In life, Edgar Vincent always maintained one great passion?himself. A semi-successful composer, his rock star lifestyle suited him well, and his narcissistic outlook ensured he was a man with few concerns. Callous comments, thoughtless promiscuity, binge drinking, and excess sufficient to shame Caligula were standard Saturday night fare. Sundays for Edgar had always been a painful haze of sickness and regret. So when Edgar finds himself in the cloudy planes of the afterlife on one particularly bleak Sunday morning, he determines that in order to find peace, he must put aside his ever-present hangover and try to figure out how he got to this point?and where he's meant to be going now. But as Edgar makes his way through this surreal spiritual realm, he realizes that facing his death is hardly as difficult as facing himself. Heaven, however, presents Edgar with an unending smorgasbord of hedonistic delights, so he's in no particular hurry to change his self-serving ways. After all, considering he's already dead, what more could he possibly stand to lose?

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"No one writes like Brent Hayward. No one ever has. His voice is a product of... Well, who the hell knows? These stories are nothing like what you're expecting—and that's a very good thing." —Zachary Jernigan, author of No Return
"Hayward's debut (Filaria) is a powerful, beautifully—written dystopian tale…" —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"(The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter is) …beautifully written and morally ambivalent; this complex tale will appeal to readers of Gene Wolfe and China Miéville." —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"(The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter's) …uncompromising originality leaves the reader with few familiar signposts. Reading it is like waking up in the wrong bed, in the wrong apartment, under the wrong sun… By turns surreal, macabre and stunningly violent, The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter is dreamlike in its strangeness and complexity. Like a dream, it is difficult to define and difficult to shake. The imagery lingers like archetypes dredged up from the sleeping mind." —Mark Dunn, The Globe and Mail
"Toronto's Brent Hayward has a knack for creating incredibly lush alternative worlds and mythologies, and Head Full of Mountains may be his most complex and demanding work yet." —Alex Good, The Toronto Star