The Basement Cypher

WE LIVE INSIDE YOU is Now Available!

2011-10-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

Available now from Jeremy Robert Johnson and Swallowdown Press (with book design by CM3 and amazing cover art by Alex Pardee):

We are within you, and we are growing. Watching. Waiting for your empires to fall. It won’t be long now.

We are the fear of death that drives you and the terrible hunger that reshapes you in its name. We are the vengeance born from senseless slaughter and the pulsing reptile desire that negates your consciousness. We are the lie on your lips, the collapsing star in your heart, and the still-warm gun in your shaking hands. The illusion of control is all we’ll allow you, and no matter what you do…

WE LIVE INSIDE YOU

“WE LIVE INSIDE YOU is fucking terrific. Jeremy Robert Johnson is dancing to a way different drummer. He loves language, he loves the edge, and he loves us people. These stories have range and style and wit. This is entertainment... and literature.”—JACK KETCHUM, author of Off Season, The Girl Next Door, and The Woman (w/Lucky McKee)

“A haunting collection from a wildly talented author, WE LIVE INSIDE YOU is composed of nineteen perfectly-wrought nightmares, every one of which will stay with you long after you've finished reading.”—PETER CRAIG, author of Hot Plastic and Blood Father, co-screenwriter of The Town

“The people populating these stories are real and vital and you WILL care, deeply, about what becomes of them... and in JRJ's harsh universe, baaaaad things happen. Often. Prepare thyself.”—CRAIG DAVIDSON, author of Rust and Bone, The Fighter, and Sarah Court

“The guy’s a genius. Reminds me of William Gibson—the dark interest in altered states of consciousness, the unrelentingly furious forward movement, and the same kind of unlimited imagination.”—BEN LOORY, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

“Tongue-replacing isopods, brain-raping copepods and body-warping worms are far from the most insidious parasites that infest Jeremy Robert Johnson's hapless literary victims. Though the squirmy bits elegantly pioneer new frontiers of sickness, WE LIVE INSIDE YOU is at its most twisted and mordantly revelatory when it drops the body-horror metaphors and digs into the real horror of all the parasitic drives that ride us—tapeworms of greed, lust like plagues of crab lice, and the lethal heartworms of true love. So tightly written and so fluidly brutal you'll want to consume this psychosexual demolition derby in one sitting, but you'll spend the rest of the night checking yourself under a microscope.”—CODY GOODFELLOW, author of Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars and Radiant Dawn/Ravenous Dusk

“Waaaay out at the deep end of the collective unconscious—where even the bravest of brain cells fear to tread—Jeremy Robert Johnson performs stand-up comedy for the gods. And their laughter is a marvelous, terrible thing. He’s the kind of post-Lovecraftian genius berserker who makes the Great Old Ones new again. As with Clive Barker, there is no glorious mutational eruption that Johnson can’t nail directly through your gawping mind’s eye.”—JOHN SKIPP, NY Times Bestselling author of Spore (w/Cody Goodfellow) and The Bridge (w/Craig Spector)

That is all. Glad to be back. Hope everybody enjoys the new book!

JRJ

Now Available!: By the Time We Leave Here, We'll Be Friends by J. David Osborne

2010-12-17T15:38:00.001-08:00

Available now from J. David Osborne and Swallowdown Press (with an afterword from yours truly, book design by CM3, excellent interior art from Erin Elise, and amazing wrap-around cover art from Alex Pardee):

Siberia, 1953. Stalin is dead and a once-prosperous thief named Alek Karriker is feeling the pressure. Trapped in an icy prison camp where violent criminals run the show, betrayed by his friends and his body, Karriker is surrounded by death and disorder. Bizarre Inuit shamans are issuing ever-stranger commands that he must obey. Opium is running scarce and bad magic is plentiful. Razor-tooth gangsters can smell Karriker’s blood and they plan to murder him more than once. The only option: ESCAPE.

Enlisting the aid of an aging guard, a cold-blooded killer, and a beautiful, murderous nurse, Karriker must now secure his getaway by finding a "calf": a gullible prisoner to be cannibalized when the tundra is at its most barren. As the vice grows tighter and life in the gulag becomes increasingly surreal, Karriker must hurry to find his mark and convince him...

BY THE TIME WE LEAVE HERE, WE’LL BE FRIENDS

“BY THE TIME WE LEAVE HERE, WE'LL BE FRIENDS is a David Lynchian nightmare set in a Russian gulag, where its prisoners, guards, traitors, soldiers, lovers, and demons fight for survival and their own rapidly deteriorating humanity. Osborne's debut…is paranoid, cold, brutal, haunting, mystifying (in a good way), and totally unforgettable.”—PAUL TREMBLAY, author of The Little Sleep and In the Mean Time

“[A]n opium-laced fever dream, swinging readily between the surreal and the horrifyingly, starkly real. Siberia is a place, metaphoric and literal: It's an inescapable, brutal state of mind. Give in to the voices and let this story deliver its kaleidoscopic nightmare, sly lines, and the truth of a bloody, damaged, beating, human heart.”—MONICA DRAKE, author of Clown Girl

“The only thing crueler and weirder than life in Osborne's Stalinist gulag is the afterlife. Wringing an ergot-laced harvest of agony and absurdity from the bleak Siberian tundra, BY THE TIME WE LEAVE HERE, WE’LL BE FRIENDS manages the nigh-impossible feat of making Kafka's Penal Colony look like a Sweet Valley High romance.”—CODY GOODFELLOW, author of Perfect Union, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, and Radiant Dawn/Ravenous Dusk

“This lyrical spatter of inspired dementia… reminds me of Celine in serious nightmare mode, and yet its brutality is quiet—gentle even. To find yourself enjoying forensic black humor scenes of disgust and revulsion is a tribute to Osborne’s writing….”—KRIS SAKNUSSEMM, author of Zanesville, Private Midnight and Enigmatic Pilot

"Like a rat in a bag of deer meat—this is BY THE TIME WE LEAVE talking—[it] scuttles around inside you as you read it, and you come to know that rat as your own heart. And it knows you back, has all along.”—STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES, author of It Came from Del Rio

I couldn't be prouder to be releasing J. David's debut. This book is fantastic.

And, if you know someone for whom cold, barren landscapes filled with surreal death presses their buttons... well, that's weird, but they would fucking love this for X-mas.

Best,

JRJ

Coming Very Soon: The Deadheart Shelters by Forrest Armstrong

2010-08-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

Available this August from Forrest Armstrong and Swallowdown Press:

“The literary equivalent of an Alejandro Jodorowsky film.”
— Carlton Mellick III

Never fall in love, and never try to escape.

Born into a life of brutal slavery, Peter spends his days driven into the wild by vicious dog-masters, forced to pick delicate swamp berries from the skeletons of dead reptiles. His nights offer only the brief escape of hushed conversation and the strange magnolia perfume of fellow slave Lilly.

A moment’s opportunity turns to violence and Peter is thrust into a bizarre new world populated by devious goat-men, poisonous coal-slugs, and murderous royal processions. With the help of his newfound companion, a man-sized infant named Dirt, Peter must decide between embracing his narcotic new world or returning to his old life to save the beautiful souls haunting his dreams.

With a unique poetic prose style Forrest Armstrong delivers a surreal and resonant Bizarro parable for all those who find themselves trapped deep within…

The Deadheart Shelters

This book is awesome. One of the best combinations of weird and beautiful I've ever read, and it's dropping in mid-August.

Cheers,

JRJ

Goodfellow Month= Free Bizarro Books!

2010-05-12T23:09:00.001-07:00

It's official, folks! May 13th-June 13th, 2010 will henceforth be known as Cody Goodfellow month (for at least a period of one month)!

In honor of this fine and lovely occasion, Swallowdown Press is offering an outstanding deal on weird shit!

Order either of Cody's astonishing books (covers shown above) and receive another book for FREE.

This includes Extinction Journals, Siren Promised, Angel Dust Apocalypse, or the giant 37 author Falling From the Sky anthology (though this last is limited 5 copies). Just order one of Cody's books, then indicate which FREE book you'd like in the Notes to Seller section.

Wait! You want more FREE books? Well, okay.

When you buy one of Cody's books and love it, do us a favor and pop up an Amazon review. Doesn't have to be epic; just 4 or 5 stars and a batch of friendly adjectives. Send me a link to the posted Amazon review and I'll send you another FREE book.

So, that's a potential 3 great books for the price of 1, and you'll receive the good karma inherent in supporting the independent press.

Anybody who's read this blog before knows that I think Cody Goodfellow is a stellar writer, one of the best in the business regardless of genre. But you don't have to take my word for it...

Check out this great review of SWFQW from Dark Discoveries: "One can certainly see influences of Lovecraft, the New Wave of SF writers of the sixties, the Cyberpunks and Splatterpunks – and even surrealists like Kafka and Borges. Don’t get me wrong though, Cody Goodfellow is one of a kind. Highly Recommended!"

Or the recent acclaim for SWFQW from Black Static magazine: "[Short story] 'Atwater' is a tour de force of reckless invention, the prose pyrotechnics and in your face imagery that are a vital component of the other stories here bubbling over like the lava flow from a misbehaving volcano."

It's also worth noting that Cody racked up four (!) Honorable Mentions from Ellen Datlow in Best Horror of the Year Vol. 2.

So, Goodfellow Month is a great time to check out a brilliant writer and cop some free Bizarro swag!

Best wishes,

JRJ

p.s. New JRJ fiction dropping shortly. Just waiting to sign some contracts.

Volta Relapse

2010-04-01T16:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve been getting some reader requests for access to the Bio/Write-up thing I did for The Mars Volta back in late 2007, for their album The Bedlam In Goliath.

When the band Bio changed to match their newest album Octahedron, the old Bedlam Bio was lost. I have placed a PDF version of it back on the Futurenet, at swallowdownpress.com.

http://www.jeremyrobertjohnson.com/TMVDIB.pdf

As a “bonus” the PDF includes a (possibly un-used) t-shirt design which was based on my album-inspired symmetrina from the end of the write-up, as well as some semi-amusing composition notes from when I first started trying to decipher the album.

Just noticed today that the word “cryptomnesia” appears in the symmetrina from 2007. One of Omar’s solo albums released in 2009 (but recorded much earlier) bears that same word as its title. Could be unrelated, but either way it carries an irony given the meaning of the word.

By the way, that album (Cryptomnesia from El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez) is the craziest thing released from this crew in some time. They borrowed the drummer from Hella and he and Omar are just freaking out. With Cedric singing on most of the tracks it’s like an alternate Volta album for people who thought Octahedron was too sedate. By random comparison, Octahedron is to Faith No More as Cryptomnesia is to Mr. Bungle.

Best wishes,

JRJ

Goodfellow-Mania!

2010-03-15T18:09:00.001-07:00

First, Cody’s got a great, very entertaining/interesting interview up at The Black Glove.

Learn how Cody got into writing at age eight, forced into action by his displeasure with the latter half of Stephen King’s The Stand.

the-black-glove.blogspot.com/2010/03/bla...-feature-author.html

Next, Monster Librarian has a great review for Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars.

http://www.monsterlibrarian.com/anthologies.htm (scroll down)

And Horror World took a shine to it, too.

http://www.horrorworld.org/reviews.htm (scroll down)

Also, David Agranoff says that Perfect Union is “An intelligent socio-political dark Bizarro masterpiece and one of the most original horror novels in years.” Check out the rest of the review.

davidagranoff.blogspot.com/2010/03/book-...t-union-by-cody.html

Best,

JRJ

Radio Ridiculoid

2010-03-10T17:15:00.000-08:00

Someone made the mistake of allowing me near a microphone. If you’re interested in a quick burst of Dayquil-influenced jibber-jabber about Bizarro, high diving, and fighting coyotes with sticks, then you could check out this interview with me at PDX.FM.

Just play Episode 3.

At your own risk. They’re your brain cells and I can’t tell you how to waste them.

Banzai,

JRJ

Coming Very Soon: PERFECT UNION by Cody Goodfellow

2010-02-08T15:33:00.000-08:00

Available this February from Cody Goodfellow and Swallowdown Press, with knock-out cover art by Alan M Clark:

"PERFECT UNION is Cronenberg's THE FLY on a grand scale: human/insect gene-spliced body horror, where the human hive politics are as shocking as the gore. This book would make Marx and Thoreau's heads explode. In other words, astounding." --JOHN SKIPP, NY Times Bestselling author of The Long Last Call and The Bridge

"Look. It's very simple. If you're not reading Cody Goodfellow, then you're doing your brain a disservice. One of the best writers of our generation." --BRIAN KEENE, author of The Rising and Darkness on the Edge of Town

"Cody Goodfellow's imagination is a freeway flyer, and his prose is a ride on a rocket-sled. He's one of the two or three god-damned best writers in the Genres today." -MICHAEL SHEA, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Nifft the Lean and Copping Squid

THE FAMILY
When Drew married Laura, he also married into the Kowalski family. But on a trip with his twin brothers-in-law into the backwoods of northern California to find their abusive, estranged mother, buried secrets will be revealed, threatening his fragile marriage and his sanity.

THE COLONY
Mom has joined a new family: Leviathan-- a utopian colony that has taken the communist ideal to radical biological extremes, using the mutagenic honey from genetically tweaked bees to make ideal workers and flawless warriors. But the once-human hive is divided by a strike and brutal internecine war, and its tyrannical Chairman is eagerly recruiting scabs.

With the Kowalski twins taking opposing sides in the colony's bitter feud, Drew is forced into a world where nothing is taboo and survival is the only law, where he must negotiate between the insane collective mind and the savage refugees, even as the battling forces of the commune work to reshape him into a tool to complete their...

PERFECT UNION

You wanted epic Bizarro? You wanted the old gooey, nasty, uncomfortable Cronenberg back? You wanted a fast-paced, bugged-out masterpiece?

Well, you've got it. I love this book. PERFECT UNION is amazing and it's on its way.

Cheers,

JRJ

Coming Soon from Swallowdown Press: Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars by Cody Goodfellow

2009-10-20T17:32:00.000-07:00

Out in late October from Cody Goodfellow and Swallowdown Press, with wraparound cover art by Alan M Clark, an Introduction by John Skipp and an Afterword from yours truly (and excellent book design courtesy of CM3):

"This is high-end psychological surrealist horror meets bottom-feeding low-life crime in a techno-thrilling science fiction world full of Lovecraft and magic..." -JOHN SKIPP, NY Times Bestselling author of The Bridge and The Long Last Call

"Cody Goodfellow's work is '80s vintage horror with a contemporary edge. An exemplary wordsmith, his prose sticks a needle in your brain and gives it a twist. This stuff is Lovecraft on acid. Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars is anything but quiet: it announces Goodfellow's continued presence among the leading cohort of modern horror with a thunderclap." -LAIRD BARRON, author of The Imago Sequence & Other Stories

"Cody Goodfellow is a force to be reckoned with. There are things within these pages with teeth on 'em. You've been warned..." -NORM PARTRIDGE, author of The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists and Dark Harvest

In the brutal zero-sum game of the new future, every meal is a murder, and every act of love is a declaration of genocidal war. To survive it, you will have to make alliances with the sleeping demons in your blood; learn to wear new names and faces, and shed your soul; feed your inner child to the machine, before it eats you alive; build and defend your own heaven; and become one of the sacred, secret tools with which nature reinvents itself. To win this game, you will have to change into everything that you are not. To play you need only open this book and arm yourself with...

Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars

Cheers,

JRJ

Goddamn

2008-09-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. D.F.W.

Just got home to seven phone messages about his passing. It's an outright fucking loss to the mental landscape. He was gifted. Truly gifted. At least he was here during our lifetime. I can't say any more right now.

Smallpressapalooza Powell's Reading!

2008-03-16T20:22:00.000-07:00

Thursday, March 20th

Powell's City of Books (1005 W Burnside, Portland, OR 97209) is the largest "new and used" bookstore on the planet (so far as I know) and has been an integral part of my life both as a childhood reader and an adult writer. That's why I'm very excited to be able to announce my first reading at the venue. Here's the basic dirt on the event from Powells.com (with compatriots and myself shown in bold):

_____

Our vibrant writing community has long been powered by various DIY reading series, zinesters, upstart printing companies, the Independent Publishing Resource Center, and cultural hubs like Reading Frenzy. Help us celebrate this unique culture during Small Press Month. This special five-hour event will feature 15-minute readings by 15 of the most exciting small press voices in Portland.

Reading Schedule (Don't be late! Times are exact.)
5:00 Tom Blood

5:15 Geronimo Tagatac

5:30 Mary Rechner

6:00 Keith Rosson

6:15 Kristopher Young

6:30 Kimberly Warner-Cohen

7:00 Kate Lopresti

7:15 Alex Wrekk

7:30 Erica Schreiner

8:00 Lidia Yuknavitch

8:15 Tiffany Edwards

8:30 Steve Katz

9:00 Jeremy Robert Johnson

9:15 Mykle Hansen

9:30 Carlton Mellick III

_____

Nine to ten is the Bizarro hour. Our shit tends to be less "family friendly" so we got the closeout slot, which I think is great. We're like the blue comedians of the lit scene. Yes, each reading is only fifteen minutes, but I know we're trying to powerpack those minutes so it should be a fun show. 9:45-10 is an open space where we can do Q & A and book signing, though I'm guessing by that point most folks will be more anxious about heading out for some drinks.

I'm really looking forward to this event and I think it'll be a great time. And I'm grateful to Powell's (and Kevin Sampsell at Burnside) for making this happen and giving so much support to the underdogs during Small Press Month.

Can't wait to see you there. It's going to be a great time.

Volta Update

The NYE show in SF was insane. I'll have more on that next weekend.

For now there are two items:

1. The Bedlam in Goliath exists and it is incredible. You should cop it.

2. The bio/album write-up thing I did for them is now ingrained at TheMarsVolta.com as their actual Bio, and it's a sharp looking .pdf for anyone who wants to check it out.

That is all.

Much more blog (covering November '07 to Now) very soon. I swear.

See you at Powell's this Thursday!

Cheers,

JRJ

"The Bedlam in Goliath"

2007-11-06T00:19:00.000-08:00

That's the title of the newest Mars Volta album, due out on January '08. I mention this not only because it's exciting in general, but because I happen to be tangentially involved.

I'm a huge fan of the Volta, and it turns out that Cedric digs my writing, so a while back I was asked to do a sort of bio/album-genesis-story write-up for their new record.

