Title: Supernal Stories
Form: Short story collection (7 volumes) ~ 25K-80K words per volume // 2.5K 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.
*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.
Preview & Premises:
Volume I — Meet thunderous kaiju, cosmic librarians, poet gods, existential snipers, and philosophically-minded A.I. golems, among others…
Volume II — Investigate a corporate conspiracy with a detective android, play a poker game for your soul, delve a fantastique dream journal, embody a creepy cosmic entity, witness the ignition of an interplanetary war via Mars rover, experience the consciousness of a messianic figure, meet your doppelgänger on a forest path…
Volume III — So a jester, an auditor, a composer, an astronaut, and a man who was just buried alive walk into a bar…
Volume IV — Follow Exen, the ultimate super-agent and wielder of the Laserwatch, as he pulls off a high-tech heist for an indestructible orb, fights for his freedom in a bestial arena, sneaks into a billionaire’s villa, battles terrorists in a 24-hour race against time, hacks a mega-city by playing a chess game, purges a haunted house that leads straight to the Underworld, and single-handedly annihilates an army of the undead on an alien planet.
Volume V — A collection of intimate conversations and solitary struggles where a notebook can erase your past, a silhouette may be your muse, and the greatest battles are fought in quiet bars and momentous self-labyrinths.
Volume VI — Immoral experiments and mad ape science; lakeborne witches and hallucinogenic prayers; post-apocalyptic underground guilds and ritual combat that saves democracy.
Volume VII — Featuring tales of imagination and intrigue such as “Psykimancer,” “Fernweh,” “The Crimson Collector,” “Parasocialites,” and “Tha Ballad of Luster Zobe, Man About Multiverse”!
*Supernal* defined: being or coming from on high; exalted, exquisite; superlatively good; celestial, heavenly.
Author Website Link: https://dylanorosz.com/books/#supernal-stories
My plan is to release Supernal Stories Vol. I-VII through 2025-2026!
Godspeed,
Dylan Orosz
Releases:
- Supernal Stories: Volume I — Fall 2025
- Supernal Stories: Volume II — Winter 2025 (coming soon)
- Supernal Stories: Volume III — Winter 2026
Thresholds of Transformation 