A Word to New Subscribers

My books and my substack and stuff

Jan 21, 2025

Welcome! It is I, Lisa Kuznak of Mechanical Pulp, and I write fiction and poetry! Sometimes I post photos or my general thoughts about stuff, but mostly fiction.

In the last few days, I’ve seen a spike in subscriptions. This is great! Thank you! But, for those that are new, I figured I’d do a small intro post. Yeah, you may have read my “about” page, but I don’t remember the last time I updated that thing, so, why don’t I just do what I’m doing right here, right now?

Remember, if the email is truncated, open it in your browser of choice, or the substack app!

I WRITE NOVELS

My work is primarily SFF but always genre-bendy. Sometimes, I’m a bit experimental with my prose (Pallas) or I might mix historical influences in a magic blender (The Highwayman Kennedy Thornwick.) Often, I can be raunchy, crude, crass, etc, even in my poetry, as a heads up. But of course, every reader and every piece is going to mesh differently.

Since my Substack is free, I encourage you to go through my archives (or the links I’m sticking at the bottom of this post) to see if the sort of stuff I write is up your alley. If it is, I hope you stick around, and maybe even choose to support me by purchasing one (or more!) of my books.

I link to Amazon.com, despite being Canadian, it’s just easier, so adjust to your territory as necessary.

In order of publication:

Pallas

Scifi with a horror bent

For Kylan Bence, hauling freight through the Belt is lonely work, and when his ship malfunctions that loneliness might kill him. Stranded on the asteroid Pallas, in view of a concrete dome long thought abandoned, he chances a distress signal—and gets a response.
As he enters the settlement, a secret paradise greets him. Lush and vibrant plants, real food, clean water—and a population desperate to keep him inside . . . with everything else they've kept hidden in the soil, the air, and under the skin.

Amazon Kobo

The Highwayman Kennedy Thornwick

Literary fantasy

Framed for murder and horse theft, Tommy Fellham is stuck in Magelock Penitentiary, rotting like a bad pickle in too small of a crock. Capital punishment was banned, how convenient—instead of getting hanged he spends his time learning how to fight, steal, gamble, and drink. There isn't much else to do with himself until his best friend and teacher, the notorious highwayman Kennedy Thornwick, confides in Tommy his plans to escape.
When Tommy receives a visitor that promises fortune at the expense of a newly built bank, that settles it. He has to help Kennedy. But what Tommy doesn't account for is how much the prison has shaped him, and not only will he have to get used to magic outside the walls, but come to terms with who he has become . . . All while trying to avoid the mage hunters after the price on his head. Kennedy might have been too good of a teacher.

Amazon Kobo

The Ghosts of Tieros Kol

Coming March 4th! Planetary-romance-style scifi.

An ancient landscape, dotted with standing stones that sing for those who listen, metallic shards on the wind that glitter while they cut, and under the surface threads a blue mineral, tierosite—radiant, strange, and haunting.
King Cedri has gone mad, the palace is in turmoil, and Princess Brena hasn’t heard from her older sisters in ages. She suspects a man named Dene Eame is at the center of all her troubles—an antiquarian with a strange obsession with the standing stones—but she needs real proof of his involvement.
Nikolai Lev, thief-for-hire, had a simple job to do: fake some mining contracts, steal some data, wipe all traces . . . but when his client attempts to kill him after the job is done, it makes it harder to pay the bills. To top it all off, a princess finds Lev while he’s too injured to run? What luck—now he has to keep himself out of jail, too.
Brena needs Lev to help her find out why Dene is getting involved with the royal family . . . What they discover might risk the future, and the past, of Tieros Kol.

(Still tweaking the blurb.)