WELCOME TO PSEUDO CITY
Pseudo-City by D.
Harlan Wilson
Raw Dog Screaming Press
5103 72nd Place •
Hyattsville, MD 20784 • 301-577-3840
226 pages, trade hardcover, $29.95
ISBN: 1-933293-02-0
Release Date: April 2005
Raw Dog Screaming Press is proud to release the hardcover
edition of D. Harlan Wilson’s fourth book, Pseudo-City,
a collection of twenty-nine short stories and flash fiction set in an
imaginary, post-real city that is a hauntingly satirical version of our own
mediatized reality. This book is distributed
through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Bertram’s UK, and direct from the
publisher. For a limited time, signed
copies are available for purchase at
a discount rate from the author. Visit www.dharlanwilson.com
for details.
The author will be making several appearances throughout
2005 in support of this release. In
April, he attended the World Horror Convention in New York City. Throughout the summer he will be conducting
readings and signings at various bookstores in the lower Michigan area. August 19-21 he will attend Horrorfind
Weekend in Baltimore. Wilson’s
countrywide publicity will conclude over Halloween Weekend at the World Fantasy
Convention in Madison, Wisconsin.
Wilson is known as a pioneer of the literary genre irrealism.
Deftly blending elements of
postmodernism, the absurdist movement, and genre fiction, Wilson crafts worlds
that are a reflection of the ultraviolent, intrusive media that bombard us on a
daily basis. Those who enjoy satire and
dark fiction will be attracted to what Pseudo-City
offers. This book will be of special
interest to fans of Franz Kafka, William S. Burroughs, and Kurt Vonnegut.
In addition to author appearances, Pseudo-City will also be promoted through display ads in magazines,
banner adds, catalogs, direct mail, and interviews. Visit the author’s website at www.dharlanwilson.com as his public
appearance information is updated regularly.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
D. Harlan Wilson is a fiction writer and professor of
literature. He has
published over 100 stories in magazines, anthologies and journals throughout
the world, and he is the author of The
Kafka Effekt (2001) and Stranger on
the Loose (2003). Both are
collections of short stories and flash fictions published by Eraserhead Press. This year Raw Dog
Screaming Press will release Pseudo-City,
a story-cycle set in an imaginary, post-real metropolis. Wilson is also the author of Irrealities, an anthology of his
collected fiction, and a forthcoming novel, Dr.
Identity.
In 1997 Wilson received a M.A. in English from the
University of Massachusetts-Boston, and in 1998 he received a M.A. in Science
Fiction Studies from the University of Liverpool. This year he received his Ph.D. in English from Michigan State
University. Prior to his graduate
studies he worked as an international salesman, a model and actor, a casino
dealer, a security guard, a garbage man, a tax collector, a sommelier, a town
crier, and a flâneur. Currently he
skulks around the bowels of lower Michigan teaching college writing and
literature.
FROM THE BACK COVER
In Pseudofoliculitis City nothing is as it seems and
everything is as it should be. Today's
forecast calls for extreme confrontation, with sandwich flurries and the threat
of handlebar mustaches to the west. By
turns absurd and surreal, dark and challenging, Pseudo-City exposes
what waits in the bathroom stall, under the manhole cover and in the corporate boardroom, all in a
way that can only be described as mind-bogglingly irreal.
CRITICAL COMMENTARY
Pseudo-City
“Only
D. Harlan Wilson could make a stick figure more entertaining than most human
beings. I haven't read a Wilson story I
didn't go bug-eyes over. He delivers
the surreal like no other writer working today, and his latest book is the
master surrealist at his best. Pseudo-City
is an ingenious subversion—the sort of book that has the power to change your
entire perception of the everyday world. You'll be laughing when you read it, wondering if you've just
tipped over into madness. But you won't
care because it feels so damned good.
Enjoy the vertigo, folks!”
—Michael Arnzen, author of 100 Jolts and Play
Dead
“These
intermeshed parables of madness and disjunction are funny the way that
fever-dream of the naked fetuses squirming silently on a sidewalk you had last
night is funny—when you think back on it sometime around noon today. At the
brain stem of this impressive, relentless, heterologic schizopolis crouches a
reptilian complex that would make Kafka, Burroughs, Bataille, and Leyner grin
in recognition and admiration.”
—Lance Olsen, author of Hideous
Beauties and Tonguing the Zeitgeist
“Pseudo-City is silly, bizarre, and completely
over the top. Much of the book takes a
slice of our own world, distorts it almost beyond recognition, and then creates
a clever sarcastic spin on the story by having some extremely wacky characters
play out the situation. No issue is
taboo . . . This book reads like a deeply sarcastic stand up comedy act.”
—Tami Brady, Blether
Stranger on the Loose
“D. Harlan Wilson has carved out a fictional style that is
completely without peer. Fans of the
surreal, the irreal, the weird and the absurd—not to mention anyone who is tired
of the giant cookie cutter that is contemporary fiction—should sit up and take notice.”
—William I. Lengeman III, Terror Tales
“Satirical, lyrical, and above all
clever, these stories shine . . . The mood is dark, the satire is priceless,
and this book is a must buy.”
—Susie Hawes, Crossroads Magic
The Kafka Effekt
“This collection, simply stated,
encouraged me to use parts of my brain that I don’t think I’ve used since my
teenaged years. It reopens the mind to
the discussion of existence while encouraging and entertaining the profound
powers of the imagination. I mean this
as the highest compliment to D. Harlan Wilson when I say that, in The Kafka Effekt, he shows himself to be
a Dr. Seuss for adults. He is clearly
encouraging us to continue to push to new levels of thought and
imagination—only in this case the Hat is in the Cat.”
—G. Wells Taylor, Wildclown Chronicle