Sean Taylor Announces New Poetry Collection, Brunch with the Obelisk

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Atlanta, Ga. — March, 2026 — Sean Taylor Announces New Poetry Collection, Brunch with the Obelisk

Acclaimed fiction writer and poet Sean Taylor unveils his newest poetry collection, Brunch with the Obelisk—a bold, unflinching exploration of the forces that have shaped both his voice and his worldview. With a blend of lyricism, candor, and razor-sharp introspection, this collection pulls readers into the complicated crossroads of personal history, politics, and the American mythos.

In Brunch with the Obelisk, Taylor grapples with the inheritance of a conservative religious upbringing, the illusions of nostalgia, and the widening divide between American ideals and realities. Through this deeply personal and often provocative work, he confronts a world that feels increasingly chaotic—and the role of poetry as a stabilizing, truth-telling force within it.

“Be warned. It’s probably not what you first think,” Taylor says of the collection, which draws inspiration from a strikingly diverse set of influences—ranging from Bob Dylan, Langston Hughes, e.e. cummings, and T.S. Eliot to Annie Dillard, Marilyn Monroe, and Susan B. Anthony. Their presence echoes throughout the book not as imitations, but as threads woven into a distinctive, evolving voice.

“As proud as I was for When We Had No Flag, my first book of poems, I think I’m even happier and prouder of this one," says Taylor. " I feel like my influences are becoming more a part of me rather than something I wear on my sleeve.”

Taylor does not shy away from the tensions at the heart of American life—the sometimes volatile interplay of politics and religion, the selective storytelling of national memory, and the lingering scars they leave behind. If that makes him an angry poet with an axe to grind, the author notes with self-awareness, he owns it completely.

“Poetry comes from a very personal place inside me, even more so than my fiction. I may use a lot of the same narrative-type tools in it, but the poems are often far closer to the surface truth than my stories are allowed to be.”

Currently available at www.taylorversebooks.com and on Amazon:
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GT1G84ZN
Print: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GT87R1FH

For media inquiries, review copies, or interview requests, please contact:
www.taylorversebooks.com

About Sean Taylor:
Sean Taylor writes short poems, nonfiction, stories, novellas, novels, graphic novels, and comic books. In his writing life, he has directed the “lives” of zombies, superheroes, goddesses, dominatrices, Bad Girls, pulp heroes, for such diverse bosses as IDW Publishing, Gene Simmons, and The Oxygen Network. Visit him online at www.thetaylorverse.com and www.badgirlsgoodguys.com or his video writing tutorials at www.book-talk.us .

About Taylorverse Books:
Taylorverse Books brings readers exciting adventure stories, contemporary and charged poetry, and non-fiction books about writing and reading. For more information, visit www.taylorversebooks.com .

Free Holiday Story: It's Christmas, Baby, Please Come Home

 

It’s Christmas, Baby, Please Come Home
by Sean Taylor

This story originally appeared in Cyber Age Adventures Magazine and is collected in my short story collections Sin and Error Pining and Show Me A Hero by Taylorverse Books.

• Listen to the audio version (narrated by Alice Cashman)
• Buy the audiobook

The woman across the table from me wasn’t really a woman at all. She had no real skin to speak of or any kind of humanity other than the feminine shape she had forced her new body of light and energy to look like. Her arms and legs may have been covered up with regular clothes like the rest of us wore, but the way I could see through the parts of her shiny, twinkling form that weren’t covered by clothing reminded me all over again how she was no longer human.

She was something else.

Just like my baby.

Her name was Nancy Elliot, but most of the world knew her as Starlight. A superhero. A woman who had lost her body years ago and had become a freak.

“We love our little girl, Ms. Starlight,” said my husband, Chris. “It’s not like we don’t want her.” He sat beside me,  his hands gripped together in one tight fist, his muscles as tense as his mind had to be. Putting words into the air for both of us. Trying not to make us sound like monsters. “It’s just that I don’t think anymore that staying with us is what’s best for Mackenzie. I think she needs parents who can understand her situation and deal with it better.”

“It takes one to know one, huh?” asked the Elliot’s attorney, a tall man with dark hair that had introduced himself as either Tom or Thomas or Tommy.

Nancy placed her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure that’s not the way Mr. Brown meant it.” Her fake face looked calm and compassionate. Like a mother’s face. “I’m sure this can’t be easy for them either.”

Her husband sat beside her, wearing a dark blue suit with white pinstripes. He looked like a lawyer himself, but he kept quiet, saying everything he needed to by saying nothing at all.

