~ announcing the launch of Supernal Stories: Volume I, my first collection of phantastical short fiction in the realms of fantasy x sci-fi x horror and more.
Title: Supernal Stories
Form: Short story collection (Volume I) ~ 76K words / 28 stories = 2.7K avg words per story
Genre: Phantasy Fables x Weird Tales
Target Audience: Teen+ / for fans of The Twilight Zone and the short fiction of Bradbury and Kafka.
Pitch: *SUPERNAL STORIES* is a collection of stories about lives from beyond, strange souls & weird transformations, and the responsibility of existence.
Premises: Volume I — Meet thunderous kaiju, cosmic librarians, poet gods, existential snipers, and philosophically-minded A.I. golems, among others…
*SUPERNAL STORIES* comprise 7 volumes of inventively experimental short-form storytelling. There is a chronology of progress to this anthology of fiction written over seven years of worldly transformation (2017-2024). Genres presided include fantasy x sci-fi x horror and more. Themes presented include creation, identity, transformation, psychosis, ethereal mysteries, reality-blurring extrasensory perception, and the endless search for existential meaning. As the pages turn, concepts expand and visions illuminate; steadily, word by word, fresh universes and esoteric concepts shall be borne into the realms of your consciousness. These stories aim to detail the human condition from richly discerning angles and often feature supernatural twists.
~ Collecting Old Stories. In all, SUPERNAL STORIES are my volumes of stories past. I wrote short fiction on my blog Thresholds of Transformation from 2017-2024 and have re-revised these stories for collection into book volumes I plan to release from 2025-2026.
~ My Zones. These collections are wide-ranging and primarily inspired by what originally got me writing short fiction: The Twilight Zone. Fantasy x sci-fi x horror are on the menu; many stories are wandering and wondrous affairs and often feature satisfactorily weird twist endings. Some are plot heavy, others a kind of stream-of-consciousness psychic journey, and more than a few feature epic concepts.
~ Secret Origins. Altogether, SUPERNAL STORIES doubles as a platform to reveal my progression as a writer and in many ways represents the canvas on which I learned to write fiction. These concepts, characters, and stories would come to me and I’d do my best to bring their salacious seeds to flowery fruition. Alongside the organizing annals of a gigantic Trello board titled “Story Ideas” and filled with copious haphazard notes and glittering imagery, I churned out many. Most of the stories are under 3,000 words, though some stretch into rather epic adventures of 7K-15K words.
~ 7-7-7. Since these stories were penned over a period of 7 years, there shall be 7 volumes, each one containing stories from each of the 7 years.
~ Cover Concepts. For the covers, I am using public domain art by various favored legends, whom I shall credit with telling a visual story of their own across the seven volumes. // In the collection’s marketing and on my website, I include several alternates and master covers for the anthology as well. For me, these art pieces by Blake, Bosch, Friedrich, Martin, Paton, Raphael, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder help me to capture the sublime energy I am after with my phantasies.
*Supernal* defined: being or coming from on high; exalted, exquisite; superlatively good; celestial, heavenly.
Story Hooks
Here are the story hooks for each of the tales included in Volume 1:
| Title | Genre | 🪝 |
| On The Shore | Weird | A boy encounters a storm from the beachfront. |
| Writs of Dawn | Fantasy | A poet must write a poem to create each day’s dawn. |
| Last Man, Last Dog | Weird | Man wakes up on park bench to find world destroyed. |
| Forest I | Fantasy | Tale from a mysterious, melancholy, and meaningful forest. |
| The Lyogith Lives On | Horror | Young man breaks into abandoned night club, meets a shadowy figure. |
| Night Owl | Mystery | Night owl makes a wish during the twilight hour. |
| Existential Sniper | Mystery | An expert sniper has second, and third, thoughts about her latest mission. |
| Breach and Clear | Horror | A SWAT team infiltrates a hostage situation and uncovers a mythical monster. |
| Negotiation | Thriller | Two generals meet at the peak of a hill between their armies. |
| Game | Mystery | Four elementary boys meet up to play a mystical game during a summer storm. |
| Beers | Weird | Friends get together for beers and start to misremember their respective fates. |
| The Clown | Weird | A neurotic man goes to a party and puts on a jester persona. |
| Kamae | Fantasy | A master swordsman dances with his blade while conceiving a new quarry. |
| The Library | Fantasy | A cosmic librarian goes about her busy day. |
| Golem | Sci-Fi | A scientist builds an automated cybernetic being in order to save the world once and for all. |
| The Dramatic Death Of Fabian J. Roshchild | Weird | A dying man flashes through his final series of thoughts. |
| Reading in Her Tree | Fantasy | A wondering woman reads a book while a voice in the sky harries her about the past. |
| The Mountain & The Dragon | Fantasy | The harrowing history of a mountain and her draconic origins. |
| Think Tank | Sci-fi | A council of experts gather to lead the world utilizing a new system of intelligently designed democracy based on love. |
| Shootout at the Shoggoth Saloon | Horror | A group of outlaws encounter a series of terrible situations. |
| Crux | Fantasy | A master wizard and his apprentice converse about a dangerous spell. |
| The Ocelot | Weird | A lonely ocelot prances through a post-apocalyptic world. |
| Hunting & Gathering | Weird | The primal human world is led by four archetypal chiefs. |
| Saint Michael | Fantasy | The Saint Michael train thunders over the tracks of the heavenly arena. |
| One Belief | Horror | Do you know cats can see ghosts? |
| Tower | Sci-Fi | A solitary figure configures grand calculations inside a sophisticated tower. |
| Shredder | Weird | Getaway driver outraces the cops while a particle accelerator comes alive. |
| Last Hunt | Action-Horror | An especially convicted vampire hunter meets his last foe. |
SUPERNAL STORIES = anthological literary thought experiments across time, space, and consciousness cast with introspective and sometimes maddened characters.
The book is available in print via Amazon & BN and ebook formats. 📙📗
Please enjoy Supernal Stories!
Godspeed,
Dylan Orosz
Thresholds of Transformation 