Hekate in the New World order: A note from the publisher

Why publish books when the world is dying?

A local way of reformulating the question: Will viruses, global temperature changes, fossil fuel scarcity and a short sighted propensity to create money out of thin air, kill the Great American Dream? That “we” work so hard precisely for those rewards, the moments of down time when we enjoy a good thriller, a philosophical treatise. or casually create a Bukowski meme, swirling a glass of Cutty Sark, pale face greened in lap top glow.

Certainly the movement to ignore the possibility of decline continues, that collective sticking of thumbs in both ears and humming loudly, that all too common avoidance of hearing truths, let alone considering or attempting to verify them, This differs from practical avoidance; that is, contemplating death TOO often, Even thinking in general can lead to becoming an unproductive member of society. When you sit still and think your are making less of a contribution, unless you get paid to teach philosophy to kids. One hallmark of this modern world is the importance of qualifying one’s irony as ironic or not-so-ironic (as irony, to an extent, has replaced the oxygen in the air we breath).

So what about books, novels, poems and such? What place do they have while iceberg’s crumble into the North Atlantic. and Miami Beach is rumored to have already been flooded? Certainly readers throughout the world have now evolved into different artificial flavors, the handler’s of physical books becoming more of a rare butterfly, along with the novel itself, as new categories of shortness are created every day along with journals devoted to flash fiction submissions under six words. How many forty five minute drum solos do you hear on currently released CDs? The new digital reward systems are to an extent based on calculated attention spans and a tried and true psychology of advertising. Our pleasure centers are being investigated through the harnessing of personal date and preference, all that in order to ultimately “pump up the likes,” the LOLs and loves, while acknowledging enormous returns garnered in winning the perceived social media popularity contests. So you can say the world IS different now, one of those economic expressions that’s used tongue in cheek on Twitter, by traders and political pundits, with respect to predicting the behavior of markets. But nobody knows whether the world is actually different or not, that we are different, whether flash fiction will be the new norm along with face masks. Conformity certainly has been revised and bolstered in our adherence and reliance upon electronic devices.

So what if the world is dying, slowly? Will that or should that change our reading habits, whether flash, novella or prosody? Will writers stop writing? Hekate is making the assumption no. Or rather, Hekate doesn’t care the world is dying. Does and doesn’t. That the world is as shallow as my tea stained saucer, and dying as well, certainly needs to be recognized and discussed. Will that happen?

The bottom line is, the three headed dog needs to be fed at the gates of hell, daily, as it has always been fed. In that, Hekate wants to continue to attract writers who believe in their personal mythologic journey in the face of a world dominated by stupidity and near certain natural and economic collapse, who would still type the last sentence of their under 700 word piece then press send as the tsunami rolls over the top of their stilted straw house.

Only understand, Hekate moves very slow behind the scenes and while frequently answering your urgent email inquiries with long rambling stream of consciousness harangues championing Yeats’ artifice of eternity, we may not actually be working on your book at all.