The Fourth Story in a Three-Story Book

[qcrisp]

Recently, a chapbook of my work, The Psychopomps and Others, was released by Rainfall Books. (At the time of writing, the book is still listed as 'forthcoming', but it is in fact on sale now.) The book features three stories, 'The Psychopomps', 'The Legacy' and 'Decay', all of which appeared in my first collection (now out of print), The Nightmare Exhibition. The new chapbook is a limited edition (limited to one hundred signed copies), and the stories have been lightly edited by myself since their last publication. In addition there is a fourth story, with the title 'Mise en Abyme (A Metafiction)', but this story is spread out between all one hundred copies of the chapbook. That is, on the signing sheet at the front of each copy of the book is a line, or a few lines, from the story 'Mise en Abyme (A Metafiction)'.

If you have a copy of the book and are interested in taking part in this experiment, please write the number of your book (from where it says, "This chapbook is copy number _ of 100 copies") followed by the line or lines from the story pasted at the top of the signing sheet, in the thread dedicated to the story, here. If you have any comments on or questions about the story, please write them on this thread, and not the one dedicated to the story itself. I have started the experiment with the lines from my own copy of the book (copy #19). I am also conducting the same experiment here.

Thank you.

[qcrisp]

The first fragment from a reader has been added to the 'Mise en Abyme' thread here.

Thank you, Chris. I've left a comment on my blog, in the blog entry for comments on the story (this is complicated, isn't it?)

[cw67q]

You are welcome (belatedly) - chris

[yellowish haze]

Hi Quentin,
I received my copy of The Psychopomps only today so it's only now that I can contribute to this interesting experiment.
I'm looking forward to reading the complete text of Mise en Abyme in the upcoming collection.
Here is the excerpt from the story from my copy of The Psychopomps (copy 10).

Best,
Slawek

[qcrisp]

Ah, thank you! I really wavered over whether to let the story be included in the collection, because I had meant to sacrifice it entirely to the cause of this experiment, but the publisher was quite enthusiastic about the piece... I wonder if I made the right decision:

YouTube - The Young Knives - The Decision