I am a custodian of the things the modern world often forgets: 

ink-stained magic that writers leave behind. 

a past that mirrors our sugar-coated, grim future, and the strange,

folktales that still have something to say,

Welcome

  • The Book No One Can Read (The Voynich Mystery)

    Deep in the archives of Yale University sits a book that drives smart people insane. It is called the Voynich Manuscript. It was carbon-dated to the early 15th century. It contains 240 pages of vellum. It is filled with beautiful illustrations of plants that don’t exist on Earth, astrological charts that match no known sky,…

  • III THE OWL PART 3

    As it turned out, Sloggendorf’s one tavern was also its town hall, panic headquarters, and, on alternate Wednesdays, the site of competitive melancholy recitations. Tonight, however, it was the scene of an even more tragic spectacle: Valerius the Valiant (pending certification and possibly susceptible to drafts) holding a vinegar jug aloft, regaling an overflowing house…

  • Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Punk Rocker of the Regency

    If Lord Byron was the rock star of Romanticism, swirling in scandal like a poetic Mick Jagger, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was the anarchic punk rocker. He didn’t want to entertain the system; he wanted to smash it to bits—preferably with a megaphone in one hand and a copy of The Necessity of Atheism in…