Official hub for Raptoraem â a nine-book dark fantasy saga of rebellion, mythpunk magic, and a drowned city that refuses to die. Previews, contraband lore, and soundtrack drops.
đ¸ď¸ FREEDOM COSTS BLOOD. SO DOES MAGIC. đ¸ď¸
Premise:
Raptoraem is a nine-book dark fantasy epic set in a city severed from its empire and ruled from the ruins.
Once a strip-mined colony of Solarium, Raptoraem fought free in a violent revolution. But liberty came at a cost. The city remains fractured across its five Struts, with true power buried in the Pit â a tiered underworld of syndicates, warlords, and whispered gods.
At the center is Erik Mordiger, ruthless powerbroker turned statesman, fighting to hold together the city he helped unshackle.
But the past is returning in the form of four women tied to his rise â and his unraveling:
Vira â his fiercely devoted second-in-command, on the edge of fracture.
Aurea â a blueblood walking the knifeâs edge between duty and desire.
Shryke â an exile returning to kill the man who shattered her family.
Stryx â a witch who once tried to kill Mordiger, but was rescued by him instead. Now she may crown his revolution⌠or set it ablaze.
As foreign powers circle and old gods stir, Raptoraemâs players must reckon with grudges and hard-won beginnings â or lose the future to a past that's sunk its teeth in⌠and won't let go.
Expect:
đ Political intrigue
đ Found-family dynamics
đ Gothic industrial fantasy
đ Revolutionary aftermath
đ Ancient magic and modern ambition
đ Crime syndicates and statecraft
đ Unreliable histories and forbidden archives
đ Monstrous cities and monstrous people
đ A planned nine-book saga
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
Imagine a setting where every great seat of government/religion contains a unique eldritch entity, and civil servants discuss it with the same tone people use to talk about regular old HVAC maintenance.
"The Vatican beastie lives under the archives."
"The Imperial Senate's is dripping eldritch slime in the dome."
"Don't feed the one beneath the treasury after sunset!"
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
A works cited list, because nine books need lots of calcium.
It's not required reading. It's just what's in the walls.
On Revolution & Its Aftermath
Arendt, Hannah. On Revolution. Viking Press, 1963.
Brinton, Crane. The Anatomy of Revolution. Rev. ed., Vintage Books, 1965.
Dix, Robert H. "The Varieties of Revolution." Comparative Politics, vol. 15, no. 3, 1983, pp. 281â294. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/421683.
Dix, Robert H. "Why Revolutions Succeed and Fail." Polity, vol. 16, no. 3, 1984, pp. 423â446. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3234558.
Goldstone, Jack A. "The Comparative and Historical Study of Revolutions." Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 8, 1982, pp. 187â207. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.08.080182.001155.
Hopper, Rex D. "The Revolutionary Process: A Frame of Reference for the Study of Revolutionary Movements." Social Forces, vol. 28, no. 3, 1950, pp. 270â279. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2572010.
Kramnick, Isaac. "Reflections on Revolution: Definition and Explanation in Recent Scholarship." History and Theory, vol. 11, no. 1, 1972, pp. 26â63. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2504623.
Skocpol, Theda. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge UP, 1979.
Stone, Lawrence. "Theories of Revolution." World Politics, vol. 18, no. 2, 1966, pp. 159â176. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2009694.
Yoder, D. "Current Definitions of Revolution." American Journal of Sociology, vol. 32, no. 3, 1926, pp. 433â441. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2765544.
On Colonialism & Its Psychology
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1983.
Bentahar, Ziad. "Frantz Fanon: Travelling Psychoanalysis and Colonial Algeria." Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, vol. 42, no. 3, Sept. 2009, pp. 1â12.
Fanon, Frantz. A Dying Colonialism. Maspero, 1959. Translated by Haakon Chevalier, Grove Press, 1965.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. 1952. Translated by Charles L. Markmann, Grove Press, 1967.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Maspero, 1961. Translated by Constance Farrington, Grove Press, 1963.
Fanon, Frantz. Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays. Edited by François Maspero, translated by Haakon Chevalier, Grove Press, 1967.
