Worlds of Paul Jessup

All the various venues that showcase my writing. From books to magazines, if you need your latest Paul Jessup fix, this is where to get it.

I’ve decided to post a short story of mine for free online. This was originally published in PostScripts issue 12, and is called Ghost Technology From the Sun. It was a very well received short story (was an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and had positive reviews). It is a [...]

And is guest edited by the always amazing, Jonathan Wood.  This one is based on the tarot, and has a short short by me in it called The Tower.  Its kind of based on two cards at once, the tower and the moon. It’s got some great fiction by some other cool authors, so you [...]

Open Your Eyes is a space opera that explores the frustrations and joys of being human in a post human world. A virus is destroying humanities last stands on terraformed planets and across space stations, traveling from mouth to mouth and turning human beings into violent slaves. The only people with the keys to destroying [...]

The Ghosts We Have Become
They made a home out of Mary’s bones, and called it the dancing legs motel…
So starts a fantastic story about a ballerina turned into a broken shell, trying to save those who live inside of her.  A story of war, loss, and realization.  This is the second story in the Silas [...]

PostFlesh
A Cordwainer Smith cum horror story, where the foreign worlds will swallow you whole.
From the review at The Fix Online:
Paul Jessup’s “PostFlesh” is a poetic tale of a planetary shipwreck. It’s a hopped up, tech-charged version of the first tale, “Death Comes For All.” When a motley crew lands on Shadrim, they find machines and [...]

The Alchemy of War
The first in the Silas Bay trilogy. A brother and sister and wife survive a gruesome bombing in the city of Silas Bay. The brother is a philosopher and an alchemist, and he tries to create eternal life by decoding magical spells encoded on the back of turtles.
From the review [...]

MudSkin
PostScripts Magazine - Issue 10
A story about family bonds and destruction. Southern Gothic surrealism, twisting Pinocchio, the golem myth and Dr. Faustus all into one. Strange and surreal, and sharing a TOC with Stephen King, Joe Hill and many others.

The Happiness of Pinned Wings
A story of a girl in love at the end of the world, her crazed father who is building a time machine and the undead, who constantly remind them of humanities lunge towards annihilation. Contains some themes (mostly paradox, the living dead and quantum physics) revisited in my later short [...]

[available online]
A Word Without Ghosts
Language is haunted, controlling, transforming. By existing in the realm of language, you exist in the realm of symbols, in the realm of time beyond time. In the realm beyond words. A sister finds the ghost of a brother, a mother, and is almost turned into a bird.
From [...]

[available online]
Fingerbones Hung Like Mobiles
An eerie podcast about longing for the end and trying to escape your current situations. Sometimes you can’t move forward, you can’t move back, you just move onward, toward the abyss. Ghosts in mirrors, spirits of the forests and whispers from the grave.