It looks like the piece was posted today, earlier than expected, maybe to counter some other info leaks about the project (it doesn't hit until January '08). So it's currently the top item over at their website (http://themarsvolta.com/) under the heading "The Mars Volta’s Descent Into Bedlam: A Rhapsody In Three Parts." It's a .doc file right now, but I'm guessing it'll be built into the site in the next few days.

So if you're into the Volta, or want to read a truly bizarre story about murder and Ouija boards, you should check it out.

Plus, after the write-up there's a very strange bit of fixed form prose that I wrote for the album. Cedric calls it "another riddle within the riddle of the album." I call it a coded language symmetrina. Because I am a nerd.

Much, much more blog soon, regarding comics, meeting El-P, my South American debut, Angel Dust Apocalypse being taught in college, etc.

Oh, and here's a link to the video for Bedlam's first single "Wax Simulacra": http://video.umrg.com/marsvolta/waxsimulacra_revised/quicktime.asp

Best wishes,

JRJ

Quicky: Big Reading Imminent & The Punk Horror Interrogation

2007-08-28T21:54:00.000-07:00

PDX Lit-mania

The flier pretty much says it all (plus some). I haven't done a Portland reading since Broadway Books a few months back, and since this new venue allows (even encourages) drinking, there should be shenanigans a-plenty. This is highly unlikely to be similar in tone and content to anything, say, McEwan's ever done in Portland, so I encourage the enthusiastic, the curious, and those who simply wish to drink near books, to drop in and check it out. Should be a-typical lit madness.

Punk Horror Interview

I sat down with the braintrust of the upcoming Punk Horror charity antho and answered some very personal questions about Bizarro, my shady musical roots, "burrito-loving," and much more. Clicking below will inter-pop you to one of the strangest Q & A's I've ever done:

http://www.punkhorror.com/html/jeremy_robert_johnson.html

Much more soon.

Cheers,

JRJ

THE GOOD OL' "SO YOU THOUGHT I WAS DEAD" POST

2007-03-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

Photo Proof of Existence 1: The beard and the famous jail.

Well, I'm not dead.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, despite any pernicious rumors that might have worked their way to you, I remain a living, breathing entity.

I think.

I have been in this weird sort of limbo for about four months now. The cause- Genetic alteration to a new type of creature: Homo Domesticus. The shift happened suddenly. I sprouted a few gray hairs, went to bed one night, and woke up thinking, "I can't live in a goddamn apartment anymore."

Thus began the Quest for the House. A house of my own. A place where I didn't have to listen to my neighbor singing Dionne Warwick at two in the morning (although she can carry a tune in her own weird way, sort of like a more coherent Wesley Willis in a sultry mood). A place where I didn't feel my cash was just going into a black hole. A place that wasn't painted piss-stain yellow where you feel the slightest vibration caused by the other tenants.

You get the idea.

Problem 1: I wanted to live in the Portland metro area. Not the burbs, or outlying Portland-y regions. In Portland. And that's expensive. And as I quickly discovered, mortgage lenders are not mightily impressed by the intermittent and basically speculative wages of a fiction writer.

These wages were fine for my pre-Domesticus era, good enough to allow for some Taco Bell dinners and a few concerts and a vaguely bohemian lifestyle in a wee apartment.

But the bankers weren't having it. They wanted a dependable job to balance out my debt-to-income ratio. So I buckled down, told myself everything was going to be okay, and got myself a day job.

Dress shirts/ID badges/cubicles/commute doldrums. Five days a week, eight hours a day.

Fuck.

So, I had locked down a nice enough job, which I'll spare you the details of, lest the miasma of boredom that floats in my skull may enter yours. Then came...

Problem 2: The job made me fat.

Photo Proof of Existence #2: Suddenly realizing that metabolism is _really_ slowing down.

Within a few months I managed to slap a nice doughy mid-section onto a frame that had previously been running marathons/10K's/5K's on a regular basis. The job is deeply sedentary, basically eight hours a day hunched over paperwork and a keyboard. And to keep up with my existing writing obligations I was coming home and typing all night, too. Not a lot of running going on. I started using the railing while going up my stairs and getting chest pains.

It was disconcerting.

In order to save myself from tubby bitchdom I had to find a way to jam some fitness activities back into my life. This meant less time at the keyboard after the first work shift of the day was done. This meant getting my mileage back up and nursing blood-blisters the size of fifty cent pieces after multi-hour sessions on the trails at Forest Park.

Luckily this venture has been fruitful. I've carved off about half of the "bonus material" around my waist, and have a decent resting heart rate again. But this new day job combined with the lifting and running is throwing a nasty wrench into my writing biz especially when coupled with...

Problem 3: The Quest for the House has gone quagmire.

Even with the job I'm not making that sweet cocaine or I.T. money (like many of the people my age that can afford the PDX city life). So I'm in a smaller house market, and that means looking at places built before the invention of, say, nails and levels. Old, decrepit bungalows and ranch-style shacks with dry rot/pest problems/silty or absent foundations/busted sewer lines (with complimentary rat holes)/shot roofs/jury rigged electricity/convicted rapists across the way/worked-over siding/collapsing chimneys/etc.

But the only way you can find out about those problems in real detail is to pay professionals to tell you how shitty the house is.

Imagine you fall in love with a nice older lady. You spend hours on the phone and filling out papers to court her. You visit her regularly. You get engaged. Then you pay a bunch of people to put her through series of tests and they tell you she's got psoriasis and eczema and cancer in her marrow. Plus carpenter ants. And then you have to leave her at the escrow altar.

Imagine this keeps happening to you again and again.

And imagine in the meantime that you've got something you really love. Let's call it writing for the sake of the loose and shambling illustrative story. You love writing, and you love talking to publishers and readers and other writers, but all that goes neglected while you work a soulless (but still pretty nice) job and try to fend off technical obesity and find a place to live that won't send you banko or collapse under you while you sleep.

Imagining these things might give you a loose idea of why I have seemed to be dead.

But the tide is changing. I have rediscovered a sort of bull-headed willpower that I had abandoned as exhausting in the past (and I'm buying a lot of Red Bull). I may have finally found a house worth purchasing. And I'm building some balance between my day job and my personal health.

What This Means:

The four-hundred or so pieces of correspondence I've received via MySpace and my website are about to get answered. I answer every bit of mail. If you sent me something it has not turned to vapor. You will hear from me in the coming weeks.

Work on Tuning Fork will shift from near-dead to moderate shuffle/top-level hustle (depending on how close my agent is to punting me into the sea).

JRJ.com should see a serious revamp. It's so goofy looking right now.

I'll be putting the thumb-screws to the two guys who are supposed to be finishing up new novels for Swallowdown Press this year. One of the guys is, I swear to God, launching what appears to be a very solid and respectable career in hip hop, so it's tough to get him to sit down and type when there's so much glory/money/groupies involved with the alternative. I understand, but man, this guy can write too so I hope he finds time to work over some prose too.

And this blog is going to be super-sized. I have a lot of catching up to do. Here goes:

NEW STORIES COMING OUT THIS YEAR-

Photo Proof of Existence 3: Celebrating DMX-mas with Totally Explode. Hair absent, beard barely present, but definitely not dead.

"Trigger Variation" is a brand new story about equine steroids and the anti-sentience movement. It's also a story about a bunch of straight-edgy guys called EndLiners causing a shit ton of trouble in a small town. I'm proud to say it's going to be included in The Vault of Punk Horror which I've just learned is also going to feature an introduction from Mr. Famous Guy of Famous Band fame (edited because publisher hasn't made official announcement yet). Doesn't seem like a traditional choice for a punk tome until you consider his decision to confront the PMRC and appear as a giant, angry transexual on his album covers. Then he seems punk in his own screaming, glammy way.

I keep telling the editor that once he receives Mr. Famous Guy's intro he's got to send back an email saying, "We're not gonna take it! No we're not gonna take it!"

But the odds of that actually happening (or coming across as funny) are pretty small. Still, as a guy for whom Famous Band was a gateway drug to metal, I'm stoked to have Famous Guy involved. Everyone I know that has ever interacted with him said he was a very nice guy, and he is a big supporter of the indie horror scene.

"Consumerism" is a sort of follow-up tale to "Priapism" from ADA. It involves a Hummer wreck, a Frito Snak-Pak, and a pinch of Greek tragedy, and it'll be appearing in the very anticipated Falling From The Sky anthology.

Head here to check out the diverse line-up on the soon-to-be-released mega-mix of literary radness.

"When Susurrus Stirs" is a truly hideous tale of parasite horror. It starts out weird and ends up way beyond weird, in some gooey realm that I feel a pinch guilty for having flushed from my brain. It'll be appearing in the next installment of the ever-excellent Bare Bone series (#10, I believe). I'm also very happy that the story will appear along with new work from two of my favorite writers on the planet, Cody Goodfellow and Tom Piccirrilli. Should be a very sharp line-up.

UPDATE: Looks like this one just hit the market. And check out the cover:

"Faded Into Impalpability" is really four stories from me, four stories from Nebula/Stoker/Pushcart/etc.-winner Bruce Holland Rogers, and a central collaboration. It's all wrapped up into this weird sort of fixed prose beast called a symmetrina.

It should see print in Cemetery Dance around the end of '07. We tried to change it up with each piece while sticking to the theme so it's got outright horror, bizarro, subtle suspense, "literary" stuff, etc. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll appear along with one of the new Stephen Graham Jones stories CD's got coming this year. His last CD appearance ("Raphael") was severely creepy.

I've mentioned this one before, but "Simple Equations" is another brand new story that should see print in the excellent A Dark and Deadly Valley anthology very soon.

So that's five (well 8.5 if you count each story in "Faded") new stories coming out in'07. And if I can manage to fill an editors request to chop about 3,000 words off of a story called "States of Glass" it may find a home at a very top-shelf literary mag. So if things really work out that's a minimum of 9.5 published servings of my weird shit while I work my way through writing the best new novel that I possibly can.

NEW NET SHENANIGANS-

Some very sharp reviews of Extinction Journals at The Zone (UK), The Pedestal, and 3AM.

Here are a few samples for people who don't like to click out of blogs (or to agitate those who could give a shit about reviews):

"Jeremy Robert Johnson's novella of the apocalypse is a supremely weird reading experience, sitting somewhere between Chuck Palahniuk and John Wyndham. Extinction Journals is a hybrid, a mutant child of 1950s' paranoia and contemporary dystopia. Bleak, funny, apocalyptic and affecting it stays with you long after you've finished it." From The Zone.

"Equally profound and hilarious, [Extinction Journals] contains not only some of the most thoughtful examinations of humanity’s need for companionship to come along in several years, but also some of the best descriptions of loneliness and thanatophobia, the pervasive human fear of death." From The Pedestal.

So those are nice.

And although it's not new to people who've already read my first collection, "Precedents" is now available for free on the net in the second issue of up-and-coming Bizarro mag The Swallow's Tail. Fans of the weird who have already read my story would do well to check it out- my tale is by far the most orthodox thing in a very strange magazine.

"Precedents" is a decent sample for readers who want to test the waters before checking out a full book of mine. "Literary" folks seem to dig the story, and it received an Honorable Mention in the most recent Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, so it seems to work for people outside of genre (which is always nice).

And although I've mentioned this before, there's some new content for bilingual readers up at the smart and stylish Proyecto Liquido. You may have already seen the elegant translation of Snowfall, but there's also a new interview up with some mook called Me. Also check out their interview with my Canadian brother (and literary pugilist) Craig Davidson.

SPEAKING OF THE CRAIG-

I've mentioned Davidson before and I hope anyone who has enjoyed my work has checked out his collection Rust and Bone. And I have to say that reading the intro to his newest book The Fighter is partially responsible for recharging my writing engine during this stressed-out stretch of my life. Craig is "the business" when it comes to storytelling, and if you believe otherwise it seems likely that he'll challenge you to a round of fisticuffs while promoting his new book.

I've noticed a series of weird coincidences between myself and Craig that really do make me think of doppelgangers and Lynchian dualities and how much time I waste thinking about dumb shit like this when I should be writing. Here goes a brief rundown:

We've both come from a horror-writing background. He hiding/writing as a pseudonymous hobo named Pat Lestewka and I writing as Jeremy Robert Johnson because I am proud of my horror heritage and I couldn't think of any good fake names (aside from Krystal Winthorn, which is the name I write my Woman's World romance stories under- they pay very well!).

(Craig is actually very proud to say he writes horror but I can rib him, "having a bit of the old joshery" as they say, because he is far away and cannot punch me.)

We both released early limited edition books with strongly established horror industry vets (him with Ed Lee, me with Alan M. Clark).

We both released well-received short fiction collections mixing brutal tales with more "literary" (ie. stories about people and their ill/handicapped love ones with less pulpy content). Both collections were blurbed by one of our heroes, Chuck Palahniuk.

I am handsome. Craig is Canadian.

Both of us are producing work that makes marketing teams squirm a bit. Which is not to peg us an uncompromising artistes, but which is to say that our cross-over odds in the "literary" market are somewhat dampened by the profound number of nasty things that happen in our fiction. If either of us were luck out and "hit it big," it would much more likely be Welsh/Palahniuk/Ellroy big, versus Cussler/Roberts/Grisham big. And that's perfectly okay.

What's my point? That I think about dumb shit. And that Craig is a cool guy (due, primarily, to his similarities to me).

Word.

THIS BLOG DON'T STOP-

Here's more blog. More sweet, semi precious morsels of blog.

On the topic of blurbs. In the last year I blurbed seven (count 'em) books, from small-press chapbooks to mass market paperbacks. Which means I definitely over-blurbed myself. I don't want to become that guy from 15 Second Film Reviews in Wichita that gets blurbed for calling Miss Congeniality 2 "A spellbinding comedy and stand-up feel good hit!"

This means no blurbs for '07. I've played myself out. Some of these blurbs are in rotation, some are for books that have yet to see publication. The seven from '06:

Licker by Michael Arnzen: “Licker is a truly intoxicating, hallucinogenic whirlwind of brainbreaking freakshow fun. Arnzen’s sure-footed, fast-paced storytelling, and his willingness to fly far beyond the bounds of good taste, make Licker the one bizarre carnival ride you must buy a ticket for.”

Exposed! By Michael Heffernan: “Exposed! shines a harsh light on the myriad horrors of modern society and reports back from the fearful frontlines with wicked wit and paranoid power. From the murky waters of New Orleans to the scarred psyches of our own image-obsessed existence, Exposed! is the last headline we get to read before reality comes tumbling down.”

A Drop of Scarlet by Jemiah Jefferson: “A dead sexy and darkly beautiful page-turner, Jefferson's A Drop of Scarlet is a narcotic blood-soaked nightmare from which you'll never want to escape. This potent mix of all-too-human passion and undead horror proves Jefferson is at the head of her class when it comes to breaking hearts- and, of course, bleeding them dry.”

Counting Earps by D. Harlan Wilson: “D. Harlan Wilson's un-filtered madness is laugh-out-loud funny and crazy contagious. His Counting Earps & Other Rejekts is a room full of floating planets with nitrous oxide atmospheres, each world more brilliantly tweaked and ingeniously irreal than the last.”

The Gutter Limits by Booger Murphy: “Booger Murphy's stories squall and bleat and blast in a cacophony of lo-fi punk fiction. These grimy tales play loose with convention and smear snot on your better sensibilities. Satire, horror, politics-all of it delivered with a knowing sneer and genuine energy.”

The Troublesome Amputee by John Edward Lawson: “With this blistering salvo of poetic gutshots Lawson has proven himself Bizarro’s true bard, its mad laureate. Switching from dark whimsy to retina-blast shock to political outrage without missing a beat, The Troublesome Amputee is a powerful collection of pitch-black verse.”

New Vincent Sakowski Collection: I swear I blurbed this one but can’t find any record of it. It was pretty hypey as far as the hype goes. Vince, if you read this, please email me your blurb so I can edit it in to the blog.

INDIE PRESS BEER-

Sounds like a good idea, right? Here's the fancy label that CM3 ran up for a stern batch of homebrew that we used as part of our promo phalanx in San Francisco last year:

I wish I had some right now....

ONE THING THAT MIGHT HELP ME STAY SANE-

Is submitting photos like this one to the weekly digital newsletter put out by the corporate communications group at my work:

Yes, this did run, which is great. And what's weird is that everybody sees it but nobody mentions it. No one ever says, "Hey, Jeremy, why do you keep submitting poorly modified photos of small dogs to the corporate newsletter?" It's just accepted like the papercuts and free coffee.

FALL OF AUTUMN CONTEST-

Witness a blog entry so timely that I'm announcing judging a writing contest after it's already over. I was honored to be one of three judges that indie stalwarts Fall of Autumn asked to have a go at their 2nd Annual Short Story Contest. I read every single entry from stem to stern and the following were my personal selections for the top 3:

First: "A History of Disappearances" by Wendy Spacek- There's something beautiful and sad about this prose that I can't quite pin down, but it stays with me (and for some reason reminds me of Mailer).

Second: "The Cold Insect" by Cameron Pierce- Obviously I'm a sucker for dark absurdism, and stuff that shifts between comedy and tragedy, but it was the dialogue and the closing that un-nerved me.

Third: "The Greatest Astronaut" by Simon Pole- The simple and touching sci fi of Astronaut just works.

From the look of the results it seems the other two judges agreed with me on the top pick but ventured toward capable (though less experimental) fare for the other selections.

I appreciated the opportunity to check out the wide variety of styles and voices the contest rounded together, and offer my congratulations to all the winners. Cameron and Simon, email me if you want some free shit/awards outside of the auspices of the original contest- I really liked your stories.

POWELL'S ON HAWTHORNE-

The Hawthorne Powell's was already carrying Angel Dust Apocalypse, but now they've also got copies of Extinction Journals and Siren Promised on hand. And as if that's not enough, DIY Press Advocate and Overall Badass John Barrios crafted an excellent display for Small Press month that featured two of my books. Check it out:

So, muchas of the gracias to John and Powell's for actively supporting literature in all its guises.

A PIECE OF "THE ADVICE"-

Sometimes people send me things to read, and sometimes I miraculously find space in my schedule to read them. And every once in a while I even get cocky enough to try and offer some advice. This was a recent response that I thought some people might dig (despite the general hackery of the example):
_____

Seldom, if ever, have one character tell another character what they both already know about themselves for the purpose of illustrating the back-story or general aspects of the characters.