Fanon-Mendès-France, Mireille, and Donato Fhunsu. "The Contribution of Frantz Fanon to the Process of the Liberation of the People." The Black Scholar, vol. 42, no. 3â4, 2012, pp. 8â12.
Forsythe, Dennis. "Frantz FanonâThe Marx of the Third World." Phylon, vol. 34, no. 2, 1973, pp. 160â170.
Gordimer, Nadine. Burger's Daughter. Jonathan Cape, 1979.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, International Publishers, 1971.
Mbembe, Achille. "Necropolitics." Public Culture, vol. 15, no. 1, 2003.
Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. 1957. Translated by Howard Greenfeld, Beacon Press, 1965.
NgĹŠgÄŠ wa Thiong'o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. James Currey, 1986.
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children. Jonathan Cape, 1981.
On Class, the Gutter, & the Underworld
Brooks, Clem. "Class Politics and Political Change in the United States." Sociological Forum, vol. 12, no. 1, 1997, pp. 1â35. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2580718.
Clark, Terry Nichols. "The Breakdown of Class Politics." Social Science Quarterly, vol. 84, no. 2, 2003, pp. 299â315. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27700340.
Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist. Belknap Press, 2011.
Evans, Geoffrey, and James Tilley. "How Parties Shape Class Politics: Explaining the Decline of the Class Basis of Party Support." British Journal of Political Science, vol. 42, no. 1, 2012, pp. 137â161. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123411000202.
Evans, Geoffrey, and James Tilley. "The Depoliticization of Inequality and Redistribution: Explaining the Decline of Class Voting." The Journal of Politics, vol. 74, no. 4, 2012, pp. 963â976. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381612000618.
Fitts, Robert K. "The Rhetoric of Reform: The Five Points Missions and the Cult of Domesticity." Historical Archaeology, vol. 35, 2001, pp. 115â132. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374397.
Jarness, Vegard, Magne Paalgard Flemmen, and Lennart Rosenlund. "From Class Politics to Classed Politics." Sociology, vol. 53, no. 5, 2019, pp. 879â899. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038519838740.
Lichtenstein, Nelson. "Class Politics and the State during World War Two." International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 58, 2000, pp. 261â274. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27672683.
Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor. 1851.
Milne, Claudia. "On the Grounds of the Fresh Water Pond: The Free-Black Community at Five Points, 1810â1834." International Journal of Historical Archaeology, vol. 6, no. 1, 2002, pp. 127â142. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016084621564.
Oestreicher, Richard. "How Should Historians Think about 'The Gangs of New York'?" History Workshop Journal, no. 56, 2003, pp. 210â215. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4289867.
Petras, James. "Class Politics, State Power and Legitimacy." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 24, no. 34, 1989, pp. 1955â1958. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4395265.
Reckner, Paul. "Remembering Gotham: Urban Legends, Public History, and Representations of Poverty, Crime, and Race in New York City." International Journal of Historical Archaeology, vol. 6, no. 2, 2002, pp. 95â112. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016032604726.
Reynolds, George W. M. The Mysteries of London. 1844â1848.
Samuel, Raphael, editor. East End Underworld: Chapters in the Life of Arthur Harding. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.
Walkowitz, Daniel J. "'The Gangs of New York': The Mean Streets in History." History Workshop Journal, no. 56, 2003, pp. 204â209. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/56.1.204.
Wiley, Norbert. "America's Unique Class Politics." American Sociological Review, vol. 32, no. 4, 1967, pp. 529â541. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2091022.
Wilentz, Sean. "On Class and Politics in Jacksonian America." Reviews in American History, vol. 10, no. 4, 1982, pp. 45â63. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2701818.
Yamin, Rebecca. "Lurid Tales and Homely Stories of New York's Notorious Five Points." Historical Archaeology, vol. 32, no. 1, 1998, pp. 74â85. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25616594.
On the Built Environment & the Vertical City
Girard, Greg, and Ian Lambot. City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City. Watermark, 1993.
Girard, Greg, and Ian Lambot. City of Darkness Revisited. Watermark, 2014.
Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. Verso, 2012.
Ho, Suenn. An Architectural Study on the Kowloon Walled City: Preliminary Findings. Columbia University, 1992.
Johnson, Steven Berlin. The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic. Riverhead Books, 2006.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Blackwell, 1991.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale UP, 1998.
