Lucid Fiction that carries you into and out of the story
Collapsible Horizon by Tantra Bensko
Intertwined narratives cast anti-shadows on the core story that dreams them.
Go through the wormhole out the other side, beyond stories, beyond your skin.
" She does it similarly to the way cubist painters represented three-dimensional objects in the two-dimensional space of a canvas, by breaking their surfaces up into their constituent parts and arranging them in a visually interesting way, creating works of art rather than images of reality."
Read Review in The Collagist by Yuryi Tarnawsky
author of books such as Short Tails JEF Books/Civil Coping Mechanisms/Depth Charge Publishing
"There is no uncertainty with the way that Tantra Bensko layers her words, one rolling on top of another, until they fill your heart and mind with an isolated bliss. I highly recommend that you buy this collection."
Read Review by Bari Kennedy
Amazon Review: "When you step into the Collapsible Horizon, the first thing you notice is a parade of wonderful Yard Men, Frogs, Lizards, Donkeys and Goats all herding down a shadowy passage which leads to the Uncertain House. Within its mirrored walls, you will find a twisted maze of wonderfully written stories, all of which will lead you towards an elevated center of consciousness.
This is truly Bensko's world, who, with the hands of a master wordsmith, takes you on a magnificent tour providing artful, clear interpretation. Through her words you can experience a reality that has been rearranged with random logic into new and beautiful images that are simultaneously alien to this world yet oddly familiar. Be prepared to feel as though Federico Fellini was whispering vibrant word images of color and light into your head.
What gives strength and muscle to this unique work of art, is the steady hand with which it was written. The author writes with the clarity and confidence of someone who clearly understands the magic of words. My advice to you: READ this book...it will without a doubt...expand your horizons." Paul Barnett
Amazon Review: "I've been following this author for awhile now...about 4+ years. She is truly, hands down, one of the most eclectic, creative, fearless writers I've ever come across.
I rate an author by how much they can pull me outside of my box in thinking and the emotional 'draw-in' I'm provided with. One thing I can say here, Ms. Bensko has put me on some magic carpet rides I never thought possible.
The book may look simple enough on the outside, but once opened, once read...it gets multi-faceted and intriguing right away. Her introduction alone had me gripped. I knew I just made a special find like no other.
My book is amazing! It's special to read alone, AND, I've learned how much I like reading it with other people. Watching other's body language is priceless. I love to read a line or two and then watch faces contort in amusement and astonishment. The visuals that dance across the mind will give you dreams for weeks. You can thank Tantra for that!
This is some of the best money I ever spent ~ BUY THIS BOOK! BUY 10!, as everyone will be proud of you that you've expanded your literary mind. " --Tiffany Millerbis
Amazon Review: "Lyric prose conjuring surreal images of the eternally shifting emotional landscapes we each wander alone. Reading Tantra's poetic explorations makes me feel like I have a companion in that inner place, so private, exploring life and death and the ever changing whole." -- Lynette Yetter
"I started reading Collapsible Horizon last night - what a way to tell a story! I love your style and I'm digging the spiraling circularity unfolding. I already want to re-read Yard Man, but will wait till the end of the book - for Ouroboros sake. My curiousity is piqued by the in-between spaces. I'm officially a fan - thank you Rosemary!" -- Tricia Sabo
Go through the wormhole out the other side, beyond stories, beyond your skin.
" She does it similarly to the way cubist painters represented three-dimensional objects in the two-dimensional space of a canvas, by breaking their surfaces up into their constituent parts and arranging them in a visually interesting way, creating works of art rather than images of reality."
Read Review in The Collagist by Yuryi Tarnawsky
author of books such as Short Tails JEF Books/Civil Coping Mechanisms/Depth Charge Publishing
"There is no uncertainty with the way that Tantra Bensko layers her words, one rolling on top of another, until they fill your heart and mind with an isolated bliss. I highly recommend that you buy this collection."
Read Review by Bari Kennedy
Amazon Review: "When you step into the Collapsible Horizon, the first thing you notice is a parade of wonderful Yard Men, Frogs, Lizards, Donkeys and Goats all herding down a shadowy passage which leads to the Uncertain House. Within its mirrored walls, you will find a twisted maze of wonderfully written stories, all of which will lead you towards an elevated center of consciousness.
