Death Flex : Shadow of the Executioner

Pilum New Voices

by J.B. Jackson, Brian Evenson (Introduction), Neal Durando (Editor)

The headsman of Nuremburg, Franz Schmidt put an end to hundreds of convicts, each of whom merited a line in his "Schober was beheaded by favour; Marti was hanged, and the bleachers made him a pair of very white hose, a doublet and stockings of Cologne linen."Introduced by the best-selling author, Brian Evenson, Pilum is proud to publish four new writers who take us into the forgotten reality behind these laconic entries in Schmidt's fascinating sixteenth-century execution records. Brian Renninger, JB Jackson (author of Shagduk and Ursula of Ulm), Lester Glover, and John Daker rescue final truths only fiction can properly deliver. The back half of this beautiful, yet lugubrious volume examines the reality principle at play in the fiction of Jack Vance by leading Vance critic, Paul Rhoads. Further fictions from Messrs. Alexander Palacio and Charles Crabtree transport us to settings uncomfortably proximate and movingly legendary. Finally, Jeffro Johnson meditates on the significance of death, ludic and otherwise, among players of Dungeons & Dragons.

216 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2023

About the author

Music freak, aesthete, and '70s aficionado, JB Jackson is a native of Fort Worth, Texas. He currently lives with his family in Sebastopol, California. He is an editor of art reference books and his fiction has appeared in Black Rose, The Wells of Ur, Death Flex: Shadow of the Executioner, and Prizes (Pilum Press New Voices, No. 4). Shagduk is his first novel. The second title in the De re dordica saga, Ursula of Ulm was published in August 2024. A third book is in the works.