“I only mean that Deidra and I aren’t really capable of taking care of someone like little Mackenzie. We’re just not physically or emotionally prepared to cope with the responsibilities of having a child that can burst into flame at a moment’s notice.”

“No parents are ever prepared for their children, Mr. Brown,” Nancy said.

As you ponder your holiday gift-giving...

thetaylorverse.com

taylorversebooks.com

Currently Available for Taylorverse Books!

Taylorverse Books

Taylorverse Books releases Sean Taylor's first poetry-only collection -- WHEN WE HAD NO FLAG!

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Atlanta, GA -- Taylorverse Books releases Sean Taylor's first poetry-only collection -- WHEN WE HAD NO FLAG!

​While the book contains mostly new poems from 2004 and 2005, it also collects several of his poems going all the way back to 1994. All poetry collected in the book has a certain, specific attitude summed up by the opening quotes from the book:

“The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”
—George Orwell

“All poets, all writers are political. They either maintain the status quo, or they say, ‘Something’s wrong, let’s change it for the better.’”
—Sonia Sanchez

“All stories are political; they involve power that has structural underpinnings and material consequences.”
—Judy Rohrer

"Make no mistake," says Taylor, "these are politically charged poems. There's no way around them. While they may contain the language of pop culture and religion, all these poems work together make a statement."

With references as varied as Bob Dylan, Langston Hughes, Rita Hayworth, and Mae West (among others), this collection has been a long time coming. 

"Sometimes you can't help but stop and write because the world forces you to have something to say, something you feel is important. WHEN WE HAD NO FLAG is that something for me," says Taylor.

​

​Sean Taylor writes short stories, novellas, novels, graphic novels, and comic books (yes, Virginia, there is a difference between comic books and graphic novels, just like there's a difference between a short story and a novel). In his writing life, he has directed the “lives” of zombies, superheroes, goddesses, dominatrices, Bad Girls, pulp heroes, and yes, even frogs, for such diverse bosses as IDW Publishing, Gene Simmons, and The Oxygen Network. Visit him online at www.thetaylorverse.com and www.badgirlsgoodguys.com.

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Taylorverse Books releases BAD GIRLS, GOOD GUYS AND TWO-FISTED ACTION!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

​Atlanta, GA -- Taylorverse Books releases all Sean Taylor's pulp stories in a single volume omnibus -- BAD GIRLS, GOOD GUYS AND TWO-FISTED ACTION!

​The book collects all of Taylor's pulp and new pulp action stories from Rick Ruby and Lance Star to The Peregrine and Armless O'Neil, and more. BAD GIRLS, GOOD GUYS, AND TWO-FISTED ACTION also includes a never before published story originally intended for the HOOKERPUNK collection. 

​If that title sounds familiar, it's because it's also the name of his writing blog, which focuses on genre writing. 

​"Folks have told me repeatedly for years now that the name would be perfect for a book, but I never had a reason to use it for one until now," says Taylor. "It really sums up the stories in this new book perfectly. Femmes fatale. Gut-punching heroes. Gun-shots. Out-of-this-world adventures. It's all there."

​​It is in that spirit of pulpy goodness that Taylor offers these stories in a single volume (finally) so fans can one-stop shop for his adventure tales of fisticuffs and derring-do. Stories feature such fan favorites as:

• ​Rick Ruby
• Lance Star
• Agara, Goddess of the Dark Lands
• Ulysses King
• The Peregrine
• Armless O'Neil
• The world of The New Deal
• Aym Geronimo and the Post-Modern Pioneers
• Blackthorn

​​​Charles Ardai, publisher for Hard Case Crime (and Sean's favorite publisher) and author of DEATH COMES TO LATE, says of the collection: “Sean Taylor is a serious student of the pulp arts and keeps the grand tradition alive in his stories. This is escapist fiction the way it used to be done.”

​Gary Phillips, author of ASH DARK AS NIGHT and ONE-SHOT HARRY, adds: "Sean Taylor delivers the thrills and chills in this collection of elevated pulp goodness." ​

​Partnering with Kindle Direct, this new edition be available for the long run both in print and eBook. He will have them for sale on his convention tables and via Amazon in paperback and for Kindle.

​"I'm so happy to finally see all these fun yarns together at last in one book," says Taylor. "These stories are not only near and dear to my heart's yearning for adventure, but they also scratch the itch I have to see how my literary background can influence all my stories, even pulp tales."

​​Sean Taylor writes short stories, novellas, novels, graphic novels, and comic books (yes, Virginia, there is a difference between comic books and graphic novels, just like there's a difference between a short story and a novel). In his writing life, he has directed the “lives” of zombies, superheroes, goddesses, dominatrices, Bad Girls, pulp heroes, and yes, even frogs, for such diverse bosses as IDW Publishing, Gene Simmons, and The Oxygen Network. Visit him online at www.thetaylorverse.com and www.badgirlsgoodguys.com.

