orchidveil.net
lyrical trance & dark mythic/transgressive fiction by lilimist
her wings are not broken, only icarus-singed…
A little bit about lilimist, keeper of orchidveil.
Vixen in her current composing room in 2010.
Vixen Lilith Phillips, aka lilimist, is a writer of dark/mythic/lyrical trance fiction, and a computer programmer, also an erstwhile composer and occasional doodler. Born in Ballarat, she found her voice on the edge of a razorblade in Melbourne, but nowadays she resides in a place that could well be the most boring city on the planet, were it not for the small tapestry of family she has sworn to take care of.
She began publishing indie fiction on the internet during the late 90s, but has been clattering words out onto the screen via a computer and several species of archaic word processor for far, far longer.
As for the stories themselves…they’ve been described as dark, poetic, beautiful & depressing. (Occasionally ‘crap’ too, but you can’t please everyone.) There’s not a lot of wham!bam!thankyouma’am action, and the focus rests on the baring of a character’s essence and personal mythos, usually from a very intimate/claustrophobic viewpoint.
Vixen at her home in Perth in 2009
Above all else, her writing is all about entering a character’s mind and unravelling their madnesses, their dreams, and their passions.
The best-known of her works in this vein is probably Trapdoor, a dark m/m love story and her first independently published novel.
The original version was released as a print edition in 2003, under her then pen name of September Dawn, but after selling out both the first and second short print runs, it’s now available as an e-book.
A somewhat overdue 10th anniversary remix edition is finally due out in print from Lost Violet Press during 2010.
At the moment she’s working primarily on a couple of dark fantasy novels, and Subtransience, a x-media work of lyrical fiction, with strong biopunk/steampunk/cyberpunk leanings; a journey into an underground virtual world (replete with its own creation myths), through shared hallucinations transmitted via DNA computers and golden towers that emit music when the wind blows through them, where code really is a kind of sorcery and poetry, into paranoia, addiction, nostalgia, and various forms of twisted love & beautiful self destruction.
Vixen at her Yarraville home in 1999,
where she wrote most of Trapdoor
In former lives, and apart from the programming stints, she’s also worked in audio engineering (mainly doing front-of-house for a number of Melbourne venues during the mid 90s), in and around various media production studios, as a graphic designer, and as a Certified Apple Sales rep, but nowadays she’s involved chiefly with her own personal loves, one of which is of course her new indie publishing company, Lost Violet Press.
If you’re interested in her projects, or in keeping up with her latest works, you can find other stories & more info at any of her websites:
Lost Violet Press
Lyrical Trance
finaldawn.net
orchidveil.net