Don't have a guy say, "You and me, Pedro, we forged our way through life in a hail of gunfire and regret." or whatever. Effectively that reads like the author saying, "Look, this is who these guys are and I can't be pained to reveal it in a less jarring way." Instead have the characters make reference to events in their past like old friends sharing memories, and don't force-feed the info to the reader. It doesn't have to be overt either— something like:

Pedro winced and grabbed his shoulder.

Harry hadn't seen that in a while. "Shrapnel still in motion?"

"Till the day it fucking pops out, man. My body's slow to reject it. I don't know- maybe it's 'cause it's the last thing I have to remember her by."

"Maybe it's because you deserved it. She's still messing you up, man... I never believed her when she said she'd been working explosives with the IRA."

"Yeah, well I believe her right now." Pedro grimaced and knocked back another tumbler of mescal. His face went calm for a moment excepting the areas held tight by scars. "What I can't believe is that I still miss that bitch."

The men laughed.

End.

There you go. It's barely passable but you've got your tough guys, your booze, your broads with weapons, and a hint of relationship back story and character development. It takes a little more work but it's worth it. If you go through your book and decompress those expository pieces of dialogue it'll really enrich it. And don't worry about getting it all in at the start if you're working at novel-length— you've got the space to develop it. Trust your reader to put things together. Write to your smartest reader— they'll get it.
_____

Nothing groundbreaking, just some solid advice that someone gave me once.

THE COLLABO ISSUE-

Collaborations seem to be a tough sell. Siren Promised, my gonzo art-saturated collaboration with Alan M. Clark, does well enough for an indie press release, but still hasn't gained the readership or momentum that ADA or EJ have. This despite nothing but favorable reviews/blurbs/award nominations. And I think I understand why...

Stephen King and Peter Straub
Murs and Slug
Mike Patton and Dillinger Escape Plan
Mr. Lif and Akrobatik

I enjoy all of the above artists, some quite enthusiastically. But when they decided to pair up and create something together I was reticent to check out the product. In some cases it took me months to cop the books/CD's when I would normally buy something from these folks the day it dropped.

I guess the fear was that the meeting of these respectable forces would somehow force each other to dilute what made their individual works so enjoyable. And I'm proprietary about the artists I love in a very nerdy way, and don't want some milquetoast mash-up of blended sensibilities (like that Best of Both Worlds disc with R. "You Going to Pee on My Little Girl Mr." Kelly and Hova).

But once I ventured out and gave the collaborations a whirl I found that I totally enjoyed what these artists had made together. And in some cases it felt like the collaborators forced each other to step their game up or try out new things.

So for any of my readers that might find themselves hesitant to pick up Siren Promised because its a collaborative effort, know this- working with Alan M. Clark took my storytelling to some of the strangest and some of the best places its ever been.

Another bonus point- The art is fucking KNOCKOUT. My right forearm sleeve based on one of the paintings is finally done (42 hours later). I tried to get a good shot of it but it came out like this:

Hopefully Pedro at ONA will have some very pro shots of the piece soon. It turned out great.

INFLAMMATORY QUOTE OF THE MONTH-

"Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and -- thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms." - Robert A. Heinlein

Good God, I just don't know how to feel about that.

AMAZON REVIEWS-

The whore in me has this basic request: If you've read one of my books, and you feel on some empirical ranking level that they warrant four stars or better, and if you might have a few nice words to say about the words I wrote, you would be an affirmed benefactor of at least one creator of weird shit if you popped off an Amazon Review (or even better, one of those Lists).

Honestly, as a micro-press author without big box exposure or a Magical Cure-All Public Oprah Book Handjob on his table, your continued support for my books on Amazon and across the net makes all the difference. Your support has already repaired my cleft palate and replaced disc C5 in my spinal column, and with your continued support I might just be able to grow a substantial beard (right now I lack the proper vitamins for any sort of real beard-luster).

Seriously, thanks to those who've already repped my work and Bizarro on the net, and advance thanks to those who will do so in the future.

Whore transmission over.

NEW VERBICIDE-

The new issue is out now, and I'm pretty sure it's the only place to find some of Fante's short fiction wedged in between Ninja Turtles and Kool Keith. For the first time in a while I did not contribute a piece to the mag, but as people who've checked out prior issues can attest, Verbicide's got a lot more going on outside of my jibber-jabber.

Speaking of Verbicide, here, at long last are the...

MARS VOLTA INTERVIEW BONUS MATERIALS-

Here, and strictly for the Volta completist, are bits of my recent interview with Cedric of the Mars Volta that were cut by the editor due to flow/page restraints. Any material in italics is Verbicide/Me (except for the very limited intro discography at the end).
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Extra intro asides-

Anyone inspired to attend a Volta concert as a result of this interview would be remiss not to devote some time to watching keyboardist Isaiah Ikey Owens work over the ivories. Because the guy is like Hendrix- he is feeling the music- and his keyboard playing is the most physically manifested stuff I’ve seen since Tori Amos started humping her piano bench.

Actually, please apply that “Hendrix” comment to the whole band. This is a group of musicians that destroy the stage like they can hear bombs whistling overhead. The Mars Volta is a group of people for whom no other life would be acceptable- they are musicians on a cellular level.

Cedric on ADA-

It's called Angel Dust Apocalypse.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I have… I’ve been reading that. It’s really good. I like the one with the guy who has the brain on the outside of his body. And there’s the other one, too, where there’s some sort of worm going through the body of a patient that they’re keeping.

The parasite one.

Yeah, that was a great one, too. And the guy realizes he got contaminated.

And he chops off his leg with a hatchet.

Yeah. That was awesome stuff, man. Thanks for dedicating that to us.

A big chunk of that book was written while listening to De-Loused in the Comatorium and EL-P’s Fantastic Damage instrumentals, so that’s definitely part of why it turned out so jacked-up.

That’s cool.

More on Dune-

I mean, I don’t mind David Lynch’s version, I love that one. But I think Jodorowsky’s version would have been a whole lot darker.

It would have been a whole different world.

I feel like only the Harkonen’s are the darkest in [Lynch’s] movie, and I feel like everyone, even the good guys, have really dark secrets that should have been in the film.

More on Meeting Roni Size-

Some people were cool it’s just that he’s the one person that we went out of our way to say, “Hey, you really have a big influence in what we do.” And he was just a big asshole. So it kind of turned me off from all electronic music. I was like, “God, are they really that full of themselves?” I can appreciate the difference between the styles of live music. But then I just felt very defensive like, “Fuck you, man, you just press buttons.” At the same time I realized that he had a live drummer but I just felt like, “God, man, you should realize that your music is hitting people that you wouldn’t expect it to hit.”

On Language and Lyrics-

Do you prefer Spanish or English for singing/songwriting?

Sometimes Spanish has a little more depth. I couldn’t sing certain songs in English in order to get a certain sentiment across. It would have to be in Spanish. I’ll view it like this- if I’m in a foreign country and I hear something, just some sort of song on the radio, and it’s not from my era, and the lyrics might be about walking the dog or something, but to me it just sounds so… it doesn’t sound like that. It might sound like an ode to a dead lover or something. Being Chicano I tend to gravitate towards the Spanglish a lot more and Spanglish has a lot more English in it and I want to get away from that sometimes because I think the sentiment is best… its intentions are better felt through Spanish.

Original Closer-

So, with that being said, and thanks and well-wishes for the remainder of the tour being expressed, the interview was done. And much like a listener at the end of a Mars Volta album, I was left with a number of intriguing but unanswered questions- How’s the 16mm Volta movie coming along? How was it working with EL-P and are there any other hip hop artists you’re really enthusiastic about right now? Have you ever seen anyone get as amped as Ikey on the keys?- and the general, exhilarating sense that these guys are creating, and will continue to create, some of the most exciting soundscapes in modern music.

Limited Discography Sidebar-

Apparatuses Unearthed: A Micro-Guide To The Mars Volta Auditory Film-Fest

Tremulant EP- The first sonic blast. Three strange, exciting songs from a batch of musicians radically redefining their path post-ATDI. Produced by Alex Newport & The Mars Volta

De-Loused in the Comatorium- Omar later referred to this album as “restrained.” Which is like calling meth-heads “easy-going.” Viewed by many fans as their defining album, it has a pop sheen offsetting the aggressive mania of tracks like “this apparatus must be unearthed” and the beautiful but mournful tones of “televators” and “take the veil cerpin taxt.” The fact that De-Loused is a concept album celebrating the life- and chronicling the death- of Omar and Cedric’s artist/mentor Julio Venegas lends the songs extra pathos and gravity. Co-produced by Rick Rubin and Omar.

Frances the Mute- Five songs broken down into fifteen sections, this is a rough one to select mix-tape tracks from. Which is fine and likely intentional because the Volta again entered concept album territory, this time via an abstract tale about Cygnus, a fictional surrogate for late band-mate Jeremy Ward. An album filled with both transcendent and lonely moments, and some of the harshest lyrics Cedric ever penned (phrases like “lakes of blood”, “feed us the womb”, and “heaven’s just a scab away” abound). Source of the breakthrough single “The Widow” as well the brilliant “Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore.” Produced solely by Omar.

Scab Dates- The closest thing to a live Volta performance, featuring some incredibly propulsive moments and a Reich/Cage-type breakdown featuring filtered backstage chatter and sax squawks that may be a serious flashback-inducer for anyone who’s ever ingested a hallucinogen (I’m not kidding you, I’m warning you). Some vital moments here, including “b. and ghosted pouts” and a forceful “Concertina.” Produced by Omar.

Amputechture- This time the Volta drop the concepts and let each song work its own singular course. Cedric’s comparison of the songs to episodes of Lynch’s Twin Peaks holds water- there are an overwhelming multitude of whacked-out things happening in these songs, and the more you listen, the more you are simultaneously enlightened and disturbed. And, like in Peaks, sometimes the audio is running backwards. Although this is an album with very accessible moments- the simple structure of “vermicide,” the throttling groove of “viscera eyes,” or the smoky, filtered noir drums of “meccamputechture”- the biggest rewards come from repeat listens to epic tracks like “tetragrammaton” and “day of the baphomets.” Produced by Omar.

_____

NEW RIDE-

It's dreamy, huh? New deck courtesy of the ever-righteous and highly recommended Merde Skateboards.

FINALLY, A COMFORT FOOD BUFFET OF OPINIONAL FUNLETS-

Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor- Okay, yeah, he raps about hugs and robots and skateboarding, but it has a great balance of the lighter material and on point commentary (including the super-dope gangster zombie critique "The Cool"). Probably my second favorite hip hop album of '07 next to...

El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead- Effortlessly badass with well-placed collabos, ridiculous production, and lyrics for days. So good I find myself afraid to listen to it, like it's challenging me to push as far as El's gone. This is a week in to listening to it, I'm sure my opinion will drain of hyperbole after time. But right now this is the best thing running.

Outkast's Idlewild- Finally copped it. Under-rated, very solid, and "Morris Brown" stays fresh on sunny days. I'm all for artistic expansion, but when Andre raps, I do find myself wishing he'd do more of that.

Nas's Hip Hop is Dead- I wish Kevin Federline would have had the balls to name his album the same thing. Nas gets a bit of Grumpy Old Man syndrome here, but there's more meat here than fat, and the opening track is among his best.

Peeping Tom- Patton=Magical, although the disc is uneven. The tracks with Amon Tobin and Massive Attack make me wish he'd work with more "electronic" artists.

Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury- It's so goddamn cold, man. If I listen to it too early in the morning it gives me The Fear. "Flow reptilian" indeed.

Game's The Doctor's Advocate- Weird goddamn album, with the chronic Dre jocking, but the production and Game's compelling flow and psychodrama keep it moving.

Muse's Black Holes and Something or the Other- Queen meets U2 meets the Volta meets politicized space opera meets Radiohead. Yeah, it feels derivative, but it's a lot of fun.

Led Zeppelin, The Eurythmics, and The Doors- All in rotation a lot recently.

M.O.P.- Where's their next album? And I'm talking a real Warriorz follow-up, not that metal thing they did as Mash Out.

D.J. Premier- I respect him more everyday.

Little Children- Jennifer Connelly gets hotter everyday, the script stays smart, and the performances are all fine tuned.

The Host- Goofy. Great monster design. I hyped it too much in my head before I went.

The Descent- Not goofy, and I keep thinking about it.

Grindhouse and Chucky P's Rant- My early impression is that both of these are going to make '07 a very entertaining year for me and a whole slew of nerds worldwide.

This blog- Bloated as fuck, but it's nice to finally see you again.

Cheers,

JRJ

HOLIDAY BONANZA 2006!: All Gods Love And Fully Endorse Shopping

2006-12-07T21:19:00.000-08:00

THE SWALLOWDOWN HOLIDAY BLITZ!:

So last Sunday a serious portion of my bedroom was on fire. And no, this isn't some double entendre about my love life because when I say "a serious portion" I mean my curtains and by "on fire" I mean ON FUCKING FIRE! After a rapid lesson is extinguisher use, much inhalation of noxious fumes, and some concerted clean-up efforts, the place is looking a-okay.

But I've now decided, in honor of the blaze that could quickly have consumed me and my residence, to launch into a full scale Holiday Bonanza Fire Sale at JRJ.com!!!

!!!

What does this mean to anyone who likes "the books"?

For the remainder of December, 2006 I will be offering a knock-down, drag-out, other-fighting-term-co-opted-for-sales emphasis type deal. Check this out:

3 BOOKS FOR THE PRICE OF 2!!!

That's right and correct!

Here's the nitty gritty- Buy any two books through JRJ.com during the same 24 hour period, and I'll ship you a third of your choice for FREE! Just indicate which freebie you'd like in the Comments section during one of your purchases in Paypal and you'll have a triumvirate of strange shit headed your way just in time for your chosen pagan ritual celebrating the Olden Tyme Things That Happened in Long Ago!

Imagine Timmy's surprise when he opens up a package containing cult favorite ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE!

Picture the look on Sally's face when she realizes she can cozy up with a cup of gingerbread tea and Stoker Nominated psychological thriller SIREN PROMISED!

Try to grasp the profound exaltation on Grandma Margaret's wizened visage as she cracks open her new copy of the roach-riddled EXTINCTION JOURNALS!

All copies signed and customizable to your specifications! All copies physically present and actual!

Wait- there's MORE!

The first hundred shoppers will also receive a FREE bonus copy of the new issue of Verbicide!

Featuring an excellent and varied sit-down with Volta frontman Cedric (done by yours truly) along with great interviews with Converge, Rise Against, and Lupe Fiasco, this is no freebie to shake a stick at! Free seagull bones- that's a freebie to shake a stick at...

Don't miss out on this great chance to pick up some bugged-out books for you or a loved one and support the independent press and help me pay for the alveoli graft I need after Sunday's fire!

Okay, I can't type one more goddamned exclamation point... here's the latest aside from holiday madness.

THE FOUNTAIN:

I thought it was exceptional. Sure, I'm a longstanding DA fanboy, but this really did effect me. And it really did make me want to do Tai Chi in outerspace.

Hell, I'd settle for taking a pleasant nap in outerspace, so long as I woke up to all that gorgeous galactic fuzz that surrounded his tree-transit orb as he approached the dying star.

POWELL'S:

I love Powell's. You love Powell's. We all love Powell's. It's an incontrovertible fact of the bibliophile's life. Powell's is a book Mecca.

That's why I'm happy to announce that ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE is now also available at the lovely Powell's Hawthorne store in SE Portland (3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214). It's easy to spot in the indie press section, just beneath the prominent Riot Lit poster. So SE PDX'ers can now pick up a copy of ADA in my part of town and join me for some greasy pizza at the Oasis Cafe.

And don't forget the awesome and inimitable the Powell's City of Books on Burnside (1005 W Burnside, Portland, OR 97209), where all of my torrid tomes are currently available.

CONGRATS:

To Bizarro braintrust Carlton Mellick III and mega-publisher Rose O'Keefe for having one of the most beautiful weddings I've ever seen. Stiltwalkers, bells, communal art, and a smuggler's cane filled with vials of liquor- straight weird class all the way.

I just wish I could remember the toast I gave. Open bars= sledgehammers to the brains of public speakers. That's a science fact. Still, I can conclusively say that an excellent time was had in every direction.

ROCK!

BARNES AND NOBLE BIG BOX STORES:

My books are showing up in these. How, I have no idea. But to those crafty employees helping the underground, and to those folks special ordering- THANKS!

PROYECTO LIQUIDO:

Check out this very classy site, which you will enjoy even more if you happen to be bilingual. Could Proyecto be the people bringing some of my weird shit to South America? Watch out GGM, I'm gunning for Colombia!

YOU TWO GUYS:

You know exactly who you are. I've asked you to finish up your novels for Swallowdown. I know they're going to be awesome. I'm excited to work with you on the editing process and can't wait to see your stuff reaching a wider audience.

So if you're reading this blog it's time to stop messing around on the internet and get back to work.

Porn and /or egg nog breaks permissible, naturally.

THE HORROR. THE HORROR.:

As much as I like writing what people call my "literary" stuff or "Bizarro" stuff, there's no denying that horror is and will continue to be a central element in my work. Here's some recently released or soon to be released proof.

Exhibit #1: A Dark and Deadly Valley

Not out yet, but coming very soon, this burly batch of WWII horror tales features a righteous line-up of modern horror masters and a new tale from me titled "Simple Equations". Currently available for pre-order at Shocklines and Silverthought Press. I can't wait to read this one myself- so many of my favorite horror folks in one place....

Exhibit#2: Cemetery Dance 56

I can't say enough good things about Cemetery Dance. They've been an integral part of my horror fiction diet since junior high, and I'm honored that there's an interview with me and a new (and apparently somewhat controversial) short story "A Flood of Harriers" in #56. People looking for a copy of this issue would do well to check out the above website, as well as Shocklines. Portland readers would, of course, be advised to pick up one of the remaining copies at Powell's. And if you can't get enough quality horror fiction you should also grab a copy of Dark Discoveries while you're there. Both are excellent reads and Dark Discoveries happens to be produced by a guy here in the northwest who definitely knows what it takes to put together a great mag.

RIOT LIT CONTEST EXTENSION:

It's good news for procrastinating indie writers who want a chance to hook up with the Riot Lit crew! For the pertinent details check this out.

HATE MAIL:

Oh, sure, I get my share. Comes with the territory. Anytime you put something out in the public you've got to expect the occasional nattering or tempestuous condemnation. They can be fun to read and show to your friends.