Buy from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Girls-Good-Guys-Two-Fisted-Action/dp/B0F1384YXL

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Sean Taylor invites you to join the Crowd in Babylon in his new collection of dark and horror tales!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Atlanta, GA (March 8, 2024) -- Featuring 17 tales of Southern horror, dark fantasy, and weird adventure inspired as much by Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, and Shirley Jackson as by F. Marion Crawford, Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury, Sean Taylor's A CROWD IN BABYLON takes readers from the chilling underside of the urban landscape to the homegrown terrors of rural life and hidden frights that lie beneath suburban smiles.

This collection includes both stories that have been out of print for a while -- such as "The Fairest of Them All: A Symphony of Revenge," the Zombies vs. Robots (IDW) tale "Farm Fresh," and "Posthumous" -- and brand-new stories, such as the title tale, "A Lot Different from the Brochures, Isn't It?," "The Ghosts of Children," "The Color of the Blues," and many more. 

Inside the pages of A CROWD IN BABYLON, readers will meet a diverse and macabre group of characters, including: 

• A zombie writer whose work funds the lifestyle of her cheating husband

• A musician who learns that true art requires irretrievable loss

• A Cherokee brave who must face the monsters from his people's legends

• A time-traveling widow nursing a violent and deadly grudge

• A woman who needs four-footed help to teach her grandchild to grieve

• A young writer obsessed with a dead actress

• An immigrant haunted by the vengeful ghosts of children

• And ten other creepy tales!

"This one has been a long time coming," Taylor says. "So much happened to delay the release of this, my first horror collection, but I couldn't stop pushing. Horror is so important to me. It's one of my favorite genres to write, and I hope even a little of that love for the genre shines through the book."

A CROWD IN BABYLON is currently available as a trade paperback for $14.99 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW5Q3YQZ) and a Kindle ebook for $2.99 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW1WMZMV), both from Amazon. 

Sean Taylor writes short stories, novellas, novels, graphic novels, and comic books (yes, Virginia, there is a difference between comic books and graphic novels, just like there's a difference between a short story and a novel). In his writing life, he has directed the “lives” of zombies, superheroes, goddesses, dominatrices, Bad Girls, pulp heroes, and yes, even frogs, for such diverse bosses as IDW Publishing, Gene Simmons, and The Oxygen Network. Visit him online at www.thetaylorverse.com and www.badgirlsgoodguys.com.

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The Dead Speak: Sean Taylor's Corpse Delivers the Eulogy in His New Collection!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Atlanta, GA (March 1, 2024) -- Comic and prose writer Sean Taylor introduces his newest collection of essays, short stories, and poems, THE CORPSE DELIVERS THE EULOGY AND OTHER WORKS. 

Designed as an introduction to Taylor's writing for new readers and a re-introduction to current readers, this collection features both old and new creations in a single volume. THE CORPSE DELIVERS THE EULOGY showcases new essays about the art of writing and reading, old and new poetry between 1992 and just last month, and stories that set him on the path to fiction writing, both literary shorts and even a superhero short from the days of Cyber Age Adventures magazine. 

"For those who only know my work from my comic book writing or those who only know me from my pulp adventures and superhero tales, this is the book to let you discover the writer I like to be when I'm writing for myself as the main audience," Taylor says. 

Readers can see in this collection how Taylor, who has written for such properties as Zombies Vs. Robots, The Bad Girls Club, The Black Bat, and the Golden Amazon, along with his own creations Fishnet Angel and private detective Rick Ruby (co-created with Bobby Nash), has grown, changed, and expanded as a writer. 

"I'm so excited to see this released," he says. "These are the words that shaped me as a storyteller and continue to shape me, and it's quite amazing to see them in print."

THE CORPSE DELIVERS THE EULOGY is available as a trade paperback for $9.99 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWR21ZTB/), and already available as a Kindle eBook for $2.99 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVLH8MS3/), both from Amazon. 

Sean Taylor writes short stories, novellas, novels, graphic novels, and comic books (yes, Virginia, there is a difference between comic books and graphic novels, just like there's a difference between a short story and a novel). In his writing life, he has directed the “lives” of zombies, superheroes, goddesses, dominatrices, Bad Girls, pulp heroes, and yes, even frogs, for such diverse bosses as IDW Publishing, Gene Simmons, and The Oxygen Network. Visit him online at www.thetaylorverse.com and www.badgirlsgoodguys.com.

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