When you fall into a labyrinth of tangled phantasms...
Be careful what you seek in the dark. You may find what it is you are looking for. It is hunting, just as hungrily. For you.
In this nightmare world of fragmented reality, violent obsession, and haunting ritual, open the cellar door into a dark hallway lined with the forty five tales and poems in Nightshades of Eden. With 20 full color illustrations beautifully reproduced from original paintings featuring the artist's own blood.
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Nightshades of Eden
Upcoming Dates
July 31, 2024
Pre-Orders Open
October 31, 2024
Official Book Release
Read an Excerpt
Nine Reflections in a Shattered Mirror
I.
Last night, I pricked the moon
with a pearl knife.
I watched the glowing white
slither through my fingers,
a raw egg.
II.
The next morning,
we tied her to a post in the backyard
and let her bleat relentlessly, a goat on the altar.
No one told me it was her time for the butcher block.
She was thirteen.
They made me hold the knife.
III.
I wake up to find meridians
cutting your body from North to South.
Your backbone, a sinuous axis.
I read your map from East to West
searching for your shore,
but you have no direction.
IV.
They saw the colors of the sky
reflected in his gunshot wounds.
That was the night that God
painted the innards of the boy’s heart
into the theater floor.
When they held it in their hands,
the barrel of the rifle became a telescope.
I saw only black.
V.
Sea water fills the auditorium.
Schools of piranha devour the flesh
off the damp velvet seats.
Chiffon hangs from waterlogged bodies
like suspended white ghosts
I touch their translucent skin lovingly.
VI.
“I am no more alive than you are.”
She pierces my wrist with a long scarlet fingernail
and evaporates, leaving a sparrow corpse in my palm.
I watch as I drip into my hand
and fade into the edges of the feathers.
VII.
I lie naked in a violet room.
Jagged film negatives are strewn
on the grey satin sheets of the bed.
I swim among leering black faces,
lunar white hair framing them like tendrils of smoke.
Your discarded ex-lovers; never developed,
forever present; haunting me.
VIII.
Your hands are made of broken glass.
I feel your touch cut me to ribbons.
You string garlands of my flesh
around the door of your apartment
and boil my bones for broth
IX.
I see them carry it,
a casket filled with hundreds of autumn flowers.
Six pallbearers heave my weightless soul,
their tears breaking on the ground like hailstones.
I wake in a cold sweat next to you.
My body turns to white roses,
smothering you in your sleep.
Anesthesia
We gaze absently out of the windows of the train car
and the dimming landscape slices by,
the sunset an open wound.
As the rust of the sky scabs over into dark,
we are left staring
into the stark white face of a cold and bloodless moon.
I’ve always been quick to realize
that the stars I wish on as I lay in bed
are nothing more than silver pins
holding the velvet of night in place.
Every dawn they rain down in a shining hailstorm;
bullets piercing us with the realization of our own solid existence,
a tangled world of flesh and decay;
Our candles burn til the wicks snuff out
and our wax pools and cools as our spirit rises up with the smoke,
detached, floating into a dreaming world
where the pain is only imagined.
Check back soon for more excerpts!
About Cyn
Cyn lives in Denver, Colorado. In her spare time she loves relaxing at home and spending time with her family, writing, making art, belly dancing, and wandering through old cemeteries (In fact, that's how she met her husband). Cynthia works as a high school English teacher and enjoys cultivating creativity and compassion in the youth in her community. This is her first full length publication.
Nightshades of Eden began ten years ago, as a chapbook for a college poetry class. It continued to grow into a full length collection of poetry, short stories and artwork. "Nightshades of Eden became somewhat of a private chapel of self reflection and expression. It became more of a place to me than a project. This is how I see the world, through my own stained glass window."
Cyn is also the illustrator of Nightshades of Eden. Cyn has always loved working with mixed media. Many of the illustrations featured in Nightshades of Eden include parts that are painted in Cyn's own blood. More than anything, she sees this act as a ritualistic way of connecting herself to her creations using a medium that has quite literally flowed through her heart.
It is undeniable that Nightshades of Eden is steeped in darkness. Many of the themes that run throughout are mental illness, depression, suicide, the aftermath of a mass shooting, death, living in a world of decay, and heartbreak. Yet, cutting through like slivers of light, hope is visible in some of the brighter notes woven throughout the book. Though there is loss, pain, chaos, violence, and tragedy, there is also love, new life, and a sense of spiritual redemption.
Release Date: October 31st, 2024
Presale Opens July 31st, 2024
Stay tuned for more updates!
Available 10.31.24 at these fine retailers:
nightshadesofeden.art
Cyn's Dark Arts Boutique
Mutiny Information Cafe
Barnes and Noble
Amazon
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Contact Cyn
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Email
cynkalam@gmail.com
cyn@nightshadesofeden.art