Soja, Edward W. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Blackwell, 1996.
Soja, Edward W. "The Socio-Spatial Dialectic." Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 70, no. 2, 1980, pp. 207â225. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2562950.
Wong, Kwan-yiu, et al. A Geographic Study of the Kowloon Walled City. Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Geography, 1992.
On Extraction, Addiction, & the Drug Economy
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Pantheon Books, 1977.
Trocki, Carl A. Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade, 1750â1950. Routledge, 1999.
On the Sacred, the Chaotic, & the Occult
Carroll, Peter J. Liber Null & Psychonaut: The Practice of Chaos Magic. 1987. Weiser Books, revised and expanded ed., 2022.
Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Translated by Willard R. Trask, Harcourt, Brace, 1959.
Evans, Dave. The History of British Magic After Crowley: Kenneth Grant, Amado Crowley, Chaos Magic, Satanism, Lovecraft, the Left-Hand Path, Blasphemy and Magical Morality. Hidden Publishing, 2007.
Hine, Phil. Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic. New Falcon Publications, 1995.
On the Body, Pain, & Violence
hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. William Morrow, 2000.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford UP, 1985.
On Dystopia, Hope, & Genre Theory
Aurora, S. "From Structure to Machine: Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophy of Linguistics." Deleuze Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, 2017, pp. 405â428. https://doi.org/10.3366/dls.2017.0274.
Baccolini, Raffaella. "The Persistence of Hope in Dystopian Science Fiction." PMLA, vol. 119, no. 3, 2004, pp. 518â521. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25486067.
Gonnermann, Annika. "The Concept of Post-Pessimism in 21st-Century Dystopian Fiction." The Comparatist, vol. 43, 2019, pp. 26â40. https://doi.org/10.1353/com.2019.0002.
Herman, Peter C. "More, Huxley, Eggers, and the Utopian/Dystopian Tradition." Renaissance and Reformation, vol. 41, no. 3, 2018, pp. 165â193.
Michael-Matsas, Savvas. "A Utopia of Immanence: Revolution in Deleuze and Guattari." Deleuze Studies, vol. 10, no. 3, 2016, pp. 289â300. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45331737.
MihÄilescu, C. A. "Mind the Gap: Dystopia as Fiction." Style, vol. 25, no. 2, 1991, pp. 211â222.
Moylan, Tom. "The Necessity of Hope in Dystopian Times: A Critical Reflection." Utopian Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, 2020, pp. 164â193. https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.31.1.0164.
SchĂśnher, Mathias. "The Triple Transformation: The Emergence of Philosophy in Deleuze and Guattari." Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 33, no. 4, 2019, pp. 610â627. https://doi.org/10.5325/jspecphil.33.4.0610.
Stivale, Charles J. "Gilles Deleuze & FĂŠlix Guattari: Schizoanalysis & Literary Discourse." SubStance, vol. 9, no. 4, 1980, pp. 46â57. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3684040.
Period Detail & Material Culture
Altick, Richard D. Victorian Studies in Scarlet. Norton, 1970.
Beeton, Isabella. Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. 1861.
Gloag, John. Victorian Comfort: A Social History of Design from 1830â1900. Allen & Unwin, 1961.
Literary & Dramatic Sources
Dumas, Alexandre. The Count of Monte Cristo. 1844â1846.
Gibbon, Lewis Grassic. Spartacus. Victor Gollancz, 1933.
Shakespeare, William. Henry V.
Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus.
Waters, Sarah. Tipping the Velvet. Virago Press, 1998.
Visual Media
Black Lagoon. Directed by Sunao Katabuchi, Madhouse, 2006.
Black Sails. Created by Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine, Starz, 2014â17.
Children of Men. Directed by Alfonso CuarĂłn, Universal Pictures, 2006.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi, Trigger, 2022.
Deadwood. Created by David Milch, HBO, 2004â06.
Domino. Directed by Tony Scott, New Line Cinema, 2005.
Empire. Created by Lee Daniels and Danny Strong, Fox, 2015â20.
Gangs of New York. Directed by Martin Scorsese, Miramax, 2002.
House of Cards. Created by Beau Willimon, Netflix, 2013â18.
