Victoriandustrial-goth vocalist / performer / author Emilie Autumn, who has gained a huge international fanbase over the past decade, has checked in with the following update:

"I am so incredibly delighted to start off this new year with new music, and to share with you this never-before-heard song from the Asylum Musical, 'We Have Instructions'. 

The song is now available worldwide for streaming/downloading.

This is a wild one, from near the beginning of Act 1, where Emilie is admitted to the modern-day hospital and stripped of all of her belongings (except for her striped you-know-whats).

The vocals are sung by all of 8 characters (4 Guards, 2 Nurses, the Head Nurse, and Emilie). Readers of the Asylum Book will be very familiar with this scene, and many who have been admitted to a psych ward themselves have likely experienced something quite similar. What many know and many do not is that nearly all of the roles in the musical are dual roles. Madam Mournington is obviously the Head Nurse, the Hospital Guards are also the Asylum Doctors and Chasers, and the Hospital Patients are also the Inmates. You surely know whom Dr. Sharp and Emilie are;).

You will of course recognize the melody from the song 'We Want Them Young', which will appear in Act 2. I will let you guess which nasty character begins both songs...

Thank you for listening, for supporting the Asylum Musical in what is going to be its most exciting and developmental year yet (spring workshops anyone???), and for marching by my side through this mad adventure."

In the gothic bestseller The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls by Emilie Autumn, two young women, living centuries apart, both accused of madness, communicate across time to fight a common enemy...their doctors.

Emilie's underground phenomenon is born again in this completely re-written paperback! With new characters, new chapters, new secrets, and new songs, the Asylum is growing, and is admitting readers all over the world.

About the story:

"It was the dog who found me."

Such is the stark confession launching the harrowing scene that begins The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls as Emilie, a young musician on the verge of a bright career, attempts suicide by overdosing on the antipsychotics prescribed to treat her bipolar disorder. Upon being discovered, Emilie is revived and immediately incarcerated in a maximum-security psych ward, despite her protestations that she is not crazy, and can provide valid reasons for her actions if someone would only listen.

Treated as a criminal, heavily medicated, and stripped of all freedoms, Emilie is denied communication with the outside world, and falls prey to the unwelcome attentions of Dr. Sharp, head of the hospital's psychiatry department. As Dr. Sharp grows more predatory by the day, Emilie begins a secret diary to document her terrifying experience, and to maintain her sanity in this environment that could surely drive anyone mad. But when Emilie opens her notebook to find a desperate letter from a young woman imprisoned within an insane asylum in Victorian England, and, stranger still, bearing her own name and description, a portal to another world is blasted wide open.

As these letters from the past continue to appear, Emilie escapes further into this mysterious alternate reality where sisterhoods are formed, romance between female inmates blossoms, striped wallpaper writhes with ghosts, and highly intellectual rats speak the Queen's English.

But is it real? Or is Emilie truly as mad as she is constantly told she is?

The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls blurs harsh reality and magical historical fantasy whilst issuing a scathing critique of society's treatment of women and the mental health care industry's treatment of its patients, showing in the process that little has changed throughout the ages.

Welcome to the Asylum.

Are you committed?