Stephanie Cover Reveal! + Free short story from me + Free stuff from other people too.
Three things in one email. Nice.
So, on top of WBTH2, I am also still hard at work on THE STEPHANIE GLITCH. To some this may seem counter-intuitive. Why write another book when you already have one, the hardback of which people have already pre-ordered?
Even if you tolerate a two-book relationship, you may gasp in horror at the thought that, no less than FOURTEEN BOOKS are currently inside my head, some of which require me to be a different person.
Yes… but that’s a post for another time.
To put it simply, my brain gears spin faster when they each have their own concept to manage.
Consider me like Jareth, the Goblin King from the 1986 film THE LABYRINTH.
I have three glorious, glistening balls. These balls are universes.
Spherical universes, eh?
Seen that symbolism before.
Yes, it was indeed a main thing on the WBTH cover, where 11 universes appeared and were interconnected, referencing the 11 main plotlines within. Not many people notice, but they like it when I tell them, so I just told you.
Anyway, I’m having a lovely callback here with the new cover for part one of
wait…
could you pop this track on first, cheers.
Okay.
It is time.
COVER REVEAL TIME
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THE STEPHANIE GLITCH!!!
She is finally here, skeletal and unformed, ready to be 3D printed directly inside your head. Gross. Weird and gross. But cool. This dimension-hopping sort of satirical adventure through reincarnation spirals, deathbots, godlike AI and… wait… Lax Morales is in this one too? Anyway, it’s here, almost.
So that’s a thing. I will explain how Stephanie came to be back in 2016 in a future post, because that’s how time works, much to my disdain, but for now, synopsis.
Synopsis
Time travellers, reincarnation, and interdimensional hot chocolate. What more could you need?
For Stephanie, the answer to this is obvious: She needs to escape reality, before it collapses.
Stephanie has Synaesthesia, a neurological condition that translates one sense experience into another. She can see smells, hear colours, and see sound. This isn't normally a problem unless someone in college wants to ask her annoying questions about it, but when her crosswired brain comes across a sensory input that human beings have not yet evolved to process, her synaesthesia translates it for her, turning a dark alien signal in an otherwise ignorant brain into a bright flash of sound and colour. This is no migraine, this is a warning.
Someone out there in the universe needs her help.
And Stephanie is the only person who can hear them.
In this starting novella, two universes come dangerously close to a collision as Stephanie prepares for university, trying to live a normal life in spite of the cosmic warning ringing inside her head.
This story, told through several novellas, is Phillip Carter's weirdest adventure yet. And if you've read Who Built The Humans? you'll know how much of an achievement that is.
I have Synaesthesia, so I can assure you I’ll be writing about it with absolutely zero sensitivity, but a lot of nuance. All Stephanie’s migraines are based on a true story, even the bit where she nearly drowns herself in a shower.
Here’s your pre-order button. THE STEPHANIE GLITCH is a series of novellas, each taking place in a separate universe. Every time Stephanie ascends from one reality, the book ends.
Weird.
It gets more meta very quickly. In fact, I am pleased to say I think I may have revived metahumour. It’s a weird book. Stephanie dies in the middle. How does that work? I won’t tell you. You’ll have to find out.
She also dies near the end, but it’s a different, diagonal sort of death.
It is to death what chocolate custard is to fried chicken.
I think.
So TSG will be split into seven novellas, each representing one of the timelines she travels through on her adventure. I know, minor spoilers, but it’s a fairly minor detail about the architecture of the book. The interesting stuff happens in the in-between, the weirdspace, and the realms between life and death.
Because every time Stephanie moves between worlds, she has to die.
Weirdspace… I like that word. Might use it. Might coin it.
There, it is coined.
And it is only this interesting because it is
SELF-PUBLISHED!
I might query other books, but not this one. This one is for me.
They can’t sand down my edges, because to do so would be to sand down Stephanie’s. And she needs them.
This is how you will feel reading THE STEPHANIE GLITCH.
It’s dirt cheap, and you don’t get charged until December 24th anyway, so you can always do it and then retreat into the woods like that robot at the end of the novel.
I’m spoiling too much. Okay. Free story time.
PART 2, THE FREE THING, THIS TIME IT’S FREESONAL
MYCELIAL GIVEAWAY
And beyond that, if you just cannot wait to get some mind-bending psy-fi in your head and wish Stephanie’s first novella would arrive sooner, you can get a glimpse at the sort of weird psychic stuff I like writing when I’m not doing weird satire and dark comedy, here, by clicking the lovely orange button below.
Mycelial rapidly became my most popular story here on Substack, and it’s now a published eBook (and more polished, too). It’s about a mycelial network that gets more than it bargained for when it eats a human brain.
IT IS FREE TODAY ON AMAZON
A zombie story in reverse.
About an ambitious mushroom that develops a concept of ‘self’.
And immediately uses that self to take over the universe.
Typical single-minded animal.
It’s dark, it’s weird, and it has hints of a wider universe.
Could this connect to another story? Who knows? Find out after the break!
PART 3, THE BOOKENING
And now, we go outside time and space and reason…
My good friend Aaron Frale has put together a Sci-Fi comedy eBook thing.
His book TIME BURRITO is always free anyway, which is neat, but there’s some other stuff here too. Well worth checking out.
Thank you so much for the book present, Phillip! 🧡🙏
Preordered STEPHANIE. Thank you!