Ian Patterson's Blog, page 3

American Psychosis

“I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning…”

-Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

I watched the children die in bombings while I scrolled on my phone and felt their anonymous weight on me. Like...

The Eyes of God

“Sister, you have sinned. Submit yourself to the eyes of God for judgement.”

Sister Margaret, third of her line to join the faith, withered skin the thin leather of an autumn leaf still uncrunched in the winter of her years, trembled inside her pristine robes. Prostrated on a circular stone plinth, she breathed out shakily, and it did nothing to quell the squirming anxiety in her guts. In the vast, infinite room, only she was illuminated. A voice spoke from the darkness. It came from all around h...

Dead Flag Blues

The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

It went like this:

The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair

-Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Dead Flag Blues

To all the children buried in rubble from the building we collapsed with long range missiles to kill a man that didn't live there anymore in a war they'll never understand but continues to bombard the buildings arou...

We, The Hollow Men

"This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper."

-T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

We do not speak if spoken to. We have no voice, we, the hollow men. We share only what we are told. We are told only what we already believe. We believe only what benefits us. We are bias, pure and unrestrained. Regurgitated from mouth to mouth, as a bird feeds its young—we eat, and we spew.

This is how it went. The world grew smaller, the greatest of days, freedom of information for all. Always connected...

Metal from Heaven by August Clarke

This book is written in the sickly sweet juices of a fruit that just turned, is still turning on your tongue. It will poison your guts as it fills your mouth and cascades down your face and throat to fill your chest with love and loss and grief and glory. It will make you yearn for another bite of the world August Clarke has created.

My time with Metal from Heaven was beautiful and raw. This dystopian, sapphic fever dream shows a world bled at the alter of ichorite production, a miracle metal tha...

Vice/Vise

Here are two variations on the theme vice that I plan to read at our open mic night tonight. Let me know if you like them! Cover image taken from Levi Walter Yaggy’s Geographical Maps and Charts (1887/93) (Public Domain)

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Big Crunch

In the inevitable tidal crashing of the universe, that final boom-whump of collision and annihilation, we will become as one. One thing, one mind, one singularity. One in its truest sense. For we are the disparate parts of some God, we are our own creation ...

The Music that Made Me - Cover Art

This will be a limited series that I’m putting out when I have the time. Consider them journal entries, and maybe a glimpse into my formative years.

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I had an idea a few weeks ago to write down some of my formative music memories. Something to bask in the nostalgia of those early years when everything wasn’t readily available on my pocket computer, where you’d hear about an album through word of mouth, or just take the plunge because you liked the cover artwork. Or you’d leave a cass...

I Hope This Email Finds You Well

Babble, open up a new thread. Write that fucker, what’s his name again? Mark? Yeah tell him he was supposed to get me the goddamn sales views this morning. And here I am, dick in my hand, because I’m un-fucking-sales-viewed.

Dearest Mark,

I hope this email finds you well. I was wondering if you had a chance to create–

Stop, what am I, a fucking bitch? Do I look like a bitch to you? More aggression, Babble.

Mark,

I expected the new sales views this morning. When do you expect to have those done?

Tony

No...

Dissolution by Nicholas Binge

Dissolution by Nicholas Binge broke my heart in the opening chapter, a trend that would continue throughout. There's a way that people write about loss that can bridge across whatever the narrative is, and form a bond with the reader. Nicholas Binge does it deftly, again and again. If you can make me choke up in the first 10 pages, when I'm not even emotionally invested in the characters yet, then you better believe I'm sticking around for the finish.

“It occurs to me that at some point, you pick...

The Cog that Spins the Wheel

I recently started on two different novel projects, and wound up shelving one of them to return to later. I really love the ideas I plotted out for it, and I’m super excited to get back to it, but I want to focus on finishing The Narrator Cycle first. Because I know if I don’t do it now, it will be so hard to come back to. Not that I don’t love writing in that universe, but after all four books are out I will be very ready to spread my wings into new literary adventures.

So I decided to throw thi...