M E T A G A M E S
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M a r k S. W a l f o r d
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T h e H o o k
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A crew of misfits play a dangerous metaphysical game which leads to a paradigm shift in their reality.
A Psychologist, a traveler, a nun, a sociopath and a psychic walk into a bar... It seems like the beginning of a bizarre joke – but what's the punchline?
Errol is a force of nature, sheer will-power made flesh; Jacob is an orphan of society, a traveler, broken by trust; Victoria is a woman seeking a higher calling; Mei Li has gone rogue from her master and is ready to put her psychic abilities to full use; and Anthony Sanford is a man on a mission but what that mission is remains a source of mystery.
Sanford has drawn them all together, citing some higher design, but it seems his intentions may be of a more sporting nature.
The crew venture off around the world on a peculiar mission, drawing other fringe dwellers into the game they find themselves playing, exploring the depths of their own possibilities and trying desperately to work out the rules.
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You can download the PDF for free below.
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M E T A G A M E S
THE NAKED SOUL
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M a r k S. W a l f o r d
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T h e H o o k
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The Naked Soul is the tale to end all tales.
No simple book of plots and characters woven on the loom of the page; it is an unveiling of secrets long hidden. A path to be trodden, word by word, through a labyrinth constructed of new myths – myths engineered to set the mind free from the bonds of those that came before.
What if there was only one story?
What would it need to contain?
These are the questions the gods ask one another deep in the Elysian Fields. Questions that lead to the forging of one final story; new seeds to be sown in the collective unconscious of mankind.
This is literary Armageddon!
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A S y n o p s i s:
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Loki, trickster god of the Norsemen, challenges all the gods and deities that ever were to compose the tale to end all tales.
Risking the fury of his fellow divine beings, Loki steals the manuscript and takes it back up to the world of men where he selects a solitary rare-book dealer as the source for circulation.
We find ourselves with that old man as he opens the pages of this manuscript; the first human eyes to look upon The Naked Soul.
Inside the book we meet LiRaz – our young protagonist.
LiRaz has been commissioned by a woman named Elle to pen the beginnings of a new history.
She implies that we find ourselves in the midst of an age-old war of perception, waged within the human unconscious, and that his writing this new book will be a turning point in this war; a reclaiming of lost ground.
LiRaz is left holding nothing but the thread of the present moment with which to unravel his story.
Following this thread, he meets Navarro Fitzgerald, a roguish investigator of arcane matters. Fitzgerald is currently inquiring into a case involving the missing limbs of some young girls.
There are allusions here to ‘The Red Shoes’ and ‘The Handless Maiden’. Throughout the book we find allusions to many of our traditional myths and fairy tales – from the original version of Sleeping Beauty to the Greek creation myths – finishing with the tale of Oedipus.
As well as joining Fitzgerald in his investigation, LiRaz is drawn into a criminal conspiracy with a legendary crew of misfits by called The kokoro Crew.
The first step of this conspiracy is aiding the escape of one Lemuel Raynes from his incarceration in the local mental institution.
Throughout these adventures LiRaz is faced with the weight of setting all this down in the form of a story and the deeper into the story he travels, the more he begins to feel like a pawn for some higher agency.
The thread of Fitzgerald’s inquiry leads our hero to Mister Joseph Lachesis, a gentleman scoundrel who is attmeting to locate a very rare book.
Detail by detail, the clues plot a course along the thread that leads our hero away from civilization in a labyrynthine descent into the human psyche and down; down into the machinery beneath, which keeps everything moving on its way, and down further still into the wound – a perfet reflection of human pain.
The ascent sees our hero, alone, attempting to tie up the loose threads of the investigation; re-raveling the psyche.
Meanwhile, that crew of misfits turns out to be holding perhaps more answers than our hero is ready to hear. LiRaz discovers that the leader of the crew has a journal, which he steals in the hopes of finding the final piece of the puzzle. The journal turns out to be a whole lot more than LiRaz bargained for. Within it he brings to light the seeds of his own existence and our young writer is himself unraveled.
Back with that rare book dealer, the impact of the book resonates as Loki drops a few final revelations of his own.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
A Prelude to Prologue: In Which Things Are Laid Bare
The Prologue: Invocation
The Very First Chapter: I Have A Story For You
The Chapter After That: A Single and Delicate Thread
The Next Chapter: A Deeper, Darker Shade of Black & White
The Following Chapter: The Kind of Poison You Just Can’t See
A Chapter Closer: Where the Noose Begins to Slip
A Chapter Deeper: Holding a Certain Key to a Particular Lock
Just a Chapter Away: An Illusion Fracturing
The Innermost Chapter: Frogs & Princesses
The Chapter After: Too Deep for Words
The Penultimate Chapter: Formulas Long Forgotten
The Very Last Chapter: Within Which Destiny Is Served
Epilogue: Wherein Things Are Released
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You can buy a hard copy of the novel here:
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Or you can download the PDF for free below.
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