The Sorcerer's Blog

This is a relic of the Black Sun Project era.

A Dying Book was a riff off the Jewish notion that God writes the names of all who are to survive the coming year during the high holidays. The idea that an inversion of this might be turned into a magical object comes from a Robert Bloch story, “The Pin” where a miniature scythe is used to prick telephone book entries, bestowing doom. It’s a fine story, but one which has been plagiarized many times.

My version– which failed utterly I must confess– was to create a magical notebook filled with vast amounts of malign power, and then enter the names of various enemies by a quill dipped in blood.

Clever idea, but not all clever ideas are useful. The sticky pages stuck together and absolutely no one died. But the poem which served as a preface has some nice bits. It probably deserved a bit more editing, perhaps.

This was probably written around 1995, plus or minus.