But lately I've been getting hate mail that's not really hate mail. It's from the Cialis/Viagra/Coxplodo spam people. They used to be more seductive, with subject lines like "Bring HeR and Over Pleasureman" or "Is AShe wondering whynnot the creem?"

Apparently they've taken on a new tack. Now they're either insulting my barbecue skills with lines like "There is an issue with YOUR tiNy sausage" and "She is thining the weeenie 2 small." Or they're confusing me by using my last name as a textual boner replacement, as in "What is the problem with your Johnson?" which I of course read as "What is the problem with you Johnson?" (a subject line not un-familiar to me, even from fans). So instead of just blocking those I charge in to respond and get hit with the thousandth specious ad for mis-spelled pharmaceuticals.

It's all adding to the ever-encroaching sense of Holiday Madness.

JIBBER-JABBER:

I've produced enough at this point. And so I bid you farewell and hope that you enjoy whatever seasonal beverages and snacks and spirits and songs you may encounter in the remaining days of December.

Fairwell, hale spirits, I pritthee thoust... um....

I think I really did take some smoke damage to the brain.

Man.

Adios,

JRJ

p.s. Thanks AGAIN(!) to POD-dy Mouth for yet another plug for ADA (this time as a mind-blowing alternative for horror kids who aren't feeling the new King book [which by the way I am actually really looking forward to since his last romance-meets-the-supernatural book Bag of Bones is a favorite King-er of mine]). Now what will I get her for Christmas? And where will I send it? Magical anonymous bloggers are tough to shop for....

The Mars Volta and My Damnable Chatter

2006-10-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

Volta:

As of November 6th, 2006 the new issue of Verbicide (#18) is hitting the streets and let me tell you, this thing is a doozy.

I mean, if you held up an old doozy, circa '96, right next to this doozy, well, you'd be astonished.

"I can't believe I used to think that was a doozy," you'd say. And you'd feel shame. Rightfully so. Knowing your doozy is important.

Why does this one qualify as a Defcon 5 Doozer-mobile? Along with coverage of some very intriguing artists like Converge and Lupe Fiasco, the new issue happens to have an interview with Cedric of The Mars Volta. And the interviewer was... doozy incoming... me!

Obviously I'm very, very excited about this. The interview was great, touching on topics like surrealism, the writing process, the Volta's musical direction, Alejandro Jodorowsky, witch burning... it's a really weird interview. Having Cedric reveal he's been reading Angel Dust Apocalypse while on tour didn't hurt, either....

I'm sure my agent will be thrilled to learn that I've segued into music journalism while she awaits my next novel. I could offer the 15% of Nothing I got for doing the piece (this was strictly for the love- I volunteered) but I'm guessing she'll let me keep those revenues. Still, I had to take this opportunity. I've been writing my weird shit to the Volta's music for years now, with Amputechture being the newest incarnation of freak-out accompaniment.

Also included in the new issue of Verbicide is a revised version of my short story "Branded" which now features some smoother sentences and less errant tense shifts. Yes, it's still gross and kind of sad, but in a more "edited" fashion.

Chatter:

Anybody interested in the old Q & A/general repartee can drop by The Lost and The Damned message board tomorrow night (10/12/06). As long as your Java biz is current you should be able to click that link, type in a name, and head into the chat within a minute or so.

My chat is part of their Bizarro Week and will start at 7PM Pacific (8PM Mountain/9 Central/10 Eastern).

Please feel free, as always, to yell, "Blitkrieg!" or other exclamatory phrases whenever the mood strikes you. I don't know why, but that cracks me up.

POD-dy Party:

Girl on Demand continued her frenzy of awesomeness last week, which included plugging my new books and keeping the world apprised of other shenanigans from Riot Lit compatriots.

She has refused my offer of marriage and a dowry. She has also refused my secondary offer to send her a box of assorted Hostess Snacks. Now that's integrity.

Opinional Funlets:

Instead of offering worthwhile, intelligent analysis of recently consumed media products, I offer the following:

The Departed- Scorcese continues to prove he's one of the finest film folks that ever breathe life into celluloid. So intense and entertaining I started grinding my teeth during the film and didn't notice until my jaw felt sore.

The Wu-Tang- Completely kicking ass out of nowhere. As evidence I offer Ghostface's Fishscale, GZA's Grandmasters, and Method Man's 4/21... The Day After. From production to lyrics to general Wu-ness, these guys are back and doing some of the best work of their careers. Makes me forgive the time Ghostface spent half a concert sitting on a speaker drinking orange juice while wearing a hotel bathrobe (which, actually, was strangely charming and apropos from such a generally idiosyncratic artist).

Adbusters- The new issue has some very strong fiction in it. They do that every once in a while.

I don't know Japanese, but am guessing this might be the right word:

Konichiwa,

JRJ

Scattershot As All Get Out!

2006-09-18T00:23:00.000-07:00

That's this post, for certain. No narrative thread. No cohesion. Just a bunch of... things, I guess. I won't even try to ascribe a value to what's going on here. You may find wisdom in here, or amusement, but don't say I didn't rule out consternation.

Item 1:

Riot Lit is here. Call me a joiner if you will, but this is another crew (like Bizarro) of writers with a lot of energy and some intriguing ideas about the literary business. And check out the website- it's sharp as an adamantium nano-syringe (not a real thing- please just imagine). Stay tuned for increasing levels of Riot Lit shenanigans...

And if you dig what you see over at the Riot Lit site, be sure to add us at MySpace so that Rupert Murdoch will know you like our ragtag squadron.

The guy behind the net-tastic good looks of the Riot Lit hub is Ryan Scott, and I'm happy to note that he's currently working on the new version of JRJ.com. Watch for that to launch and burn many a retina in October of this year.

Item 2:

Three of the writers associated with Riot Lit owe their appearance on the bookish radar to this lovely woman: PODdy Mouth. In fact, she's got a great review of DSB's new book up right now. And she was nice enough to give a shout out to my book in her recent interview with Bloggasm.

Girl on Demand, whoever you are, wherever you are, you kick ass. If you were my spoiled daughter, I swear I'd buy you a pony and coat it in gold. Thanks again for all the good mojo.

Item 3:

I'm getting very, very excited for this book.

Item 4:

Don't watch this. It's proof that YouTube is putting every wasted, worthless bit of human existence out there for pointless consumption:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEZqJRxtzA8

Never seen an idiot with a gigantic skull spinning a coffee table book (it's about sharks) on his head while sort-of-reciting Old Dirty Bastard lyrics? I offer this cell phone footage as Exhibit A for anyone who ever mistakenly thought I was anything but a supreme nerd.

My cousin Joel put this up. He's an ass. But he's about to be a year older, so... Happy Early Birthday, You Ass!

Item 5:

If one were to check out the Honorable Mentions section of this year's edition of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror they might come across a couple of stories by a guy I call The Me. Yup, Ellen Datlow was nice enough to include my stories "The Gravity of Benham Falls" and "Precedents" on this year's list.

Also nice to see two mentions ("A Mean Utility" and "The Apprentice's Guide to Modern Magic") for Craig Davidson on there. Congrats to all the writers who are mentioned in the book this year, and thanks are due to Ellen for reading every stitch of strange fiction published in 2006.

Item 6:

I'm currently reading a collection titled Voodoo Heart by Scott Snyder and it's wonderful. This guy can pull off strange and poignant in the space of a single sentence and has ideas bleeding out his ears (not a real malady- please just imagine). More on this book when I finish it up, but I can already recommend it. If you don't trust my rec, maybe Stephen King's gushing page-long blurb will do it for you. It did it for me.

Item 7:

Haven't checked out Riot Lit yet? Get over there and play with some floaty flash graphics, stat! They're like digital indie writer playing cards!

Okay, now I'm hungry. I done blogged myself up an appetite, and so I bid you good day.

JRJ

Zeen Fare & Sliding Scale Reviews

2006-08-09T22:29:00.000-07:00

The 2006 PDX Zine Fair

I'll be there pimping Scissor Press/Verbicide Magazine, and this year I'll also have copies of Angel Dust Apocalypse, Extinction Journals, and Siren Promised with me ($10 a pop, or 3 for $20, which is a cool deal). I'll be there for the whole event so if any NW folks want to drop by and say hello, that would be fun. Here's Verbicide editor Jackson Ellis' rundown on the event:

Author Jeremy Robert Johnson will once again represent Scissor Press at the Portland Zine Symposium in 2006. The PZS will be held on August 11, 12, and 13 on the campus of Portland State University, and Jeremy will be giving away hundreds of copies of Verbicide and selling copies of his books. For more information, visit www.pdxzines.com.

The Bizarro Books Reviewing Quandary

How does one state that the work might be overly jacked-up for the general readership but will be enjoyed by tweekers, deviants, thinkers, and drinkers? By introducing a sliding scale based on the reader's tastes. That's what Horror Wench did in this fun Horror-Web review of Extinction Journals. So, depending on who you are, this book ranks in at anywhere from 3.5 to 5 stars. Intriguing.

I want some chocolate mousse.

JRJ

Audio Buggery and Warmongering

2006-07-31T22:55:00.000-07:00

The lovely folks at the die-hard DIY site Fall of Autumn have decided it would be a good idea to have one of my stories "audiofied" and available to all comers. And so it was that I agreed and sought out my music producer muchacho Remote View to make the thing not only listenable but potentially entertaining. Clocking in at about twelve minutes of alliterative strangeness, this is a sonic rendering of my insectile short story "The Sharp Dressed Man at the End of the Line" (which happens to be my staccato ode to roaches, paranoia, and the direct style of Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand, and also happens to be a sort of brief prequel to my novella Extinction Journals).

Remote View must have used some type of high band-pass EQ ultra-filter to make my voice sound like that. Because, really, my voice is this sort of silky smooth ultra-manly basso profundo.

It's Barry Whitey, you could say.

But don't.

Also on the fictional warfront, I just sold a short story titled "Simple Equations" to the anthology A Dark and Deadly Valley. Should end up being a very strong batch of bizarre and horrific war stories from the WWII era. With fellow contributors like Harry Shannon, Steve Vernon, Brian Keene, Brian Hodge, Graham Joyce, Gary Braunbeck (and so on) I can't wait for the thing to come out so I can read every story but my own (I know how that one ends).

Check it out- I've now got a ZineWiki entry. One can never have enough Wikis, and this one is quite nice (and a great resource for independent writer types).

And at a level of lastliness I'd like to note that I recently discovered I was born the day the original Nuclear Proliferation Act was signed into action. No wonder I've always got mushroom clouds on my mind...

Barely coherent but still typing,

JRJ

Where the Hell Have I Been?

2006-07-15T20:14:00.000-07:00

Oh, man- two months since the last blog. I can't make any excuses for that. All I can say is that I was busy with a couple of different things, one of which I'm happy to be able to finally announce:

As of today, I've officially signed to a literary agent.

I've been mulling and fretting about this decision for some time because the Needle Awards magically put me in this dream position where I had multiple agents eager to see my work- I know, it's the best kind of problem. I'm not complaining. But it can be stressful. I don't want to cross over the NY threshold meekly, and I have to be sure that I find the right agent who will place my books with the right publisher and help me reach decent enough sales that I'm viewed as viable for later publication. Slow sales tied to the ISBN of your first novel can have a nasty quicksand effect on a writer's career (or so I've heard).

So after many emails and phone calls I've decided that the agent for me is Mollie Glick with The Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc. (JVNLA for short- they represent some NY Times Bestsellers like Phil Margolin and Jean M. Auel who both also happen to be PDX'ers.). I've now signed on with her to represent my new novel TUNING FORK, and my amended collection. Mollie's previously worked in foreign rights consulting and did an editorial stint at Crown before joining on with the JVNLA team. She's got a great breadth of industry knowledge, is very well vetted industry-wide (and is an AAR member), and happens to really dig my work (I'm pretty sure that's one of the most crucial elements- to have an agent who's a real advocate for the story you're telling).

Now it's "put up or shut up" time. Somehow, in the next six or seven months I'll need to navigate my way through the following tasks-

1. Take TUNING FORK from its preliminary stages to full blown super-novel.
2. Complete 3-4 stories for anthologies I've committed to.
3. Stay on top of Swallowdown Press marketing/promotion for existing titles while trying to develop new books for the press by a few writers I've expressed interest in.
4. Relaunch JRJ.com.
5. Complete SKULLCRACK CITY (which has temporarily taken a back seat to TUNING FORK).
6. Not let all this monitor radiation melt off my face.
7. Spend less time wondering how much bone density I've lost to my soda pop addiction.

So, that's a decent list going forward. I'm excited and nervous, and can only guess that this workload will only increase my consumption of the toxic phosphoric-fructose soup that is Pepsi. Hopefully by the time my brittle bones shatter they'll have that whole "adamantium skeleton" thing figured out.

Get to it M/I Complex.

Also of interest (to me, and apparently, some very nice British people):

Somehow both Angel Dust Apocalypse and Siren Promised managed to make the final lists (in collection and novel) for this year's British Fantasy Awards (established by Ramsey Campbell). Very nice to be on there with guys like Gaiman, Wolfe, Braunbeck, Joe Hill, etc.

I'm not likely to be a front-runner for either award, but if by some miracle I won something I'd be on the next plane out. I've always wanted to eat the sort of fish and chips that actually cause small heart attacks. My friend Ben from London said I could acquire that there. And I'd like to see Bristol because I'm attracted to wet, grey cities.

Lastly-Most:

I just kicked out some free signed books (ADA/SP/EJ) in a pack for the "Hurricane Katrina Victims Fashion Charity Event" (my brain keeps transposing it as Hurricane Katrina Fashion Victims which strikes me as a particularly cruel phrase). I'm not sure when this thing hits (the MySpace page is a wee rough on the eyes) but the organizers seem to have their heads on straight (okay, aside from the layout of that MySpace page) and will also be auctioning off some signed stuff from guys like Harry Shannon and Will Clarke. So, when this thing drops it's a good chance for somebody in Alabama to score some cool books, kick out cash for a still needy cause, and add another tax write off item into their filing forms next April.

To those who've noticed my sloth- yes, this post is pretty much a copy of my recent post over at the ChuckPalahniuk.net Cult Discussion for ADA. Like I said, I'm keeping busy. Work smarter, not harder- all that.

In that same vein, here's something excellent that I'm jacking from RN Lee's ever-entertaining blog:

Chris Cunningham's New "Parasite" Video

He retains his god-like status with just under two minutes of full-fledged freakout. This guy, methinks, is special.

Waiting for summer to die,

JRJ

A Plague of PromoLocusts aka Thrice the Mojo

2006-05-19T00:35:00.000-07:00

Good mojo comes in threes, right? It must- here's my new triumvirate of crazy luck:

1. I usually wait until I'm "contract in hand" on this sort of announcement, but in this case, I couldn't wait. I just found out that Cemetery Dance will be publishing my short story "A Flood of Harriers" in Issue #56 (accompanying the interview Steve Vernon did with me). Having a story in CD's always been on my "To Do Before I Die" list, so I'm very buzzed about the news.

2. My new books (Extinction Journals & the paperback edition of Stoker Nominated novel Siren Promised) are in from the printers and finally available at Amazon.com, Powell's, Shocklines, and JRJ.com.

3. Angel Dust Apocalypse has been chosen as the most recent pick of The Official Cult Book Club at ChuckPalahniuk.net. I've offered to be a part of the discussion and it's been going great. Any fans of Chucky P and ADA are totally welcome to drop by and join in.

As a sign of karmic balance it is notable that my car pretty much exploded today (what does it mean when all the dash lights come on at once and the thing just stops?). Mojo can be fickle.

Cheers,

JRJ, Brand New Bike Commuter

What the Hell is a Meat Socket?

2006-05-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

Honestly, that's a question you're better off not knowing the answer to. It's not as bad as, say, a "blumpkin" but it is pretty foul.

The Meat Socket is also the name of an ultra-sleazoid Canadian magazine that just released its fifth issue, titled Pornography Hurts. This thing is jam packed with truly foul content, death metal, and pics of sex acts I usually choose not to contemplate.

Somehow, amidst the filth, you can also find excerpts from my fiction, a gonzo interview with me (accompanied by photos of prolapsed colons and me reading Angel Dust Apocalypse to school children), and a graphic adaptation of my short story "Amniotic Shock in the Last Sacred Place" (seen above).

The whole experience will make you feel dirty on the inside (and maybe even on the outside). Consider yourself warned. Seriously.

Although the issue is currently up as a disc based magazine, rumor has it that the mag will soon be available online (at which point it will likely be banned).

I'm a bit chuffed that my material ended up in this issue next to hate-based cocksmith Max Hardcore and homophobe horror hip-hopper Necro, especially since (my hero) Mike Patton is scheduled to appear in issue six. Thems the breaks.

Genuine sickos- pick this up or watch for its net appearance soon. Everybody else- this shit will make you lose your lunch. Then it will make you eat that same lunch again. It's that messed up.

JRJ

p.s. The new Tool album continues to grow on me.

1: EXTINCTION JOURNALS- Coming May 1st

2006-04-25T01:42:00.000-07:00

You can survive a nuclear blast.

All you need is some luck, and maybe a customized business suit coated in cockroaches. It could work. At least that’s what Dean believed before the bombs actually dropped and his suit led him to murder a Very Important Man at the foot of a blackened obelisk.

Now D.C. is looking awfully empty. Life on Earth is pretty much coming to an end. All of which leaves Dean with a single question-“What now?” The answer to that question will take him on an uncanny voyage across a newly nuclear America where he must confront the problems associated with loneliness, radiation, love, and an ever-evolving cockroach suit with a mind of its own.

Dean’s bizarre adventures mark the last chronicle of human existence, the final entries in our species’ own…

Extinction Journals

“DUCK AND COVER, BITCHES! Jeremy Robert Johnson answers the call to glory with his intimately insectoid mini-epic of apocalypse, Extinction Journals: a trip far weirder and more fucked up than it has any right to be. Just like these times.”
— John Skipp, author of Conscience, co-author/editor of The Scream, Mondo Zombie, and Book of the Dead

“Extinction Journals is like a Twilight Zone episode made without Standards & Practices telling Serling he couldn't feature any human/insect love scenes. Move over Chris Genoa- there's a new sexy genius in town.”— Chris Genoa, author of Foop!