In the Mood for Love. Directed by Wong Kar-wai, Block 2 Pictures, 2000.
Jormungand. Directed by Keitaro Motonaga, White Fox, 2012.
Mad Max: Fury Road. Directed by George Miller, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2015.
Metropolis. Directed by Fritz Lang, Universum Film (UFA), 1927.
Neon Genesis Evangelion. Directed by Hideaki Anno, Gainax, 1995â96.
Peaky Blinders. Created by Steven Knight, BBC, 2013â22.
Penny Dreadful. Created by John Logan, Showtime, 2014â16.
Pirates of the Caribbean. Directed by Gore Verbinski, Walt Disney Pictures, 2003â07.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Directed by Akiyuki Shinbo, Shaft, 2011.
Rome. Created by Bruno Heller, John Milius, and William J. MacDonald, HBO, 2005â07.
Shadow and Bone. Created by Eric Heisserer, Netflix, 2021â23.
Silo. Created by Graham Yost, Apple TV+, 2023â26.
Snowpiercer. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, CJ Entertainment, 2013.
Sons of Liberty. Directed by Kari Skogland, History Channel, 2015.
The Crow. Directed by Alex Proyas, Miramax Films, 1994.
The Great. Created by Tony McNamara, Hulu, 2020â23.
The Sopranos. Created by David Chase, HBO, 1999â2007.
The Wire. Created by David Simon, HBO, 2002â08.
V for Vendetta. Directed by James McTeigue, Warner Bros., 2005.
Public applications for the Raptoraem ARC team are officially open.
An ARCâor Advance Reader Copyâis a free pre-release edition of a book sent to selected readers before publication. ARC readers get early access to the story, the chance to enter Raptoraem before the wider public, and an opportunity to support its launch through honest reviews, recommendations, and word of mouth.
For an independent author, that early support is invaluable. ARC readers help a new book build visibility, credibility, and momentum before it enters the wild.
For readers, it means becoming part of the bookâs earliest circleâand helping the right stories find their audience.Please note that submitting an application does not guarantee acceptance.
Places are limited, and every application will be reviewed before the final ARC team is selected.Members of the Contraband Network receive first priority.
If you would like priority consideration:
1. Join the Contraband Network.
2. Use the same email address when completing your ARC application.
3. In the space provided on the application, leave me a note confirming that you are a Contraband Network member so I can match your submissions.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
Mordiger Ă Vira star in Angela Carterâs tragically suppressed tenth story: a cautionary romance proving that no crown, however phallically loaded or chock-full of unresolved sovereignty metaphors, should be entrusted to a woman whose fingers can crush masonry.
Itâs a bit wild how long ago the Victorian era was...
And yet, if you traveled back there, you could probably still understand each other. Granted, there would be accents to contend with, slang flying past in both directions, and the small problem of explaining why you keep saying bestie, slay and weird and asking where you can charge your phone.
But you could communicate with startling fluency.
The Victorian era ended in 1901. Thatâs 125 years ago: distant enough to feel embalmed in the contemporary imagination; yet the English spoken then was fundamentally our present, modern-day English. The grammar is ours. Most ordinary vocabulary is ours. You could arrive in Dickensian London dressed like an escaped lunatic, ask "Where the fuck am I?!" and receive an answer you understood.
Worse, you could string together the following sentence:
âOkay, dude, your girlfriendâs clueless. Letâs take a photo of the dinosaur, find somewhere comfy, and get brunch. Iâve got a hangover.â
-and the average Victorian would fully understand that sentence, however profoundly cursed if linguistically plausible.
It's patently unfair that we divide history into sealed rooms: Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, modern etc. Real human lives overlap. An elderly Victorian might have known someone who remembered the 1780s. That person might have known someone born around 1700.
Three handshakes, and youâd be nearly back at the Great Fire of London.
History has never been a row of locked rooms. It is, and always has been, people standing in doorways, talking to someone on either side.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
I really think we should stop saying "kid-friendly" and start saying "ad-friendly". We shouldn't indulge these companies and their excuses anymore. I also think that continuing to pretend that this is about "protecting the children" pushes a lot of the blame onto kids and teens, who don't have the political power to push through any of this censorship legislature. Corporations and governments are to blame.