This is truly Bensko's world, who, with the hands of a master wordsmith, takes you on a magnificent tour providing artful, clear interpretation. Through her words you can experience a reality that has been rearranged with random logic into new and beautiful images that are simultaneously alien to this world yet oddly familiar. Be prepared to feel as though Federico Fellini was whispering vibrant word images of color and light into your head.
What gives strength and muscle to this unique work of art, is the steady hand with which it was written. The author writes with the clarity and confidence of someone who clearly understands the magic of words. My advice to you: READ this book...it will without a doubt...expand your horizons." Paul Barnett
Amazon Review: "I've been following this author for awhile now...about 4+ years. She is truly, hands down, one of the most eclectic, creative, fearless writers I've ever come across.
I rate an author by how much they can pull me outside of my box in thinking and the emotional 'draw-in' I'm provided with. One thing I can say here, Ms. Bensko has put me on some magic carpet rides I never thought possible.
The book may look simple enough on the outside, but once opened, once read...it gets multi-faceted and intriguing right away. Her introduction alone had me gripped. I knew I just made a special find like no other.
My book is amazing! It's special to read alone, AND, I've learned how much I like reading it with other people. Watching other's body language is priceless. I love to read a line or two and then watch faces contort in amusement and astonishment. The visuals that dance across the mind will give you dreams for weeks. You can thank Tantra for that!
This is some of the best money I ever spent ~ BUY THIS BOOK! BUY 10!, as everyone will be proud of you that you've expanded your literary mind. " --Tiffany Millerbis
Amazon Review: "Lyric prose conjuring surreal images of the eternally shifting emotional landscapes we each wander alone. Reading Tantra's poetic explorations makes me feel like I have a companion in that inner place, so private, exploring life and death and the ever changing whole." -- Lynette Yetter
"I started reading Collapsible Horizon last night - what a way to tell a story! I love your style and I'm digging the spiraling circularity unfolding. I already want to re-read Yard Man, but will wait till the end of the book - for Ouroboros sake. My curiousity is piqued by the in-between spaces. I'm officially a fan - thank you Rosemary!" -- Tricia Sabo
Visit the store here.
12 plus shipping (3.50 US)
Would you like to read more about it and Tantra's other books at her author's site?
12 plus shipping (3.50 US)
Would you like to read more about it and Tantra's other books at her author's site?
"Collapsing doors led to journeys down the stairs straight down under the floor. The collapsing doors were only subtly visible along the floor, its mottled, painterly style a puzzle she never fully put together. Underneath, the rooms became larger, darker, and any area dark enough could also contain others, hazy, locked up in other dimensions, but floating, edgy, electric to the touch."
"The House with Collapsible Rooms"
“The reader, observing the collapsing waves becoming one reality, becomes Schrodinger’s Cheshire Cat, with a fur-licking grin. The Event Horizon spins round and round, like the dryer."
“Collapsible Horizon”
LucidPlay Dreamhouse
Solid ground seems to fall out from under the characters' feet as things fall away. Some characters re-appear throughout kaleidescopic narratives, like a dying old man whose house is sold out from under him. We see down below the surface as it opens into the liminal subconscious of the world.
A point in space, and a crab with its long eye-stalks watch a man through a window as he paints on cards made from flattened histrionic splayed frogs, who are proud of the their usefulness. A lugubrious house loses a new friend.
A man trying to go along with a woman's New Age delusions get stuck with her in a passageway, where they are discovered by a cult designing to keep them on the top level of their triple decker yard. A man falls from the sky, making a crater.
Have you ever felt like you were going into a wormhole?
Quantum foam is theorized to be the substance of the universe, tiny black and white holes; we are always going through portals to other realities. This book approaches the singularity, where the Event Horizon makes everything go wonky, and out the other side, into the white hole. Everything dreams all the time, on some level, including the Event Horizon itself.
