Mark A. Rayner
Mark A. Rayner posted an update4 months ago
4 months ago
Cover Reveal! This is always an exciting time during the life of a book. The moment when the art is ready. I believe this work by BiblioFic Designs does a lovely job of expressing what’s in between the cover in terms of the stories, themes and characters presented there. Not an easy task for a collection that spans several genres, and runs the gamut from serious to silly. Donovan Street Press is the publisher of The Gates of Polished Horn. It’s a collection of twenty short stories and flash fictions I’ve written over the years, going back twenty-four years. (Wait, that long ago? Checks math. Yeah, twenty-four. Yikes.) Ten of those stories have been previously published. They’ve appeared in such publications as Abyss & Apex, Parsec, Corvus Review and The Saturday Evening Post. The title of the collection is one that I’ve always had in mind for one of my projects. At one point it was the title of a trilogy that I started that never went anywhere. It originates from this quote: "Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams, one is made of ivory, the other made of horn. Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved are will-o'-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit. The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them.” ~Homer, Book XIX, The Odyssey And that’s exactly what holds the collection together: dreamers facing their truth. Many of the stories are science fiction, some are humorous, but there’s other genres in there: magical realism, horror, fantasy, and even some straight-up literary fiction. Yet they all deal with characters encountering a life-altering fact. Some of them are dream-like, some more visceral, and some exist in that liminal space between. Publication date is March 10, 2025 -- more news soon!

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