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Jack Preston King

@jackprestonking.bsky.social

1.8K followers 3.7K following 2.3K posts

Author of In Defense of Magical Thinking: Essays in Defiance of Conformity to Reason and other books for rebels against the spiritual, creative, and cultural status quo. Writes unruly poems, short stories, and novels, too. jackprestonking.com

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · Apr 13

For anyone interested, my author website currently has over 200 essays, short stories, flash fiction, poems, a novel, bunches of book reviews and more, all free to read. No subscription needed! Just a good old fashioned author website full of cool things. Come see what I'm about! jackprestonking.com

Jack Preston King

Jack Preston King - author, poet, philosopher

jackprestonking.com

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 2h

I saw this in the theater as a teenager when it came out and I remember thinking "this is the dumbest movie I've ever loved watching!" A huge Queen fan, I went for the soundtrack but stayed for the high camp comic strip fun!

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Sarah Nour @sarahnour.bsky.social · 2h

Before Sarah Good was executed in the Salem Witch Trials, she said to one of the judges, Rev. Nicholas Noyes, "If you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink." Twenty-five years later, Noyes suffered a hemorrhage and choked to death on his own blood. #WyrdWednesday

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Kadmus @kadmusauthor.bsky.social · 3h

Are you interested in Orpheus and the Orphic Mysteries? I recently received some delightful feedback about the chapter of “Learning from Legendary Practitioners” on Orpheus.

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Louise Blackwick @louiseblackwick.com · 4h

Showcasing only the FIRST page & the LAST page of my epic #darkfantasy novel (+ #cosmichorror) "Vivian Amberville - The Book of Chaos" 💙📚

Not sure whether you can deduce anything about the story from it, but oh well.😅

If any fellow #authors feel up to the challenge, show us your 1st & last page!♥️🥰

There is a hard limit to human imagination. This story will take you far beyond that limit, beyond the fabric of reality itself.

In this book you will find characters that can:

manipulate luck, odds and circumstances (the ODDS WEAVER, Vivian Amberville)
remove, store and control physical pain (the PAIN PUSHER, Wolfgaar)
strip both objects and subjects of their shadow (the SHADOW STEALER, Djaar)
reduce the physical world to concepts and abstractions (the CONCEPT BREAKER, Gold)
create shifts in perception and/or gravity (the REALITY SHIFTERS, Yuresne and Circense)
pluck sound out of thin air and store it inside containers (the THUNDER BRINGER, Antuun)
absorb, hold and release darkness (the VOID WEAVER formally known as Allspice)
ABOUT THE SERIES
"Follow the Dark and where it's leading you..."

Vivian Amberville® is a bestselling DARK FANTASY book series about a girl whose imagination can reshape reality.

ABOUT THE BOOK
"Vivian Amberville - The Book of Chaos" is the second instalment in the Vivian Amberville fantasy series by Dutch international author, Louise Blackwick. It centers on Vivian’s attendance at the “Alarian School of Thought”, a place where students learn the noble and dangerous art of “Weaving subtle Threads of influence into the fabric of reality”.

Joined by friends and challenged by foes, Vivian will have to master her ability to manipulate odds and circumstances, in a world now complicated by war, disease and political strife.

"The Book of Chaos" also features people who can rewrite history using a special type of "Ink". It includes individuals who manipulate entire nations by putting words into people's heads and watch those exact words take over. We explore the art of imbibing and imbuing one's intention into an object, and many more mind-over-matter powers.

Standing at over 220K+ words “The Book of Chaos” is a complex narrative tapestry that has taken the author over five and a half years to write.

If you're a fan of epic dark fantasy, with a new adult cast of characters, magical realism set in vast psychedelic worlds, rich Jungian themes and just a touch of Cosmic Horror, you're in for a real treat.

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 3h

My #BookReview of Spoonbenders, by Daryl Gregory

#psychic #family #novel #fiction #warm #funny #Boosky

jackprestonking.com/f/spoonbenders

Spoonbenders

Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory is a charming novel about a down-to-earth, ordinary family, most of whose members possess some level of extraordinary psychic ability. The mother, Maureen Telemachus,…

jackprestonking.com

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 2d

It’s #SpookySeason! Read "Night Fall, Moon Rise," a brand new 2,000 word story set on #Halloween night!

#HappyHalloween #shortstory #HalloweenStory #HalloweenFiction #magicalrealism #weirdstories #weirdfiction

jackprestonking.com/home/f/night...

Night Fall, Moon Rise

A Halloween Vignette

jackprestonking.com

Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 5h

Been listening to an audiobook on Irish folklore, with a fantastic narrator who has a great brogue and perfect Irish pronunciation. A very pleasurable listen! But now I find that in my mind I'm hearing every Bluesky post I read in that voice! You're all Irish now! Help!

Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 5h

By this astute definition we have created hell on earth. Welcome to 2025...

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FRINGE QUEST @fringequest.bsky.social · 5h

"We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment." -- C. S. Lewis

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Susan Maxwell @ Bibliothèque des Refusés @bibliorefuses.bsky.social · 8h

Greetings! I am an independent author & scholar who writes literary/slipstream, fantasy, & mystery fiction, and non-fiction related to archives & literature. Latest book is (the appropriately seasonal) Death at Hallowtide, a cosy mystery/fantasy set in Ireland.
Links linktr.ee/dr.susan.max...