As the wave function collapses, as the wild possibilities narrow down and are sucked through into their new life, the Event Horizon undermines rules of normalcy. A man shows up selling yard triangles, yard hats, multi-leveled yards with themes on each yard and spiral staircases between them. Around his mouth are arrows, pointing into it. But inside, there is no glottis, no teeth, no nothing, but the narrator himself.
The white hole gleams, prancing in the sunshine outside the story.
As the wave function collapses, as the wild possibilities narrow down and are sucked through into their new life, the Event Horizon undermines rules of normalcy. A man shows up selling yard triangles, yard hats, multi-leveled yards with themes on each yard and spiral staircases between them. Around his mouth are arrows, pointing into it. But inside, there is no glottis, no teeth, no nothing, but the narrator himself.
The white hole gleams, prancing in the sunshine outside the story.
Levels interacting beyond time?
A woman's ex-husband has said he'll watch every move, suspiciously, from the afterlife, after he dies; his ghost hovers over the scenes from the future. The higher levels of the consciousness of the con artist who ruined the family and became a fugitive hover above, as the mother's ghost sleeps in the daughter's bed superimposed upon her.
Consciousness dictates a narrative to a surprised man in a cafe in Sedona, about how it set some people up in a bizarre ritual. The people in the cafe mimic what Consciousness is saying through their actions.
One story is from the point of view of residual auric energy from a man who has left his wife, as it tries to understand itself, while it resides in her rib cage.
Consciousness dictates a narrative to a surprised man in a cafe in Sedona, about how it set some people up in a bizarre ritual. The people in the cafe mimic what Consciousness is saying through their actions.
One story is from the point of view of residual auric energy from a man who has left his wife, as it tries to understand itself, while it resides in her rib cage.
Publication history
This 225 page book contains numerous new stories, as well as many published in magazines. Tantra has 200 publications of stories and poems in journals, many winning awards, as well as substantial non fiction, including literary theory, and reviews of Innovative Fiction. She has 2 full length books, including Lucid Membrane (Night Publishing), and 4 chapbooks, includingThe Cabinet of What You Don't See (ISMs Press), and Watching the Windows Sleep (Naissance Press). Yard Man is forthcoming from Make-Do Publishing and Equinox Mirror forthcoming in Dec. 2014 from ELJ. Her stories are in many anthologies such as Surreal South (Press 53), and Women Writing the Weird (Dog Horn). Her author website is Lucid Membrane.
Tantra obtained her MA in English from FSU, and MFA from the Iowa Writing Program, and taught writing in universities. She teaches online her own academy, sporadically through Writers College, and regularly with UCLA Extension Writing Program.
She promotes and encourages the work of other writers at all stages of their career in various ways including Exclusive Magazine, the resource site Experimental Writing, and the FlameFlower Innovative Literature Contest..
Tantra obtained her MA in English from FSU, and MFA from the Iowa Writing Program, and taught writing in universities. She teaches online her own academy, sporadically through Writers College, and regularly with UCLA Extension Writing Program.
She promotes and encourages the work of other writers at all stages of their career in various ways including Exclusive Magazine, the resource site Experimental Writing, and the FlameFlower Innovative Literature Contest..
“Collapsible Horizon is a dazzling collection of fiction peopled with characters you can relate to and situations forged from realities and dreams. In clear, luminous prose, Tantra Bensko, inventor of Lucid Fiction, never misses a beat. Each story sucks you down the rabbit hole into a world you can’t help but explore.”
Steven Gulvezan, The Dogs of Paris (March Street Press)
"Tantra Bensko invented her own genre and way of telling stories. She is a singularity, the center of her own narrative gravity, and Collapsible Horizon is her best collection of short fiction yet."
Kyle Muntz, Voices, VII (Enigmatic Ink) and Sunshine in the Valley (CCM)
Steven Gulvezan, The Dogs of Paris (March Street Press)
"Tantra Bensko invented her own genre and way of telling stories. She is a singularity, the center of her own narrative gravity, and Collapsible Horizon is her best collection of short fiction yet."
Kyle Muntz, Voices, VII (Enigmatic Ink) and Sunshine in the Valley (CCM)
Want to hear about future books, like the novel Unside: A Book of Closed Time-Like Curves?