Omikuji: random fortunes written on strips of paper at Shinto shrines in Japan.
Literally "sacred lottery", these are usually received by pulling one out randomly from a box that one shakes, hoping for the resulting fortune to be good. The omikuji falls out of a small hole, scrolled up.
The Omikuji Project is an experiment in cyberfunded art. It is an old-fashioned approach to new-founded literature, the shortest path from author to reader. It is a secret and marvelous communication, a unique way for you to read stories unavailable in any other venue, in any other way. It is a network of tales, a community. It is whispering in the dark; it is a fireside confession.
On the first of the month, subscribers will receive either a PDF or a mailed letter containing one short story not less than two-thousand words, a small piece of illustrative art by the author (and occasionally by her friends), and any other literary flotsam I can find to send you. The mailing, however, is the heart of the project: printed on high quality archival paper, autographed, and sealed with a scarlet wax stamp, they are stunning collectible artifacts.
The stories will not be published in other arenas, so this is the only way to read them. I will continue this project so long as a minimum number of subscribers are interested (approximately 30).
Click below to be a part of the Omikuji Project (Note: Subscribers outside the US should email the author for international postage rates):
In honor of the sacred lottery of the Omikuji, each month, a random subscriber will be selected to receive a unique gift along with their email or mailing, which will change from month to month.
Subscribers will also have access to a dedicated Livejournal community and may, if they like, suggest subjects, characters, or structures for future stories. I deeply hope that a small community will form around these stories, and that my readers, extraordinary people that they are, can find each other and know each other through this hidden space, off the beaten road of traditional publishing.
The first tale, The Glass Gear, a steampunk Cinderella story, will go out on April 1st. you must subscribe by the 28th of any given month in order to receive that month's story; late subscriptions will receive the next month's offering. In order to cover costs, the mailing will be $10 a month, the PDF $5. If you wish to subscribe for a full year, a discounted rate of $100 for the mailings and $50 for the emails is avaiable.
If you enjoy a given month's story, please feel free to use the tip jar or to upgrade to a mailing for that period for an additional $5. You subscription will not change permanantly unless you wish it to.
Before and behind, the line of brass lanterns extended. Tristram was caught up in the traffic, her feet hardly touching the glowering red road, swept along by a tide of bodies. She snatched breaths whenever the teeming folk swelled and her head crested theirs, only to be driven down again, surrounded by swinging arms and strange scents--women who smelled of nutmeg and cardamom, men who smelled of smoldering newspapers, glossy-coated dogs on their hind legs and horses in prim green vests and Windsor ties, smelling of expensive rose-leaf perfumes. She could hardly breathe for the press of them.
At home, she had always liked traffic jams. They gave her reason to stare out the window at glowering grey skies, and besides, if they were driving anywhere with more than three other cars on the road, it generally meant they were headed somewhere excited, somewhere worth getting stuck, worth the endless radio and gas-brake, gas-brake.
But here, Tristram walked. Everyone walked. There was no sky to stare at, only the long, black, loamy underside of the world, broken by those glowing, curling glass flowers that seemed to turn and crane their stems to follow her. Around her rose the rumble of a thousand languages at once. The flowers played a slow, quiet music, something like department store speakers, and something like a sitar of sugar candy, stuck in a minor key. She strained to hear it, and in her straining nearly collided with the creature before she saw it.
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