Cover Reveal for Necessary Poisons!

Info on my forthcoming book and other things I've been up to

Author

Andrea Blythe
July 15, 2024

I’m absolutely delighted to present the cover for my forthcoming found poetry chapbook, Necessary Poisons — to be published later this year by Insterstellar Flight Press.

From the Cover Description: A woman troubled by her place in the dark manuscript of her life rediscovers her strength and power. Poison, plants, bloodshed, and the supernatural collide as Blythe weaves a haunting series of horror poems not for the faint of heart.

Necessary Poisons has essentially been in the works since 2016, when I took part in The Poeming, a challenge to create found poetry from the pages of Stephen King’s The Plant. Since then, I’ve revised and edited the poetry and developed a number of new poems for the final collection — along with creating the cover art and collage illustrations within the book.

I’m so excited to finally see this book go into print. Digital review copies are now available at Net Galley, with plans to launch preorders in October of this year. And I will keep you updated as things develop.

Sample Poems:

Advanced Praise:

“In a collection of otherworldly poems, Andrea Blythe deftly constructs verses that function like surreal puzzle boxes, inviting readers to unravel the complexities of identity and self-discovery within the context of a vast, unexplainable, and often violent world. By grounding her poems in the organic and the natural, Blythe walks a dazzling line somewhere between bloody corporeality and cosmic wonder. An exhilarating and provocative work.”

— Claire C. Holland, author of I Am Not Your Final Girl

“Andrea Blythe is one of the most unique and gifted fantasy-horror authors out there today, and her latest book, Necessary Poisons, is proof why she should be at the top of your reading list. With gorgeous and haunting language that feels as lush as the poisonous plants that inspire it, this collection is a heartfelt ode to Stephen King, and a truly breathtaking accomplishment that's not to be missed.”

— Gwendolyn Kiste, Lambda Literary and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Reluctant Immortals and The Rust Maidens

"Andrea Blythe’s found poetry is horror and resurrection and soil, jackals and poison plants and dead things transformed. She actively erases story in search of narrative: her collection is method as well as madness, and the two come together as a literary chrysalis, where the act of adaptation results in mutations that slink and shriek over the page.”

— Dr. Octavia Cade, author of Chemical Letters and Mary Shelley Makes a Monster

What I’ve Been Up To

Most of my creative capacity over the past five weeks has been focused on completing the Game Writing Master Class II, taught by Susan O’Connor (a writer on Bioshock, Far Cry 2, and a number of other amazing games) through The Narrative Department. The class is a deep dive into game writing, with modules on story genre versus game genre, branching narratives, cinematics, quests, and more.

For each lesson, Susan shares interviews with experts in the games industry about their perspective on that week’s topic and hosts open discussion sessions so the students can delve deeper into the subject. Each week we also perform deep analyses of games and create narrative samples through various exercises. My favorite projects, by far, have involved collaborative work between myself and one or more game writers — which is closer to what it feels like to make games.

I’m absolutely loving the experience so far, but it is taking up a lot of my energy. All my waffling about what creative thing to focus on next went up in a puff of smoke in the face of class deadlines.

This is the last week of the class — and I am both relieved at the prospect and sad for it to end. After the class is over, I’m hoping to share some of the insights I learned by possibly expanding on some of the analyses I performed or polishing up some of the creative samples I wrote.

Recent Publications

Medium is an interesting blogging platform, since it has the potential to provide a bit of extra income to its writers through royalties. Most of my experience on the site has been fairly static with somewhat low readership — but something shifted over the past six months and my writing has seen a boost in views.

As a result, I’ve been playing around with posting in various publications on the site more regularly, with positive results. Here are a few of the the things I’ve shared on Medium recently (with friend links, so you can bypass the paywall).

Poems Published:

Essays Published

Good Reads

Check Wendig, author of The Book of Accidents, recommends blowing up your writing process, as needed:

Anyway, my point is ultimately this: you’re gonna eventually hit a speedbump or even a wall where you discover that the Way You Write is simply no longer working. Why that is, I don’t know, because again, I am not you, I don’t know your life. But it’ll happen. And when that does, you have to be willing to change it up. Change when you write. Evening to morning, morning to evening. Change where you write: stop writing in that Starbucks, or fuck, start writing in a Starbucks, write in the Starbucks bathroom, get behind the counter and write your story in latte foam, go sit with a stranger at Starbucks and steal their laptop and write your story on it. Change something.

Charlie Jane Anders, author of All the Birds in the Sky, advocates for allowing authors to read their own work at book signings and other literary events:

There's a particular sort of magic in a well-performed reading of someone's own carefully chosen words. The author and the audience join together in creating a space where the narrative lives in the center of the room, and people are literally transported by hearing the author's voice. I've compared it in the past to church: yes, sometimes it can be boring, but it can also be incredibly transcendent, communal and a bit otherworldly.

And literary readings are a crucial part of book culture — they turn the written word into spoken word, a very particular sort of alchemy. I know for sure I leveled up as a writer by reading my work to people and getting a sense of what was working from their reactions.

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