“Johnson swirls just enough lucidity and knowing, zombie-Vonnegut hilarity into his bizarro fable of mutually assured delirium to make me question my own sanity. Until science finds a cure for whatever ails this boy, we can only hope to bask in the cool plutonium glow of his weaponized mind... and start collecting cockroaches.”
— Cody Goodfellow, author of Radiant Dawn and Ravenous Dusk

2: SIREN PROMISED- Coming to Paperback May 1st

2006-04-25T01:37:00.000-07:00

Angie Smith and Curtis Loew are having dreams they can’t shake. At the heart of each is Angie’s daughter, Kaya. Angie’s dreams end in death, the spreading of hand-shaped bruises across her daughter’s throat. Curtis’ dreams end in something else, something closer to obsession than love.

Angie is worlds away, trying to keep her drug-shattered mind from falling apart, traveling through an American underbelly filled with inhuman shapes, dark whispers and old friends with empty eyes.

Curtis is Kaya’s new neighbor. He’s getting closer to her, and her mentally unstable grandmother, Colleen. He’s had families before, but he’d always made mistakes. Mistakes that led to new names, new towns. But this one time, he swears, things will all work out. He’s got so much love to give.

The Bram Stoker Award Nominated Novel

Siren Promised

Featuring an introduction from author Simon Clark, over thirty illustrations by Alan M. Clark and an afterword by the book’s creators, Siren Promised sets a new benchmark in visual and written storytelling.

"Using Alan M. Clark's gorgeously dark fantastique artwork to springboard the lush, compelling, often raw storyline forward, Johnson and Clark have created a unique literary atmosphere full of dread and wonder. This is a synergistic fusion of major talents that seethes with the black, beautiful energy of nightmares made real."— Tom Piccirilli, author of Headstone City and A Choir of Ill Children

“I have just one word for you – DAMN! By the time I was done reading I was wondering about the purpose in my own life; they left me with an emptiness I didn’t even know existed.”— Horror-Web.com

"What makes Siren Promised such a towering achievement is the rare skill that both men possess to transform their personal experiences into a work of such visionary power. It's harrowing, it's horrific, it's moving, and it's mesmerizing.”— Simon Clark, From the Introduction

“Siren Promised is a page-turner. Johnson and Clark are masters of their crafts…”
— Verbicide

“Siren Promised is a tale of addiction and legacy and rebirth. It is spontaneous and compelling. Dark, sordid characters, bound together like weaving vines of a bog rose. A haunting tale that will surprise you constantly. I recommend it highly.”— Cemetery Dance Weekly

3: SIREN PROMISED/JRJ Interview at SCI FI WIRE

2006-04-25T01:20:00.000-07:00

This just popped up today. It's a pretty cool short piece about Siren Promised and the Stoker Awards at the Sci Fi Channel's net news section:

Siren Promised in the Realms of SCI FI

Big thanks to JJA for taking the time to conduct the interview, and to the SCI FI Channel for always playing that Frankenfish movie.

Okay, that's enough gumption from me,

JRJ

p.s. It turned out that JJA had some quality leftovers from our interview that he couldn't use in the SCI FI WIRE piece, so he posted the rest of the Q&A at his blog:

The Slush God Speaketh

It's pretty much the only place I've ever used the phrase "burrito party."

Chit Chat of the Damned!

2006-04-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

CHAT WITH JEREMY ROBERT JOHNSON, MONDAY APRIL 24TH

On Monday, April 24th I'll be the guest author for the “Message Board of the Damned” weekly author chat. It starts at 6:00pm PDT (7 MST, 8 Central, 9 EDT) and lasts for an hour or two depending on how many people show up and whether I decide to answer all questions monosyllabically or en espanol.

I’ll be officially announcing the release of my next two books (and talking about my new imprint Swallowdown Press) at the chat, which is pretty exciting. I’m also open to questions about the Stoker Awards, Bizarro, socialism, parasites, sharks, etc. If any of that is of interest to you then meet me at Message Board of the Damned on 4/24/06.

NOTE:

You might want to come early to sign up for a Message Board of the Damned account. It's free and easy, but might take a few minutes to sign up. You probably won't need to sign up if you already have an EZBoard account.

Also, once you’re signed up you’ll be able to come back on 5/1/06 and chat with New York Times Bestselling author John Skipp whose ninja-like skill with banter will make your minor effort all the more worthwhile.

INFO OF POTENTIAL BENEFIT FOR THOSE NEW TO “THE CHATTING”:

Please use the ‘?’ method to get your place in the queue. Don’t blurt out questions. Make sure the patient folks ahead of you have had a chance to ask their questions.

Please feel free to randomly shout the word “Blitzkrieg!” should you find that amusing (as I do).

Also, no side conversation while the chat is in progress. It tends to jack the flow. There will always be a free-for-all period after the official chat has ended.

I think that’s about it. Hope to see you there!

Bout It,

JRJ

p.s. The chat is now done, and here's a link to the Transcript for those interested.

Swallowdown, Chat, Stokers, Hype & Powell's Re-Restocked

2006-04-11T21:55:00.000-07:00

This is the new custom logo for the micro-press I'm launching in May of 2006. Much thanks to Alan M. Clark for the design job and for coming up with the elegant and slightly disturbing image (that bird doesn't necessarily look too healthy).

Swallowdown Press is a Bizarro imprint- much like Carlton Mellick III's Avant Punk- that will release its own weird books while still marching to the communal lit tune established by Eraserhead Press. Inspired by the DIY ethos of guys like Ian MacKaye, Jim Munroe, and, of course, CM3, Swallowdown Press will strive to release underground books at overground levels of quality.

Basically what it is right now is a cool label that you'll be seeing on brand new weird work coming from me. Will it become more than that in the future? Perhaps. Some have suggested that the press name might also be appropriate should I decide to start releasing gay erotica. They were joking, but I've heard there's good money in that market, so we shall see (tweedling fingers and stroking waxed-and-curled moustache like a greedy corporate bastard).

Want to hear more about the upcoming books from Swallowdown? Make sure to come visit with me at 6:00pm PDT on April 24th, when I'll be doing a live chat at The Message Board of the Damned. I know I've been evasive about upcoming releases so far, but I'll be spilling all the beans and half a can of soda at the chat, I swear.

I can tell you that I should have some lovely cover art for EXTINCTION JOURNALS to show you by the beginning of next week. Oh, and here is the back cover copy, for folks who can't get enough of vague promotional text:

You can survive a nuclear blast.

All you need is some luck, and maybe a customized business suit coated in cockroaches. It could work. At least that's what Dean believed before the bombs actually dropped and his suit led him to murder a Very Important Man at the foot of a blackened obelisk.

Now D.C. is looking awfully empty. Life on Earth is pretty much coming to an end. All of which leaves Dean with a single question- "What now?" The answer to that question will take him on an uncanny voyage across a newly nuclear America where he must confront the problems associated with loneliness, radiation, love, and an ever-evolving cockroach suit with a mind of its own.

Dean's bizarre adventures mark the last chronicle of human existence, the final entries in our species' own...

Extinction Journals

So there's that.

Some other news of interest- SIREN PROMISED has been officially nominated for a 2005 Bram Stoker Award (in the First Novel category) by the members of the HWA. The Stoker is like the Oscar of the horror world, so I'm very honored and excited to be included among the nominees (including Weston Ochse and Kealan Patrick Burke in our category, and lesser knowns like King, Palahniuk, Mieville and Barker in others). Clark and I won't find out if our little dark horse of a book will take home the prize until mid-June, but in the meantime I threw myself a burrito party- that's the kind of party where I eat a giant burrito(!)- just for being nominated. Here's a link to the Final Ballot to give you an idea of the kind of excellent writing that's up for the award this year.

Hype! I love me some hype! And thanks to some kind words and a Needle Award nomination from the incredibly cool Girl on Demand at POD-dy Mouth, I've been nearly coated with "the hype" for the last few weeks. No, I didn't win the coveted Needle Award, but just being a nominee sent a modest cavalcade of interested New York literary agents in my direction. Although most have agreed that ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE is doing what it's doing just fine, the real interest from New York has been in seeing a new novel from me. I can't fathom not returning that interest so I've already started work on a new book tentatively titled TUNING FORK.

That's all I can tell you about it right now, since the novel is only in partial outline form and I haven't officially signed on with any agents yet- but things are looking very interesting. Hopefully I'll have more info on this front soon, although I may not actually end up agented until I've written this new book, which I'm hoping to do by 3rd quarter of this year. Crazy...

Finally, I wanted to offer another big THANK YOU to the Portland people who've been heading into Powell's Books (1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR 97209) to pick up copies of ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE. It has already sold out once since I announced its inclusion as a featured small press title last blog. I love heading down there to deliver new copies (gives me a chance to loiter and check out a bunch of magazines while feeling like I'm doing "work"), so much love is due to the Portlanders who have been picking up the weird little book. One of the agents I was speaking with last week said Portland and Seattle are two of the biggest, most supportive literary communities on the planet, and I believe him.

I think that's enough info dump for now. On a personal note I'd like to offer my best wishes to my friend Kane who just joined the Coast Guard and is now somewhere in NJ learning how to be a military man. Glad we got to party, play poker and pool, check out Chappelle's Block Party and Slither, etc. last week. Sorry I never found you a Last Detail-style hooker with one eye to give you syphillis. Hope basic training's going awesome, man. You'll be fighting sea pirates and dope smugglers in no time!

Should have the EJ cover and more chat news next week...

JRJ

Powell's Restocked & Some Big News (Sort Of)

2006-03-22T01:39:00.000-08:00

First, big thanks (!) to the people who quickly bought out the first batch of ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE at Powell's Books (1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR 97209). Powell's has since decided to increase their stock and make it part of the featured display for small press, which is very cool. I dropped off a bunch of copies this week.

So, that's good news. Thank you to all the PDX people and others who support their local booksellers.

Next, the new issue (#16) of Verbicide is now out and is ridiculously great. I have to give props to Nate and Jackson for putting out their most attractive, solid issue yet. You've got in-depth interviews with Saul Williams (a major artistic influence on ADA and a hero of mine) and Gorillaz alongside the weirdest "interview" ever with the Wondershowzen guys (it's total chaos but frequently laugh-out-loud and lasts much longer than I'd expected). On top of that you get artist profiles, politics, tons of music reviews, some dreamy Suicide Girls shots, and fiction by people like Agent Automatic and some jackass called... ME!

That's right. The new issue features one of my most popular stories, "The Sharp Dressed Man at the End of the Line"- a cockroach riddled story of paranoia, nuclear war, and creative tailor-work. Which leads me to my "big news" for this blog...

EXTINCTION JOURNALS is coming!

Scheduled to be available by the end May, EXTINCTION JOURNALS is a book-length follow-up to the aforementioned short. I'd give you more details but I don't want to ruin any surprises from the prior short for those that haven't checked it out yet (not that it's a necessary read- EJ works as a standalone- but it's likely a little more resonant if you've read the story). I can say that EXTINCTION JOURNALS is the strangest thing I've ever written, which is exciting.

EJ will be relased by the same mysterious press that's putting out another book of mine (which I also can't say anything about at this point in time). I swear that by the beginning of May all my jibber-jabber will make more sense. Sometimes contractual obligations keep me from reaching any level of lucid communication. What can you do?

On a final Powell's note, Ultra Marathon Man Dean Karnazes happened to be speaking the night I dropped the books off, and he's always highly entertaining, especially when you realize that he has magical powers and is basically the closest thing to a living super-hero you may ever meet. I mean, I've never met anyone else with a 38bpm pulse rate who is capable of running 350 miles non-stop. Have you? He plays it off very casually, but I can't help looking at him and thinking, "Man, this dude's like the endurance version of The Flash." It was good inspiration for the new batch of marathon training I've just kicked off (1/2 marathon in June, full marathon in October).

Maybe too inspiring. I headed out an ran myself into some sort of lame immune-suppressed state and came up with a brutal cold/fever/sinus infection. But once my tonsils are no longer so swollen they touch, I'm headed back out for speed drills.

Final note for now- the new Ghostface album is his best since Supreme Clientele. Not a point for argument, just a fact. Going to check out his live show tomorrow night.

Best Wu-wishes,

JRJ

The Staccato Sound of Random Promotion

2006-02-22T16:48:00.000-08:00

That's the blog quandary- how much time do you spend talking about the sort of personal experiences that people actually find compelling, and how much time do you spend talking about your writing career (which is fascinating pretty much only to yourself)? I shoot for balance. I do. I let you know about Benchley's influence on my childhood in the last blog. But this new one is pretty much all business. But it is good stuff. Here goes...

After I fired up the computer this morning I discovered:

1. An interview with me (done by Steve Vernon aka Mick Lebowski) will appear in upcoming Issue #56 of Cemetery Dance. CD's always been a sort of horror mag Grail for me, so I'm hugely excited about this.

2. The Bookgasm reviewer that read ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE ended up digging it. The new review is three down, just under the new one for Bryan Smith's DEATHBRINGER. (If you're checking this out a bit after February '06, here's a perma-link to the review.)

3. ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE has been nominated by Girl on Demand for POD-dy Mouth's Needle Awards. This means that of the 1,400 some titles considered, and fifty reviewed, ADA was one of the top five commercial titles. The awards are being judged by prominent NY agents and editors, and a copy of whatever wins has already been requested by 27 agents and editors so far, including esteemed folks at Bantam, Crown, Tor, Penguin Putnam, William Morris, Trident Media, ICM, Inkwell and many others. I don't have many illusions about the viability of a collection winning, but I'm still very honored by the nomination.

So that was my morning. My bagel could have been made from musk ox and it still would've tasted great.

JRJ

Another Hero Gone

2006-02-16T12:01:00.000-08:00

"The great fish moved silently through the night water..."

When I was five years old I wanted only one thing for my birthday- to finally watch the movie Jaws. I'd already developed a shark fixation thanks to National Geographic specials and a coloring book dedicated to the toothy beasts. They were the only thing cooler, in my book, than dinosaurs. I had a brutal case of fear-based fascination that made my first swimming lessons terrible- who knew where sharks could pop up. I even had the awesome Jaws game, wherein two people compete to hook various items from the rubber-band rigged mouth of a plastic great white. Lift one item too abruptly or get one of the final pieces and SNAP!

But I still hadn't seen the film. The big one. THE shark movie.

So, on my fifth birthday, when I heard the first bass-heavy strains of the score- yup, I knew the iconic music long before seeing the movie- coming from my parents' living room, I knew I'd got my birthday wish. And for the next two hours I sat in my mom's lap and watched what was to become one of my favorite films of all time.

It was about two years later when I discovered a ratty old copy of the paperback among my dad's books. I dived right in, of course. Having already seen the film thirty-or-so times by then I was a bit shocked when Hooper and Mrs. Brody became intimate, and even more shocked with what happened to Hooper later in the book. And the Quint-incites-a-frenzy scene was priceless, if a bit too dark for Spielberg's film. Sure the ending lacked the cinematic POW! of the movie version, but it was still a deeply rewarding read and one that introduced me to Peter Benchley's potent world of oceanic thrillers.

Benchley's writing often merged captivating facts about marine biology with pulpy thrills, and still managed to excite even when he basically re-wrote his own Jaws with a giant squid instead of a carcharodon carcharias in Beast. His books read effortlessly and always satisfied. His later take on sharks as less malevolent creatures (Shark Trouble) was equally interesting, and will hopefully one day reach an audience as wide as Jaws has had. He was a man deeply concerned with humankind's abuse of the ocean, and you could sense in his later work a desire to exorcise the damage his early work may have had on cultural perception.

Had Benchley never written Jaws? Well, I wouldn't have shelled out serious cash for a framed original theatrical poster (including the "...may be too INTENSE for younger children" note next to the PG rating). I wouldn't own four copies of the book including the awesome illustrated Reader's Digest condensed version that I "procured" from a hotel lobby. Steve Alten would have no career. I wouldn't have wasted so much time on the Jaws NES game. Shark Week wouldn't drop me into a TV-coma. Spielberg may not have ended up where he is today, and the phrase Summer Blockbuster might not have entered the lexicon. I never would have contemplated a career in marine biology. I'm sure there are other things I'm missing. The influence of his book was huge.

His passing at age 65 is indeed sad, a literary voice and caring steward of the sea lost, but there is a sense that his work will endure for some time. Jaws has deservedly become a part of the thriller canon, and I hope it will continue to delight readers throughout the next century.

Peter Benchley, RIP. Thank you for the stories.

Sincerely,

JRJ

p.s. If there is indeed some sort of Writer's Valhalla as I'd like to imagine, I hope Peter's knocking back a cold one with Selby and Hunter right now. My heroes need to stick around a little longer.

p.p.s. On the lighter side of things- Tom Piccirilli, author of one of my top five books of last year, A Choir of Ill Children, has offered up this awesome blurb for Siren Promised:

"Using Alan M. Clark's gorgeously dark fantastique artwork to springboard the lush, compelling, often raw storyline forward, Johnson and Clark have created a unique literary atmosphere full of dread and wonder. This is a synergistic fusion of major talents that seethes with the black, beautiful energy of nightmares made real."--Tom Piccirilli, author of HEADSTONE CITY and A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN

So that's cool.

GOD on ANGEL DUST

2006-02-06T09:43:00.000-08:00

The GOD I'm referring to, of course, is the lovely Girl On Demand, the anonymous Penguin Putnam author behind the ever-popular POD-dy Mouth blog. Somehow I was lucky enough for her to select ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE as one of her "treasures" to be saved from the pulp mill that is Print on Demand, or POD (my publisher, Eraserhead Press, utilizes POD technology instead of the more traditional offset printing to create its books).

The review (visible on the main page now or on the right-side archives if you're reading this after February) can be seen here: Girl on Demand on ADA

My favorite bit?

"Johnson is probably a few books away from doing for horror what Jonathan Lethem did for science fiction. Plain and simple? Forget horror; this is good fiction. From stem to stern, each story will amaze you--and I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts you'll read them all more than once."

For those who enjoy Girl on Demand's industry insights, you might also want to check out this blog: Agent 007

My right ear itches. And now, thanks to the miracle of blogging, you know about it. Oh, the verdant digital age, so rich with promise!

