is part of the Embassy’s plan. Captured, tortured, and falsely accused of treason, she is given a chance to win back her freedom. She only needs to charm information from one of the fragger leaders, then kill him. But by the time she figures out the Embassy’s intel is flawed and that Sean Cryer is her true mark, she’s already in love with him.

Sean knows why Sara is on his ship from the start, but as a lonely, anti-social doser, he doesn’t value his life, only his ideology within the fragger organization. Against his better judgment, he becomes her protector, each day caring more about a future he was always afraid to hope for.


MourningJewelryCoverMourning Jewelry poetry by Stephanie Wytovich • May
The tradition of Victorian mourning jewelry began with Queen Victoria after the death of her husband, Prince Albert. Without photography, mementos of personal remembrance were used to honor the dead so that their loved ones could commemorate their memory and keep their spirits close. But what about the sadness and the memories that they kept close to them at all times? The death-day visions and the reoccurring nightmares? Wytovich explores the horror that breeds inside of the lockets, the quiet terror that hides in the center of the rings. Her collection shows that mourning isn’t a temporary state of being, but rather a permanent sickness, an encompassing disease. Her women are alive and dead, lovers and ghosts. They live in worlds that we cannot see, but that we can feel at midnight, that we can explore at three a.m.


Embrace the Hideous ImmaculateEmbrace the Hideous Immaculate poetry by Chad Hensley • May
Within these realms of darkness await outer space monstrosities, ancient undead goddesses, serial killer prophets, and revenants from the Deep South and South Pacific. Bram Stoker Award nominee, Chad Hensley, pushes the reader face first off a cliff and into the bottomless, abyssal plain where vast horrors lurk underground in cities made from infant bones.

In a collection that marries literary and contemporary horror, Hensley uses gothic subtext with a modern spin to send the living to the grave while the dead rise and walk the streets. The poetry contained in Embrace the Hideous Immaculate is unflinching and grotesque, mixing gore and depravity with verse that is both evocative and illuminating as noted by renowned Lovecraftian author and scholar Wilum H. Pugmire’s insightful introduction.


BOOKS-themanThe Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes (Dog Star Books) by Albert Wendland • June
What could draw poet, explorer, loner and paranoid Mykol Ranglen away from the relative peace of his own stellar habitat? He has no choice in the matter as one by one acquaintances are murdered or disappear altogether. Propelled by ever changing and deepening mysteries Mykol embarks to uncover secrets which could make people rich beyond their wildest dreams…or tear apart human civilization. The escalating quest takes him through worlds of many dangerous extremes, leading him to confront the deadly alien “fist of thorns,” extinct species refusing to give up their power over the future, and those racing against him to uncover the secret first. But in the course of his pursuit, he must also face his own secrets. And some of these are more dangerous.


Books-softapocalypsesSoft Apocalypses by Lucy Snyder • July
Lucy A. Snyder proves once again that she is fearless in mapping every corner of the literary landscape. Not content to be confined to any single region, she guides readers through dark realms of fantasy into the churning industry of steampunk, from the dizzying heights of science fiction down to the most desolate depths of horror.

The strength of the tales that make up this quiet cataclysm—for example “Magdala Amygdala,” winner of the 2013 Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction—do not compete. Instead they overlap to create a vista of ethical armageddons at once thorny and hopeful. Snyder’s irresistible prose and stunning eye for detail bind together a collection that defies expectation but delivers deep satisfaction.


BOOKS-mrwickerMr. Wicker by Maria Alexander • September
Alicia Baum is missing a deadly childhood memory. Located beyond life, The Library of Lost Childhood Memories holds the answer. The Librarian is Mr. Wicker — a seductive yet sinister creature with an unthinkable past and an agenda just as lethal. After committing suicide, Alicia finds herself before the Librarian, who informs her that her lost memory is not only the reason she took her life, but the cause of every bad thing that has happened to her.

Alicia spurns Mr. Wicker and attempts to enter the hereafter without the Book that would make her spirit whole. But instead of the oblivion she craves, she finds herself in a psychiatric hold at Bayford Hospital, where the staff is more pernicious than its patients.


BOOKS-howtoreadHow to Read (Guide Dog Books) by Eckhard Gerdes • October
For too long, our educational system has oversimplified the practice of reading while pretending that only one method works: Read as fast as you can, from beginning to end, in a straight line, without skipping anything. The fastest reader is the best reader and gets the gold star and the certificate for free ice cream! This, of course, punishes deliberate, careful students and booklovers who delight in the process and incorporate what they read into their everyday lives. The dominant method of reading works for simple linear texts, but it is by no means the only way to go about reading and excludes many other types of texts. In How to Read, veteran novelist, editor and educator Eckhard Gerdes reveals 81 different approaches for reading, opening up new horizons that restrictive educators have been blocking from view for far too long. This innovative guidebook will enrich the experience of textuality for young and old readers alike.


BOOKS-gravemarkingsGrave Markings by Michael A. Arnzen • October
Grave Markings follows the tortured mental breakdown of Mark Michael Kilpatrick—an artist driven to purge visions of hell from his tainted mind by permanently working his ink into the skins of unwilling victims…the flesh of both the living and freshly dead.

News reporter Roy Roberts finds himself drawn into an obsession with tattoo culture, at the same time as Kilpatrick’s own compulsions produce sicker and sicker masterpieces that attract media attention, twisting in a spiral that inevitably brings Roberts and his loved ones into Kilpatrick’s morbidly perverse universe, and the artist’s deadly inkgun turns toward them…