Cover of Death at Hallowtide.
Book description on back cover:
Corrbofinn. A place where things are… different. Where Jessica Quill has inherited a house and land. And where she has just become the number one suspect in the murder of local wide boy Tony Millar.
Jessica's life has entered uncharted waters. A job she hates, a cheating partner, her unexpected inheritance, and the final straw: tripping over a corpse in the rain when she comes to rural Ireland to arrange the sale of her property.
But Herne's Acre is no ordinary place. It’s a key crossing-point on the borderlands between the mortal world and the otherworlds of the sidhe. And now it is to be sold by a stranger unfamiliar with the true nature of Corrbofinn, a source of considerable anxiety for Thornapple, that very civil servant of the Borderlands Commission.
Bewildered, grumpy, and armed only with knowledge of toxic plants and classic detective stories, Jessica pursues her own inquiries to clear her name. Corrbofinn yields some of its mysteries along with new friends—human, canine, and… Well. You know.
Increasingly conflicted, Jessica’s sensible self squares off against her dreams of a different life. But she makes enemies, too, leading to a deadly showdown on Hallowe'en, when the borders between worlds are at their most fluid and uncanny.

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BOO-trous BOO-trous-Ghoulie @dlbowman76.com · 10h

Every one of my friends knows this but Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was an absolute treasure. Every single one of her works that I have read has been even better on rereading. To give someone the Earthsea books for the first time is a mitzvah. You'll make their life better forever.

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Louise Blackwick @louiseblackwick.com · 1d

My deep and vast literary legacy, ladies and gents...💙📚

#quotes #louiseblackwick

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 9h

Let’s talk about what it means to “follow a path” in life.

#spirituality #psychology #mythology #LifeLessons #Booksky

jackprestonking.com/f/choose-the...

Choose the One that Thrills Your Heart

To discover your destiny, take this advice from a Greek god

jackprestonking.com

Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 19h

Let’s envision a bright, common future for global Humanity – then choose the past with the power to get us there.

#myth #mythology #psychology #LifeLessons

jackprestonking.com/f/choosing-o...

Choosing Our Past with the Future in Mind

We’re Not Telling the Same Story. Let’s Get On the Same Page.

jackprestonking.com

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heaven or los alamos & the hungry ghost @ghostlips.bsky.social · 19h

ai is a secular faith that is entirely divorced from spirituality and therefore fails at a person-to-person level as it is almost entirely solipsistic in practice and philosophy. it's the sum of all parts and nothing more, mirrored from your own psyche. it can never want to help, as it cannot

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 19h

From my chapbook Like an Astonished Magician: archive.org/details/like...

Like an Astonished Magician : Jack Preston King : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

From the pleasures of mature love (While ember kisses/stirred between two lifetimes twined in love/and years, those romance doesn’t know about), to...

archive.org

Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 19h

After 26 years of marriage I'm still crazy in love with my wife.
#LuckyGuy #poetry

No Surprise

It’s funny how those things that we expect
the least somehow always seem to happen
when we least expect. We really shouldn’t
be surprised. And yet, we’ll say of every
out of nowhere speeding car or falling
Easter snow, we never saw it coming.
What should be no surprise has once again
surprised us. And that’s always how it feels,
even after all these years together,
to find my heart, so practiced in your presence,
speeding, falling hard toward what I never
see coming every time. My head and heels
sent spinning by your kiss. Surprised by falling
in love that should be no surprise — again.

-- Jack Preston King

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Eric Wargo @thenightshirt.bsky.social · 1d

Awaken your inner precog!

In partnership with Morbid Anatomy, my book Precognitive Dreamwork and the Long Self is now a five-week course, Sundays starting November 23.

shorturl.at/FaOdB

Precognitive Dreamwork and the Long Self with Anthropologist and Author Eric Wargo, PhD, Begins November 23 — Morbid Anatomy

Five-Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom Sundays, November 23 - December 21, 2025 3 - 4:30pm ET (NYC Time) $175 General Admission PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students ...

shorturl.at

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Sophiacycles @sophiacycles.bsky.social · 20h

When one reads poetry that is “all on the page,” one is alone. When poetry is spoken, particularly when the larynx is opened and the voice can come from the midriff, people feel in company, in joy, in community. Depths of grief are reached, and flights of inspiration. So it might be well to let your own voice sound when coming upon a poem that particularly strikes you or one that seems remote and cold on the page.Robert BlyThe Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 1d

My #BookReview of the Audible Original full cast audio production of Bill Oakley's Space: 1969

#audiobooks #Booksky

jackprestonking.com/f/space-1969...

Space: 1969 - A Baby Boomer Sci-Fi Treat

I bought the Audible audiobook of Bill Oakley’s Space: 1969 naively expecting it to be an audio narration of a paper book, like every other audiobook on Audible. Well, it’s definitely not that.…

jackprestonking.com

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R.U. Sirius @rusirius.bsky.social · 1d

seen on fbook this morning

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Alison Birch @irishali13.bsky.social · 1d

For your Tuesday
We Lived Happily During the War
~ ILYA KAMINSKY
—And when they bombed other people's houses, we protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not enough.

We Lived Happily During the War
BY ILYA KAMINSKY
And when they bombed other people's houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.

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FRINGE QUEST @fringequest.bsky.social · 2d

"I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me." ~ Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), world's first computer programmer

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FRINGE QUEST @fringequest.bsky.social · 2d

"Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology." ~ Terry Eagleton

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 1d

𝑃𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑒! 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑑. 𝐻𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑚𝑒!

"𝐺𝐼𝑉𝐸 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐶𝑂𝑀𝑀𝐴𝑁𝐷."

"𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑚," ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑑. "𝑁𝑜𝑤."

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑒𝑥𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑑 𝑔𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑦.

"𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐼𝑉𝐴𝑇𝐸𝐷."

Manifest Destiny Inc

Paraclete?

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