JRJ

Free James Frey/Avant Garde DNA/Rust and Bone

2006-01-28T05:20:00.000-08:00

Free James Frey-

Jerry Stahl (another "narco memoir" author who has appeared on Oprah and also wrote the genius-level novel Perv-A Love Story) has written a very funny and somewhat scathing essay about the AMLP shenanigans. Had me laughing out loud, and frequently. Here are a few samples from the bit:

"That is to say, I may experience the despair and soul-death of a man who has knocked over convenience stores — though, technically, if you’re going to go all Smoking Gun on my ass, I was held for shoplifting M&Ms. Peanut.

The kind that feel like little skulls between my pain-racked teeth. The chocolate mushing to bloody brown with every bite. Blood. Mouth. Peanuts.

Okay, okay. Fuck the bullshit. I wasn’t exactly arrested. There was a security guard, in a turban. Whom I turned into a cop for dramatic purposes. And fuck you if you think I need to embellish my super-bad criminal status by describing how I smacked him in the face with the jerky rack. Jerky everywhere.

Preserved meat. Which I ate off the floor on all fours. Like a wolverine . . ."

and

"Haters like to make a big deal out of whether I really murdered the rabbi who asked me to take the dreidel out of his pocket and cup it. Maybe I did. And maybe I didn’t. You smoke crack and guzzle brewskis under a parked bus for two weeks and see how your fact-to-fantasy ratio shakes out."

Here's the link (you have to scroll down after you get there): Free James Frey!

Also, here's an interesting article about another acclaimed author. The article pitch- "Did a struggling white writer of gay erotica become one of multicultural literature’s most celebrated memoirists — by passing himself off as Native American?"

And the link (scroll down again): Navahoax

Avant Garde DNA-

A few days ago this, over at the Mondo Bizarro forum, I received an unexpected post from hyper-cyber-avant-garde-David-Bowie-acclaimed-author Kenji Siratori:

"Jeremy Robert Johnson, you mash-up the apocalypse head of a drug fetus and brew the genetic code of guerrilla=sex."

Which is weird, because I've always kind of felt that way about myself but have never been able to articulate it.

I will, of course, create a T-shirt utilizing the quote. Too great not to.

Rust and Bone-

So, a while back I saw an ad for a fiction collection called RUST AND BONE by Craig Davidson. I noticed the acclaim it was receiving from folks like Bret Easton Ellis and Clive Barker. I maximized the cover image for the book and saw that Chucky P also had some kind words for the work. "So," I thought, "this is the other guy." I knew Chuck had blurbed two books in 2005, but wasn't sure what the other one was. Turns out RUST AND BONE is a dark literary fiction collection from a guy with a background in horror. Sound familiar?

I got my grubby mitts on a copy as soon as I could and by then end of the first story I realized this guy was the most exciting new author I'd read since Cody Goodfellow. Craig Davidson (whose highly amusing blog can be found here) is "realer than Real Deal Holyfield." Were I to continue to quote that delightful rap couplet I'd also say, "and now you hookers and hos know how I feel" but that's always seemed a bit redundant to me, despite the delightful rhyme cadence and important message.

Back on point- Davidson has delivered a hell of a first book. Odds say you'll love it. You can check out more details and see a rather rambling review from my alter ego S.P. Doyle over at:

RUST AND BONE at Amazon.com

Hell, you could buy a copy of ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE with it and get Super Saver shipping and all that. Wouldn't hurt my feelings.

Okay, pimping done, I'm off to brew the genetic code of guerilla=sex, and then maybe I'll eat some sourdough toast. That sounds fun.

Kill all machines,

JRJ

Get Out of the House

2006-01-11T03:01:00.000-08:00

Seriously.

Go. Make sure your clothes are weather-appropriate and get the hell out.

I did it, at around 2:30am, this Wednesday morning, and it was great. I'd spent five hours straight in my midget-box office, typing away at short stories, blogs, message boards, emails, etc. My wife is working out of town and the place was (and is) Capital L Lonely and feels quiet even with my computer pumping out tunes. The rain outside has been near torrential and has rendered my life into a series of boxes. Apartment to car to grocery store to fast food joint to Post Office to home, etc.

This place, my brain, the patterned but effective lifestyle- all gone stale. So I grabbed my keys and got out. But where to go?

Anywhere. Just walk. Just breathe. Pull some fresh air into your lungs.

I spent half an hour trolling the streets, in the rain. Gallivanting. Being a flaneur (I think that's the word). I saw one other human being. We nodded at each other and kept walking. TV's flashed through a lot of the windows. The only screen I caught was selling air filters with seven layers of protection.

Seven layers of protection. You know, for the boxes we live in.

The rain picked up its force. I started to soak and turned back towards my place. On the way back I stopped and touched the bark of a tree. What kind of tree, I don't know. I'd check Google but that seems so against the point. It was the kind of tree that was rough and thick and huge and will outlive me, and I could barely see the moon through its branches and the thickening clouds.

Before I reached home, I heard a noise. Like industrial bird song. Beautiful but metallic. As I got closer I realized it was water running and pressurizing through pipes on the outside of a building. I stood and listened to the song and its rusty melody and imagined a nice drumbeat boom-bapping under it.

The noise ceased as I walked away. Kind of perfect, this tiny performance.

And that kind of shit is happening everywhere, right now. It's not huge, but it's something different. It's something I can't fucking Google up.

My hair is still wet with the rain as I type this. I'm tempted to head back out. I didn't want to write this down, didn't want it to become part of the culture where an experience is only validated if you have fourteen forms of digital files notating its existence, blog included. But I've got a lot of love for the people who read this, and I'm telling you...

Get out of the house.

Best,

JRJ

New Digs/ADA for Collectors/2005 Top 5 Lists

2006-01-08T21:21:00.000-08:00

New Digs-

So, you may have noticed a change over at JRJ.com. When you click on the handy Blog icon on the menu, it brings you here, to my newfangled Blogger page. I've outsourced my blog for a few reasons- ease of interface, presentation (I think this page looks halfway sharp and should improve as time passes), and most of all, the COMMENT option.

I say some ridiculous things in my blog and I've always wanted to give readers a chance to hammer me for my indiscretions in a public forum (aside from, you know, my actual forum). So the next time I say something like, "There's no one in modern Croatian hip hop that's worth listening to!" you can respond with a comment like, "Well, obviously, Mr. Johnson, you've never heard of DJ Zeb and the Dzirn Street Krew." And then we'll all reflect on the brilliant discourse and laugh like kings with mouths half-filled by mutton!

Of course, you don't have to be contradictory... any kind of comments will be welcome.

And no, I still have no idea where the name for the blog comes from. I was drunk when I came up with it and have kept it out of a vague sense of nostalgia, despite its silliness. I suppose it has vague connotations in either sci-fi, math, or hip hop territories. But I've never once written a blog anywhere near the basement. I've done some other things in the basement, but that remains under lock and key (and some of it is under quicklime). What happens in the basement, stays in the basement...

Oh, and for anyone who really enjoyed the old blog entries, they've been archived here at the Blogger page, all under January 2006.

ADA For Collectors-

There are only 16 copies of the "Old, No-Palahniuk-Quote-Having Edition" of Angel Dust Apocalypse left in the known galaxy. 6 have been shipped to my friend John and the remaining 10 are with me, available for purchase at my website. There are less than 300 of these in print, so it may be worth a couple more bucks on eBay some day.

Pick one up if you're interested in having a copy that'll prove you were down for Bizarro work before it was lauded by one of the World's Best Authors (caps and title inserted subjectively by blog-writer). Just indicate "Old Version" in the inscription zone during purchase. These are likely to go quick, so establish a false sense of urgency... NOW!

(Update: "Old Version" copies have dwindled since this announcement, so the sense of urgency could now be considered genuine if this sort of thing is up your bookish alley.)

2005 Top Five Lists

My lists will involve what I call "the cheating," meaning that not all picks will actually have been created in '05. Last year is just when I happened to come across the item.

Oh, and if there were any doubts about how truly un-hip my taste is, these lists should serve as a permanent confirmation. What can I say? Maybe my near-thirty status is starting to show through. Or maybe I've always been a nerd. Probably the latter.

Books:

1. Radiant Dawn/Ravenous Dusk by Cody Goodfellow- HP Lovecraft meets David Foster Wallace meets James Ellroy meets Robert Ludlum meets Alan Moore meets... okay, enough of that. What I'm trying to say is that this guy has skills and you need these books. Plan on losing some sleep once you're addicted to this epic chunk of madness.

2. Off Season by Jack Ketchum- One of the most balls-out and lyrical examinations of human darkness I've ever read. Plus, there's some mid-book trickery that will shock you. That Ketchum was capable of pulling off such a nasty coup still amazes me.

3. A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli- This book sucks you in from the opening sentence and pulls you deep into a mutant southern gothic that's often poetic, sometimes surreal, and always engaging. It's like someone slipped absinthe into your moonshine.

4. Porno by Irvine Welsh- Being back in the presence of Sick Boy and Begbie made me giddy and nauseous, respectively, but always with a smile on my face (okay, except for that scene with poor Spud and the bar-slag- that's just nasty). Plus, seeing characters from Glue added into the picture helped to further define Welsh's sick and wonderful world.

5. Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk- "Shooo-rook!" From the heartbreak of tales like "Post-Production" and "Exodus" to the straight-out existential horror of "Hot Potting" and "Ritual" this was the year's most enjoyable horror collection.

Honorable mentions include Blood Father by Peter Craig, Play Dead by Michael A. Arnzen, and The Troublesome Amputee/The Horrible by John Edward Lawson.

Films:

1. Brokeback Mountain- Forget the words "gay cowboys." That's boring. Really. Just know this- Brokeback is one of the finest representations of love, longing, and loss ever committed to film. Beautifully written, beautifully shot, beautifully acted, and brutal in its emotional implications.

2. Syriana- When's the last time you spent an hour after the film just trying to sort out the plot, but finding the act gratifying? A smart, gritty, and surprisingly even-handed examination of the geo-politics of oil (and a rewarding character study).

3. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang- Fast, funny post-modern noir (PoMoNo?) with a real love for the genre and one of the best recent performances from Robert Downey Jr.

4. Ong Bak/Kung Fu Hustle- Hell, both these movies made me want to take up martial arts again. Tony Jaa is like the love child of Jackie Chan, David Blaine, and Jesus. I'm pretty sure he's not even human. And KFH is pure cinema, the sort of thing that feels new but presses the old buttons that made you love film in the first place.

5. Wolf Creek- Yeah, you might think there were a lot of other films worthy of a top five spot, but I've got to hand it to Wolf Creek for sheer effectiveness. I cared about its protagonists more than any other batch of horror flick kids in recent memory, and I started grinding my teeth and having rapid palpitations as they were dragged further and further into their outback hell. Sharp cinematography, too. I don't want to watch it again, but I respect it.

Honorable mentions include Munich, Ju-On, and A History of Violence.

Music:

1. Frances the Mute/Scab Dates by The Mars Volta- Did anyone else even try to rock this hard in 2005? Okay, so they got a little indulgent on Scab Dates (who really wants to listen to ten minutes of backstage noise through LSD filters?) but when they hit those high points, there's no-one else I'd rather be listening to.

2. Saul Williams Fader Album by Saul Williams- Saul channels his poetry into more musical structures and adds a new punk energy and aggression. "Shakespeare," his collaboration with Zack De La Rocha, kept me going through four months of harsh marathon training. "When they tell you to achieve, ask yourself, 'Is that for them or for you?'"

3. Vheissu by Thrice- The singer learned how to sing but didn't forget the power of a guttural scream, the songs got even more complicated (but somehow more song-like than their prior work), they donate album proceeds to Eggers' literacy program, and the songs all contain a real sense of urgency in favor of human transcendence. Ambitious without over-reaching, this is a very positive slab of punk-metal energy.

4. A Healthy Distrust by Sage Francis- Every time I listen, I pick up a new genius line. Whether rapping about politics, relationships, or a hip hop battle between the sun and the moon, Sage is furiously on point in his best work to date.

5. Hell's Winter by Cage- I never thought Cage would come anywhere near one of my favorites lists, but something must have happened to him when he went through that mushroom coma (or whatever trauma hit him). His Def Jux debut is so full of neck-snapping beats and sharp lines that I have to give him props. The old Cage was content to offend with nasal tales of drugs and misogyny. The new Cage is flexing a variety of flows on topics like his jacked-up childhood and the "war on terror" over ridiculously hot beats from El-P, Camu Tao, DJ Shadow, and RJD2, among others.

Honorable mentions include With Teeth by Nine Inch Nails, Arular by MIA, Black Dialogue by The Perceptionists, Leviathan by Mastodon, and B-side and Rarities by Deftones. And the best live show of the year was incontestably Ozomatli at the Kauai Convention Center, followed by The Mars Volta at The Rose Garden, The Perceptionists at Doug Fir, and RJD2 at Holocene.

2005 will be a tough year to leave behind. Somehow in the last twelve months I managed to have two books published, run a marathon, get married, and get a literary quote from one of my heroes. In 2006 I'm going to have to get four books published, run an ultra-marathon, move to Utah and marry some more people, and get James Ellroy to co-write a book with me.

I'm going to need some benzedrine, for starters. I better get moving.

And thank you to all the wonderful friends, family, and readers who made 2005 such an incredible year.

Let's make 2006 The Year of the Lazer! (Hint: this will involve lazers!)

I need another drink,

JRJ

TEL : Stories is Poppin' Fresh

2006-01-08T20:59:00.000-08:00

TEL : Stories is a new anthology edited by Jay Lake, two time World Fantasy Award finalist and 2004 John W. Campbell Award winner. The basic premise of the antho is that "great style makes great literature."

Yeah, I have a story in it ("Last Thoughts Drifting Down") and I'm excited to have it included alongside fiction by folks like Forrest Aguirre, Greer Gilman, and Jeff Vandermeer.

This batch of stories is fresh out of the oven and already receiving very positive reviews, which I will now indicate the presentation of using what most folks call a colon (looks like this ':') :

"Elegant, erudite and strange, TEL:Stories is a remarkable anthology, containing much to enchant, perplex and terrify."
—Liz Williams, author of Snake Agent

“In some cases, the style is challenging enough that the reader is likely to experience an ‘A-ha’ moment when, well into the story, the style's role in the fiction as a whole is suddenly understood. Jeremy Robert Johnson’s ‘Last Thoughts Drifting Down,’ exemplifies this approach, gradually revealing the narrator's identity to powerful effect.”
—Rudi Dornemann for Rain Taxi

TEL : Stories is also available at Amazon for people who like to shop there.

In a semi-interesting side-note, this publication marks the second re-printing of one of my Nuclear Family stories from Angel Dust Apocalypse. The other two, "Snowfall" and "The Sharp Dressed Man At The End Of The Line," either have appeared or will appear in issues of Verbicide Magazine. Who knew my insane fear of nuclear war would prove so beneficial?

And why won't my fear of clowns yield the same result?

JRJ

Bizarro vs. Hail Saten & DMX-Mas

2006-01-01T23:48:00.000-08:00

Just a quick heads-up. Brian Keene (author of the hugely successful zombie novel The Rising and the super-natural crime thriller Terminal) has just posted his interview with the founding fathers of the Bizarro scene, including yours truly, Carlton Mellick III, etc. So, for those folks interested in hearing me wax un-poetic about Bizarro, Dio, Dungeons & Dragons, and other sundry topics, head here:

Bizarro Interview at Hail Saten

And yes, there’s a reason he spells Saten that way. Don’t ask me, ask Keene. If you’re reading this much later, check out the December 2005 Hail Saten archives for the interview.

I’m off to Central Oregon to celebrate DMX-Mas with the fam. It’s like Christmas but we celebrate the birth of everyone’s favorite Ruff Ryder by drinking codeine-laced egg nog, riding around the tree on quads, shooting at each other, and saying the occasional prayer to show how deep and conflicted we are. Get at me, dawg!

Hope everyone’s having a lovely holiday season,

JRJ

ADA Hits PDX (12/9/05)

2006-01-01T23:45:00.000-08:00

Great news! Angel Dust Apocalypse is now available in Portland bookstores, at Powell's (1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR 97209) and Reading Frenzy (921 SW Oak Street, Portland, OR 97205). If it’s out of stock at one, the other store is a short walk away (and I’m likely headed that direction with more copies).

Reading Frenzy is a huge supporter of local writers and independent press and Powell’s is, well, it’s Powell’s- the biggest, best bookstore on Earth. I remember being a little guy and asking my parents to drop me off there for four hour stints. Growing up in Oregon, the place has always been a literary Mecca for me, and I’m honored to have my book available there. Where is my book shelved? Check out the substantial Small Press section. I think it’s in the Blue Room, but might be wrong. Like I said, this place is BIG…

And thanks are due to Powell’s fixture Kevin Sampsell for choosing to stock the book. As an aside it’s worth noting that Kevin himself is a respected author and editor and the major force behind indie powerhouse future tense publishing. I hope PDX people interested in the book will head downtown and support their local booksellers. And when you’re there, why not ask when the next Jeremy Robert Johnson reading will be…

Also, issue #15 of Verbicide is now available. For those on the fence about picking up ADA, here’s a great chance to check out a short of mine (“Swimming in the House of the Sea”) and get the best issue of Verbicide yet. Even if you’re not interested in my story (and by the way, what are you doing reading this if that’s the case?) the new issue has an excellent interview with hip hop pillar Chuck D, as well as sessions with Kim Coletta of Jawbox and 40 Oz. Comics creator Jim Mahfood. Verbicide is one of those magazines that gets better with every issue and with their recent expansion you should be able to find an issue in your zone.

All business today,

JRJ

The Tale of Bloodcrotch! (11/9/05)

2006-01-01T23:42:00.000-08:00

So, I did manage to complete the Portland Marathon, and in decent time (4:03:14 h/m/s). I would have finished in about 3:56:00 were it not for the crushing blows meted out by hubris. Yes, hubris. I made the classic beginner’s mistake and overestimated my training on the big day. My training guide warned against this. Runner’s World magazine warned against this. But the ego- the part of my brain that told me I was feeling great at mile two so why not up the pace by a minute per mile- did not listen to wisdom. And so an early 7-8:00 minute/mile pace later became a 10:00 m/m pace when I hit the wall.

The wall, for me, was invisible and hovering somewhere around mile 24. And I hit it hard. Blood competition led to abdominal cramping. My left hamstring knotted up. My eyes sunk so far into my head I started collecting rainwater in which sparrows were a-play. It was harsh. But I slogged through to a decent finish time, and was in the upper 25% for a bunch of categories by race end.

And hey, I finished in much better shape than the poor man we now refer to only as “BloodCrotch!” This poor guy, he ignored all the good advice too, and ran the 26.2 miles in gear he apparently forgot to field test. His shorts liner dug out furrows in his crotch so deep they struck red gold, and it was running in garish red rivulets down the back of his legs. Too late to apply the Vaseline at that point, I guess.

But even “BloodCrotch!” finished. Tough to quit a sport created buy a guy who died birthing it. Because of the hubris.

And, yeah, I’m now married, and the wedding was perfect and the honeymoon was even better and that’s all I’m saying about that.

The other big news is something you’ve probably seen plastered all over this site, but it’s worth mentioning anyway. I returned from vacation to find that one of my literary heroes, Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame, and author of one of my top five books of all time (Choke), has given me a quote to use for my collection Angel Dust Apocalypse. The full quote now sits above the cover image on the Currently Available page. I couldn’t be more honored and can only hope that the book will live up to the expectations Chuck’s quote may set for it.

Carlton Mellick III and I have revamped the book design, so copies shipping in the next couple of weeks should begin to feature the quote. We’ve also created this sharp little banner:

I’ve got some other fairly interesting news but I have to wait about a month before I can share it. In the meantime I’ll be sitting in front of this keyboard with the sounds of The Mars Volta’s new album making my brain twitch.

And, yes, I do plan on revamping this site soon. It looks like it was designed by two guys with a vague knowledge of HTML who might have been drunk on Steel Reserve (and it was, and they were). Plus, the menu gets all jacked up if you don’t maximize. Look for a sharper JRJ.com by mid-’06.

Maybe.

Oh, and the new PROTECT compilation from Fat Wreck Chords is out, too, and definitely worth picking up. Not only do all sales fully benefit the National Association to Protect Children, Verbicide’s own Jackson Ellis had a huge hand in putting it together. The CD contains 26 tracks from 26 bands including Coalesce, NOFX, The Mishaps, Jawbreaker, Western Addiction, Hot Cross, Bars, and more. You can pick it up here or at places like Amazon.

Okay, enough flim flam…

Jodorowsky Needs to Make a New Film, As Does Aronofsky,

JRJ

All Sizzurped Out (10/2/05)

2006-01-01T23:40:00.000-08:00

Oh, fair October… this is a month that will disappear in a blink. In the next thirty days I’ll be attending a Mars Volta concert (Stoked!), running the Portland Marathon (Slogged!), moving to a new residence (Domiciled!), flying to Hawaii (Transitioned!), and getting married (Hitched!). All of this while finishing up a couple of anthology contributions and keeping the Dread Angel Dust Marketing Steamroller in crusher mode. Oh, and writing that zombie/noir book. Got to pretend I’m on top of that one so my publisher doesn’t gut me and leave me collapsed in the gutter hugging my steaming entrails. I swear, Rose & Carlton, that it’ll be in your hands by the time the winter ice thaws. Or sooner.

In other developments, the first ever comic adaptation of my work is on its way. Jon Towers, the guy behind The Heart of Abracax (www.jonnyaxx.com) is hard at work on a graphic version of my story “Amniotic Shock in the Last Sacred Place” to appear in upcoming issues of brutally nasty magazine The Meat Socket. From the look of Jon’s early sketches, this is going to be an outstanding envisioning of one of my weirdest stories.

Also, for those interested in a preview snippet from my profane interview with Meat Socket editor Mikhail, head here. The interview will be accompanied by two shorts from ADA, and Issue/Ordeal Five also include written work from other twisted folks like Ed Lee, Jeffrey Thomas, and Peter Sotos. Also featured- the bands Bathtub Shitter, and Crackwhore. No, I’m not kidding.

There are a couple of other cool interviews in the works, but the level of cool involved is to such a degree that I’m held to secrecy. Masons may or may not be involved. Shhhhhh…

For any folks out there interested in a quick way to become an emaciated bird, try marathon training. I’ve just calculated my miles run in the last four months, leading up to the PDX Marathon, and the number comes out to 393. 393 miles! Not including miles logged on my bike for cross training. And during the process I’ve managed to drop 15 pounds from my frame (mostly Black Butte Porter-related belly weight) and 7% of my overall body fat. I’m not quite starvation gaunt, but I am looking more and more like the main alien from Close Encounters. And my resting heart rate is around 40 BPM. It’s like the screwed & chopped version of my old crunk heartbeat, all sizzurped out. It’s okay if you can’t translate that last sentence. All I’m saying is that there have been strong physiological changes related to me running around in circles in the woods. All that time among the trees and now I’m the twig-boy. It’s been fun. It all culminates on Sunday, and after that it’s straight to the opium den!

And to the folks out there who are continuing to rep for ADA, giving copies to their friends, doing Amazon reviews, that sort of thing… I salute you! I couldn’t have predicted it’d be doing this well, and I have y’all to thank for it. Next time you’re headed through Portland the beer and tacos are on me!

Doing Okay With Regards to Vitamin Intake,

JRJ

Olden Tyme Mail (7/29/05)

2006-01-01T23:39:00.000-08:00

The PDX Zine Fair is coming, and I’m going to be there repping Verbicide magazine. Here’s the official press release from Editor-In-Chief Jackson Ellis:

August, 5 2005 - Portland Zine SymposiumPortland State University, Smith Memorial Center Ballroom, SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 Author Jeremy Robert Johnson will be representing Scissor Press at the Portland Zine Symposium 2005. The PZS will be held on August 5, 6, and 7 on the campus of Portland State University, and Jeremy will be giving away hundreds of copies of the latest issue of Verbicide, as well as regaling Symposium-goers with wild tales and crackpot conspiracy theories. He will also surely have copies of his newest books on hand. For more information, visit www.pdxzines.com.

So that's about that. Verbicide's an awesome internationally-distributed mag that features music, literature, culture, poetry, reviews, the whole big stew. And I'm proud to be shilling for them at the zine fair. PDX people should come say “Hi” and grab some free loot. I'll have copies of ADA there, too. And if you want, I'll do palm readings. Or I'll just stare at you and then fall over. Depends on the room temperature.

And I’ve recently learned, via a device I like to call “the electronic mail” (it resides in my very computer!), that Carlton Mellick III and Rose O’Keefe will also be at the zine fair spreading the word about Bizarro. If all goes well we’ll be sharing a table and maybe a pizza.

In other news, I have to report that there have been several winners of the “contest” on page 180 of ADA, and the promised points and free books have been distributed via a system I call “the olden-tyme mail.” The contest has been a fun way to find out that not only are people reading my inane author’s notes, they’re also well-read regarding famous physicists. So there’s that.

Also, I’m happy to say that I’ve recently been invited to contribute my weird fiction to a couple of interesting anthologies. I’m not sure how much I can say about either, but I can tell you that one will also feature the work of the incredible Cody Goodfellow and a couple of other very cool contributors. And I can also tell you that my invite to the second anthology was later revoked when it was revealed that a.) I don’t want to write about unicorns and orcs and b.) I don’t know how to write and can barely speak English (or Elvish). Regardless, two anthology invites in two weeks means that the mainstream is starting to pick up on Bizarro work and artists, and it makes me feel all cuddly like a Pegasus/unicorn/panda cross-breed that soars on butterfly wings. Wow, maybe I can do fantasy!

And finally, I have to note that the aforementioned Cody Goodfellow has written a couple of awesome books that are wholly worth your attention- Radiant Dawn & Ravenous Dusk. You can head to their respective Amazon pages, the Bizarro Forum, or my MySpace page to see a full review of both books. Definitely worth checking out.

Unicorns vs. Unicrom-The Final Battle

JRJ

p.s. Check out the Currently Available page for some strange new music from the Siren Promised release party!

Greasepaint on Bloody Knuckles (7/1/05)

2006-01-01T23:33:00.000-08:00

“There, at the foot of the door to Mid-World, Jeremy decided ‘Screw the Tower’ and took a much needed nap.”

The circus is in town so I’m ducking the inane prattle that usually heads off my blog-type materials and getting right to what I like to call “The Biz”:

1. Angel Dust Apocalypse is now available for secure purchase via this website! It’s over at the Currently Available page, with only a Buy Now button between you and said purchase. The upside of picking it up here rather than Amazon is that you get free shipping, the copy is signed (for later eBay sales value), and you can request inscriptions. Want a drawing of Webster molesting a cow? Done! And it keeps the big A’s corporate hands out of my pockets, which means I get a better cut and can eventually afford that skull-piercing I’ve been saving up for.

2. Siren Promised now has a spokesmodel (!) repping it over at the Bloodletting Press site. While I might question the idea of using heroin chic to sell such a surreal, brutal tale of drugs and derangement, I wouldn’t do so for long. Because, hey, when’s the last time Stephen King had a spokesmodel? Jealous, King!? Oh, you are? Oh, okay, sorry, that was rude of me. At top, as a consolation, I present my personal spokesmodel shot for the Dark Tower series.

3. It’s Bizarro time! You may have noticed the new link to the Forum. Hell, you may have even clicked on it. It’s the gateway to the heart of Bizarro-land, wherein several writers of the bizarre have joined forces to… well, we’re working on that part, but I’m pretty sure global conquest or the acquisition of a great deal of sugar is somehow in the works. You’ll be hearing more soon. And by “more” I might just mean “me singing songs about a Delorean (aka That wingy-car made with coke money)” or I might really mean more.

That should cover things for now. I’m off to the circus to put the pain to some clowns. Hate me some clowns, I do.

With greasepaint on bloody knuckles,

JRJ

Donning the Propaganda Hat (6/6/05)

2006-01-01T23:31:00.000-08:00

So let’s imagine that the planet’s trying to kill you (and then eat you). That the plants growing around you and the air you breathe have conspired to shut you down, permanent-like, and put you in the soil, where the same plants whose pollen choked you out will now extend their root-tendrils into your cold body and start sipping away at the mass of gelatinous proteins you are quickly becoming. Imagine these things with me, and empathize.

Allergy season is here. Trees and grasses and flowers are all ejaculating poisonous motes into the air, and unless I want to start rocking a Jackson-style surgical mask, I’m breathing this noxious junk in. And on a windy day like this, I’m praying for a rain to rush in and wash all this floating nastiness into the gutters. This is Portland, so my prayers should be answered any time now. I’m wasting your time (and, hey, the point of most blog-type content is time wasting, so don’t complain, or do, but only vocally so I never know) with this info because I want you non-allergic folks to understand how lucky you are. You can breathe this same air, swallow up deep lungfulls of it, like it was just air. I take a deep breath of the exact same air and my head fills up with great writhing slugs of snot and my eyes are pepper-spray red. Makes me want to Agent Orange every green growing thing in my perimeter… but enough lamentation… Watch out! Here… comes… the…

MEDIA BLITZ!!! Put your Propaganda Hat on (yes, the one with the bells) and take a fanciful tour through the halls of modern marketing! Peruse the many hyperbolic review quotes that now parade their way across the Currently Available page! Watch my skull expand as I start to believe my own hype! Check out the awesome reviews of Siren Promised and Angel Dust Apocalypse at Horror-Web! Or let your eyes take in the majesty of Verbicide editor Jackson Ellis’ review of ADA over at Amazon (which will also appear in Issue #14 of his mag)! Wait for the upcoming review of ADA in Dark Discoveries #5! Make your own reviews with refrigerator magnets and bask in their multi-colored alphabetic glory! Blitz over… for now.

Aside from the good reviews, I’m also happy to announce that Angel Dust Apocalypse has been officially recommended for two Bram Stoker Awards (Best Fiction Collection and Short Fiction-“The Sharp Dressed Man at the End of the Line”), the highest honor given by the Horror Writers Association. 2004’s nominations includes folks like Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Chuck Palahniuk. The idea that I might make it onto the 2005 ballot, well, it almost makes up for the fact that the planet is trying to kill me. Wish me luck…

And in the biggest news of the week- Siren Promised is here!!! The official hardcover release from Bloodletting Press is now available, and from the copy I’ve received I can tell you that it’s gorgeous. Alan’s art has never looked better. People that pre-ordered copies should be receiving them within the next week. I hope you dig it!

If my allergies get any worse today, I’m going to use my home norepinephrine injection kit. And then I’m going to go bowling and utilize that synthetic adrenaline rush to roll the best game of my life. This is the lamest plan I have ever cooked up, but it’s got a certain charm.

Solidarity, brothers and sisters,

JRJ

Back from NYC (4/15/05)

2006-01-01T23:30:00.000-08:00

Back from doing book promotion in New York City. Still recovering. Call me a countrified rube, but I didn’t believe any of that “City That Never Sleeps” nonsense. And then there I am, still up at 7:00 in the morning, nowhere near sober, staring up at how vast everything is, just waiting for somebody to get smart enough to mug me. But there were no assaults. This was the post-Giuliani Shotgun Lockdown Corporate Remodel New York and that sort of thing doesn’t happen as often as it used to. Last time I’d stayed in New York City, Times Square was still porn central with barbed-wire outside of the windows (to catch/snag jumpers, I was told at the time), and now it’s a giant open-air mall with a hard-on for electricity waste. Call me a rube again, but I sort of like the new version better. Less “stabby.”

I was attending the 2005 World Horror Convention at The Park Central Hotel (one of those “Whore With Pretty Make-Up” hotels that have a gorgeous lobby and front but rooms fit for cheap affairs and booze binges). I was rolling with the Eraserhead/Raw Dog Screaming crew (Carlton Mellick III, Rose O’Keefe, Kevin Donihe, Andre Duza, John Lawson, D. Harlan Wilson) and we had a fine time pushing books and hefting a wide assortment of beverages. I had a good reading on Friday and also participated in the Celebrity Charity Poker Game (sponsored by Raw Dog Screaming/ promoting Michael Arnzen’s upcoming psycho-poker thriller Play Dead) along with horror masters like Jack Ketchum, F. Paul Wilson, and Tom Monteleone. F. Paul Wilson ended up taking the game, but I finished third, which meant $300 went to my charity of choice, The National Association to Protect Children, a pro-child/anti-abuse organization that you should go check out right now (or later, but seriously check them out; they’re doing great things).

The convention was a blast. The Eraserhead Press table sold quite a few copies of Angel Dust Apocalypse, and it was great to meet so many of my literary heroes (Dallas, Jay Clarke, the ever-manic J. Skipp). It was also cool to meet (and this is a partial list due to booze-related brain damage from the con): Cody Goodfellow, Jeremy Lassen, Matt Schwartz, Steve Vernon, Brian Keene, James Sneddon, Andre Duza, Linda Addison, Kevin Donihe, and a host of others. I can’t wait to get back to New York again.

I also got to visit with my friend Erin who showed me around town but, alas, could not find a way for me to make out with Chloe Sevigny, who was supposedly around, somewhere. Still, Erin, you kick ass. Thanks for taking me out on the town.

Further thanks go out to Jackson Ellis, editor-in-chief of the awesome Verbicide Magazine, and Nate Pollard (of Abstract Fantasy comics fame), for showing up and rocking the spot as if it had been there awaiting a mighty rocking for lo these many years. I shall remember your crackpot conspiracy theories and “tap fury” for the rest of my years.

Also, a quick shot of good news: Angel Dust Apocalypse is selling well and has even hit the Amazon Top 50 on five different occasions since its release. BIG thanks to all the people picking up this psychotic piece of work. I hope you’re enjoying it!

I’m on an awkward sleep schedule that modifies my melatonin to the point where my brain gets this weird pharmaceutical fog over it, like Dinty Moore Beef Stew is all I’ve got floating between my ears. So, if this entry seems particularly disjointed, blame the brain stew.

Once there was an English gentleman who was asked to type a sentence that he believed represented how Americans spoke. He responded with the following: “Fancy a corndog, bro?”

That just makes my day…

Your friend and neighbor,

JRJ

The Effed-Up Spectrum (1/19/05)

2006-01-01T23:27:00.000-08:00

Another New Year. Glad I’m still here. Glad you’re still here. Good to see you again. Up here in Portland we brought in the Annum Novus (I have never learned Latin so somebody tell me if this is wrong, or if it is a type of foreign sedan) with shenanigans galore. Fireworks (accompanied by my sterling improvisational keyboard work)- check. Booze- check. Second degree burns- check. Broken glasses- check. Projectile vomiting- check, check, check. And check.

2005 should be fun year. I’ll be attending the 2005 World Horror Convention in April. And I begin marathon training in July, a month known for its pleasant, balmy, distance-running conducive weather. So at some point this year I’ll probably get heat stroke. I’ve heard brain trauma can be very inspiring for writers so I’m actually looking forward to that.

BIG NEWS for the start of ’05- It’s just been announced that I have won the “2004 Eraserhead Press First Book Contest” for my book Angel Dust Apocalypse. This is a manuscript that I actually sent to them before Siren Promised sold to Bloodletting Press, so luckily I still fit the judging criteria. This book will be out early this year, possibly even before the long-slated Siren Promised. And it’s a doozy. This book pretty much covers every color of my patented “Jeremy Robert Johnson is Effed Up Spectrum.” It should fit in well at Eraserhead’s stable, home of the notorious Carlton Mellick III novel Satan Burger. For more early info, head here.

Also on the slate for 2005- trying to prevent the Bush administration from killing Social Security. I’d prefer to not think of the Boomers as a bunch of clear-cutting parasites. Or at least I’d like to make sure my parents still get their benefits when they retire some twenty years from now. Look back at the last sentence. Look closely at the tiny space between the “w” at the end and the period that follows. That little space right there is one hundred times larger than my trust for Wall Street privatization schemes. Didn’t the base populace already take it deeply enough up the ass on the fabulous “Tech-Boom”? So I’m writing my letters and making calls and signing petitions and doing all the things that are supposed to make the democratic process so great.

I’m trying to stay optimistic. All civilizations eventually fall, but I’d prefer if this one not fall right on us and our children. Let’s move this out a couple of generations and teach our kids to live sustainable and ethical lifestyles and maybe when this ship goes down we’ll have some well-crafted lifeboats. Because if things go belly-up now, or in the next thirty years, well, I just can’t picture it being too rosy.

There’s some mixed-metaphor lefty chatter for y’all. Not what you came looking for, but it’s what you got.

I have grown a beard. It’s pretty shaggy and less writer-riffic than it is transient-tastic. I’m tempted to shave it but it seems to actually be keeping my face warm, of all the wonders.
Hopes for the new year? Pretty much the same as last. Health and happiness for friends and family. Musical success for my friends Mike and Max. More time to spend with my bad-ass nephew, Ryan, who is sweet at crashing toys into other toys. A country-wide realization that the Bush administration’s actual policies do not forward a “Culture of Life.” Asia Argento’s phone number would be nice, too.

Plus, it’d be cool if DIO revived his “Sacred Heart” tour and brought the mystic metal show to P-town. Dragon included. That’d be the best.

aDIOs, por la noche,

JRJ (who on top of not knowing Latin also manages to not know Spanish and is thus multi-unlingual)

Oh, the Miscellany (11/11/04)

2006-01-01T23:25:00.000-08:00

Half a year? Seriously? It’s taken me that long to write another entry? You know, for a guy claiming “prolific” in his bio, that’s an awfully long time to go without updating a website journal. I must have been ridiculously busy, or traveling as a carny named “Shepples” to hide from the law. Let me check my memory banks here. Okay… yeah… no, I was just busy. No Shepples. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Moving to Portland, OR- “What,” you ask, “Salem wasn’t good enough for you?” No, it wasn’t. A city composed almost solely of strip malls, jails, mental institutions, and cookie-cutter suburbs is not good for anyone. Okay, so LeGuin wrote about it as idyllic, but that was a long time ago, and you’ll notice, she moved. To Portland.

I followed her lead, and I’m enjoying the honeymoon phase with my new home. It’s rainy here, gloriously rainy, which means I don’t have to be confronted by the giant nuclear explosion in space that many refer to as “The Sun.” I’m living in a cool, old three-story house and the roommates keep me in the attic. I ask them to send up cakes. They do not respond.

There are a lot of bookstores here, and you can drink beer in the theaters, and the young people don’t look so much like they’re dying from meth. Here, they’re dying from being hip i.e. Walking in front a mass transit bus which they did not see (because their shaggy, black, and purposefully unkempt hair and tattered copy of Tropic of Cancer kept them unaware). Not that I’m immune to hipsteritis. I’ve started wearing more black t-shirts. I tell myself it’s to slim the burgeoning belly created by drinking beer in theaters, but that’s probably a lie. I’m really hoping that Suicide Girls will hit on me.

And here’s a shout out to the nice lady at New Beijing. Thanks for making the General Tso’s just right.

Going to the Burn- Burning Man ’04, The Vault of Heaven. I’ll have pictures up soon, I swear. Burning Man melted my brain. I’ve tried, often, to convey the experience in words, but they tend to pale. And I’m not short of the damn words, here. This was the most fun I’ve ever had in a totally barren desert environment that humans should be smart enough to stay away from. A genuinely other-worldly experience. Where else can you molest a Theremin-alien, bike ride through a twelve-story dust storm, hear an aria, get a lesson in astronomy, play a tiny wooden flute inside a giant domicile made of white balloons, and reconfigure space-time and the consequences of death through the yellow fluid-miasma of existence, all in under two hours? Okay, that last one may not have actually happened, but it felt pretty real at the time.

And here’s a shout out to all the Burners. Especially the guy who offered to hit me with a mallet and the lady who showed me how to drink tea out of the giant nose.

Unicorn Business- I had a lot of fun at the 2004 World Fantasy Convention, in Tempe, Arizona. The event was well organized and through the dealers room I managed to finally find a copy of Jack Ketchum’s Off Season (which really was the kick in the gut I’d heard it was). I dressed up like a business man, and even acted like one, too. I handed out business cards and plugged Siren Promised like it was the second coming of Mailer. I got to meet a lot of cool people: Mike Arnzen, John Lawson & Jennifer with Raw Dog Screaming, Allen K., Paula Guran, Ellen Datlow, Tom & Elizabeth Monteleone, Steve & Melanie Tem, Nancy Holder, and more people who I will later feel like a dick for forgetting. Alan M. Clark showed me the convention ropes and bought me a pizza, and Liz Engstrom made me a righteous devil-head necklace that I used as a tie-tack.
I wore pants for the entire event.

And here’s a shout out to all the people who showed up early in the morning for my panel on Collaborations in Horror and Fantasy. Thanks for listening to my jibber-jabber when you could have been across the hall at the Bruce Holland Rogers reading. Hope those who won the free copies of Pain and Other Petty Plots… are enjoying them.

Selling Stories, Sucka- “Dissociative Skills” will appear in the upcoming holiday issue (#6) of the righteous City Slab magazine. I can’t think of a less Christmas-y, more vulgar story in my meager canon. That said, happy holidays to all the City Slab readers out there. I hope yule love the tale. Keep your Christmas stocking close by in case you lose your lunch. Good God.

Also, “The Gravity of Benham Falls” will be part of Triple Tree Pub’s Ghosts at the Coast: The Best of Ghost Story Weekend Vol. II, which is going to be a great book for ghost story fans (like me) and people who like stories with the word “gravity” in the title.

And here’s a shout out to all the editors currently cringing their way through a story of mine. Buy it up, pals. You know you like it. Send me money; I’m runnin’ out of cakes and pants.

Forever Yours,

Shepples (aka JRJ)

Kramstacktanfronshein! (5/11/04)

2006-01-01T23:23:00.000-08:00

It’s exciting, sending in my application for “The Swan.” This could be my year. Last time the show’s producers said that I didn’t qualify because I’m, you know, a guy, so this year I subverted their sexist agenda by stating in my application that I am “a handsome woman beset by a lack of breasts and a penis-like appendage that my husband just hates.” And I’ve been brushing up on my “surprised weeping.”

“I just… sob… I just never believed… sob… that I could be chosen. I’m gonna be a swan… sob… a beautiful swan. Now chop this thing off of me.”

Before you know it I’ll be wrapped up like a mummy with half my ass injected into my lips. The glory, the sweet, stapled glory of it all.

Actually, I was stoked to see “The Swan” and “I Want a Celebrity Face” airing this month. Gives me a bit of the old Nostradamus complex, since my story of televised surgical freaks, “The League of Zeroes,” hits bookstores by the end of this week. It’s in the new Verbicide #11, which also features interviews with The Shins, The Descendents, and Tiger Army.

Not much news to report, now that I’ve begun work on my first solo novel. I’d tell you more but, really, I should just be working on it right now, instead of writing this entry.

I recently caught The Mars Volta in concert and I’m still trying to reconstruct my brain. People used to associate Zeppelin’s live shows with the word blitzkrieg. I’ve created a new word, far more devastating than blitzkrieg, solely to be used in describing a live Volta performance: Kramstacktanfronshein! Note on pronunciation- should be yelled as loud as possible in a voice so guttural it sounds like you’ve been drinking hot asphalt.

Are you registered to vote yet? November isn’t that far away. Especially if you live near wormholes. Not earthen wormholes of course, but those tear-in-the-fabric-of-time-types. They speed things up like Newtonian Mini-Thins. Don’t let a lack of registration or a time-warp stop you from helping in the upcoming (intensely necessary) regime change.

Also, I’ve added some cool new links on the Elsewhere page.

I’d say more, but I’ve got to get off the net. Somewhere out there, producers are trying to call me, wanting to turn me into a swan.I’m ready for the knife guys. Let’s get to it. Chop-chop.

Your Surgically Jonesing Bro,

JRJ

Hope in one hand, spit in the other... (1/19/04)

2006-01-01T23:19:00.000-08:00

It's MLK Day so I'd like to start by wishing everyone a peaceful and prosperous new year.

Here's hoping that 2004 will hand everyone a basket full of golden eggs (of equal monetary value to whatever you may have lost via the Nasdaq crash and the various public robberies of the Bush presidency).

Here's hoping that Kill Bill Vol. 2 will have its release delayed no later than April.

Here's hoping that it will be much harder to steal the presidency this time around.

Here's hoping that hip hop fans will come to appreciate lyrical quality more than bullet wounds.

Here's hoping that Stephen King wins the Nobel this year, just so I can watch the literati throw another fit.

Here's hoping that I get pictures of my new, grown-out haircut on the website this year, thus ending the questions and speculation about me being a Nazi (which is just ridiculous; I'm the guy that plays the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in slow motion because there's very little as satisfying on God's green earth than watching Nazi's heads exploding).

Here's hoping my friend Mike finally gets his band together this year and saves the airwaves.

Here's hoping my friend Kane finds his way back to Thailand and continues cracking skulls legally.

Here's hoping my baby nephew Ryan learns some words this year, because, seriously, it's hard to carry on a conversation with this kid. Eat, play, and sleep, that's it. The kid's living the unexamined life.

Here's hoping that the resurgence of all things 80's wanes (aside from bands using keyboards again), and that we can all create a new decade instead of recycling the last. This does not apply to a potential reunion of Faith No More.

Here's hoping for more hope, and the action that turns hope into reality.

On the writer's front- much tumult. I've sold four stories in three months (check out the Currently Available section) and Siren Promised is now available for purchase.

The new issue of THE EDGE should be available within weeks, and "Working At Home" has been picked as the Feature Story, meaning Keith Minnion will be doing an incredible cover based on the tale. Keith has been one of my favorite illustrators since the early 90's, so having him illustrate my seething story of parasitic worms is a real buzz. There's a link to his website in the Elsewhere section.

My story "Luminary" will see daylight in the very cool "Darker Than Tin..." anthology. Sales will benefit the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Scholarship Fund which means I've done my one nice thing for the year. I can be rotten for the remainder.

If you haven't already checked it out, "Sparklers Burning" is still available for reading at Horrorfind.com. It's deeply strange... you've been warned.And finally, I just sold "The League of Zeroes" to Verbicide, for publication in Issue #11, May 2004. For those unfamiliar with Verbicide, it's a great combination of music, literature, politics, and culture. It's one of the only places you can find a Ray Bradbury story back-to-back with an interview with Minor Threat/Fugazi founder Ian MacKaye. The current issue features an interview with Mystic River author Dennis Lehane. I can't recommend it enough. And, it's distributed widely, so you won't have to pay for shipping to get it (assuming you've got a Borders a.k.a. Starbooks nearby).

Your Pal, Currently Couched in Superstition and Wary of Witches,

JRJ

Mirthful Fancies (10/26/03)

2006-01-01T23:16:00.000-08:00

Daylight Savings Day has finally arrived. I’ve been mowing my lawn all summer and paying myself for my own services in devalued Super Yen, just waiting to save big on daylight. Hopefully, by the time you read this, I’ve visited Ra and cashed in three fat barrelfuls of Super Yen for as much daylight as one kid can carry home.

What a mirthful fancy!

Yes, the Fall doldrums are here, wherein I allow an acute but self-denied case of Seasonal Affective Disorder to push me to the brink of madness. Or, at least, the brink of stupidity (the thinnest and most easily trespassed brink I’ve ever met).

Chimcham1903 wrote, asking if I planned to start Blogging on my site soon. Well, Chimcham1903 (if that is your real name), I will resume Blogging once the damn Bgovernment rolls back all this red tape about their precious Bspotted Bowls. But only then will the Blogging commence. Until then, the Rarely Visited Self-Congratulatory Author Website Squad & The Precious Coalition for Northwestern Blogging will be at the legislature’s collective throat, demanding that Oregon welcome and embrace the Blogging that served it for so long.

Actually, I just don’t Blog because I don’t. Might someday. Maybe if I can get a hold of some extra daylight.

GOOD NEWS: "Working At Home," my fast, gruesome tale of parasitic worms and the doctors that love them, has been sold for publication in issue #18 of THE EDGE: Tales of Suspense. Look for the issue to hit the stands in January of 2004.

Also, I’ve got the latest update on my long-awaited collaboration with Alan M. Clark, Siren Promised. The book is complete and due for publication in Fall of 2004. Published by Bloodletting Press (www.bloodlettingbooks.com ), Siren Promised will be available in limited and lettered hardback editions. Both editions will feature new art from Alan M. Clark. The lettered edition will include a handcrafted steel traycase. Alan’s incredible cover art for the book is done, and I will post it to the site the moment it’s available. Stay tuned for more info as the book’s release date approaches.

As a final note, I’ve been learning about writing techniques from the esteemed Eric M. Witchey, and have taken to heart his advice about the alpha-wave conducive hypnogogic states that account for the best writing. As a result, this entire journal entry was written while napping.

Hit the snooze button one more time,

JRJ

The Wondrous Multitude (8/5/03)

2006-01-01T23:14:00.000-08:00

I had to go cold turkey with the Robitussin. The sunlight was starting to feel like molasses on my skin, heavy, holding me to the ground. And, the high (and please note, medically unnecessary) dosage of guafenisin sulfate (an expectorant a.k.a. spit-loosening med) had me hawking up liquefied lung.

Strangely enough, I’m eating a cold turkey sandwich right now. The soda I’m chasing it with doesn’t have the satisfying, syrupy kick of Robi, but it’ll do. It’ll do. (subject sighs, twitches, prays he develops a cold).

On the upside, within eight days of writing this entry, the initial draft of Siren Promised will be complete. There are thirteen chapters in all (they’ve even been placed in sequential order), and I’m very excited about the project. I know, I know, even parents with ugly babies are proud, but there’s something about this little novel that has me more jazzed than Bob Fosse.

In other writing news, I sold a story to a magazine that’s suspending printing indefinitely, and was short listed for an anthology that’s been "round filed" by the publisher due to a merger.

The charms of publishing are a wondrous multitude.

On the flipside, Pain and Other Petty Plots continues to put the critics in a critically wowed condition (do you ever type a sentence just to amuse yourself?). Cemetery Dance #43 even features two very positive reviews, one of which contains the sentence "’Amniotic Shock in the Last Sacred Place’ spotlights a horror-filled pediatric wing that Jeremy Robert Johnson has now seared into my mind forever." You should know that I used to read CD under the covers, with a flashlight, back when I was a wee laddie. So, you can guess how great it was to see my name, in a positive context, in the hallowed pages where I first discovered Ed Gorman, Joe Lansdale, etc.

The ego had briefly gone interstellar. I was so excited I put down my bottle of Robi and took a shower. It was glorious.

I’ve become inane. Thus, I bid you adieu. Which is French, I think, for "goodbye". Or perhaps, knowing the French, "go away".

Yours,Jeremy

Addiction Prone (5/25/03)

2006-01-01T23:12:00.000-08:00

Well, I’m thinking about what to get addicted to. I have to get addicted to something first, you know, and hit rock bottom hard. That’s the first step in my campaign to ascend to the upper echelons of writerdom.

The drug memoir is a smart move. Jerry Stahl had Permanent Midnight, Wurtzel had her Prozac thing going, this Frey guy is blowing up with his crack smoking journal, and J. Carroll did the heroin bit to perfection.

And, most of these books get the romanticized cinematic treatment, wherein the drug use is incredibly fun for the first sixty minutes, before the inevitable descent into pathos and pain, and "oh, gee, I can’t believe I’m making gay porn in front of my neglected children while my eyes are bleeding due to my tear duct heroin injection techniques."

So, Costco’s got crates of Robitussin DM on sale right now. My credit card limit just got bumped up. Magic in the making? Maybe.

Writer news? Well, there’s a very exciting contract on the table for Siren Promised, but I can’t divulge the details until I put the ink to the paper. I can say that Siren Promised may be my first book to see deluxe hardback treatment, which is a kind of special and significant joy to me.

Danimal12 from Bisby asks why I don’t swear in my journal entries (his perplexity stemming from the pervasive presence of vulgarity in many of my short stories).

Well, Danimal12, I have a simple answer. This website, much like the Wu-Tang Clan, is for the children.

Keep it crunk, children. Keep it crunk.

Love, Jeremy

Funification- Not a Word (3/18/03)

2006-01-01T23:07:00.000-08:00

Wow, here I am with another of my timely, dependable journal entries. First of all, big thanks to the countless thousands that have flocked to the website! I’ve had the site memory expanded and the RAMstat re-digitator has been refined to handle the constant traffic, so to those of you who view this site as some sort of digital serotonin, I promise, NO MORE COLLAPSING, NO MORE WAITING, JUST PURE, WRITHING, UN-ADULTERATED LITERARY FUNIFICATION!!!

(And to MSexxxktty420 from Akron, Yes, I did get your e-mail, and yes, they are my “real” elbows in all of the photos. I’ve actually considered having them reduced, because women seem to pay more attention to my elbows than they do to me, and that can cause a hurting, inside, where the heart is.)

Where have I been during the long months between journal entries? So nice of me to ask.

On the writing front, I’ve been working diligently on Siren Promised, my first full size book due out in January of 2004. Progress is steady and with each completed chapter the book gets longer. I’ve been writing it in English, so I think those that speak the language will have an even greater appreciation for the material. That’s about all the details I can give you right now. I’d post a sample chapter, but those bootleggers, man, they can’t wait to get their no-intellectual-property-respectin’ mitts on it to make a dollar and a cent. Goin’ out like suckers

My last collaboration with Alan M. Clark, Pain and Other Petty Plots to Keep You In Stitches has now hit the market, and you can get it at Alan’s site or via Amazon. Check out this site’s Currently Available section for links. So far the critical response has been overwhelmingly positive, and I hope you dig it, too (if you’re really buzzed off the goods, spread a little of that joy around the Amazon reader reviews).

On the stranger side of things, my twisted tale of acid overdose, Catholic ravers, and obsessive compulsive disorder a.k.a. "A Number of Things Come to Mind" did not win the 2002 Pushcart Prize for which it was nominated. However, others who didn’t make the cut this year include two of my personal heroes, David Foster Wallace and Rick Moody (who seems to win every year), so I’m among a fine pantheon of losers. I’m also consoled, in the weirdest way, by the fact that Susan Lucci was nominated 9 times before she won a Daytime Emmy.

Jeremy Robert Johnson, The Pushcart Susan Lucci.

As far as the short story market goes, look for new fiction from me in the near future (which, in publishing schedule time, is actually pretty far away). Things are going well and I’ll post news about a couple of big sales soon!

Did I celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? Well, I’m not Irish, and I think it’s a little weird to just co-opt some culture’s holiday and slap binge drinking onto it (not that the Irish don’t engage in their fair share of drinking, but you get my point). But, yeah, I did celebrate and it was a Lucky Charmsian good time.

Still, you can’t just add beer bongs to Kwanzaa, can you?

(If you can, the idea is hereby copywritten in digital print. Hallmark, give me a call.)

On a final note, on the eve of war, I also have this to say:
Down with the imperialist monarchy.

I’m not an erudite political writer, but I do know that I didn’t vote for Bush, nor did the majority of this country. He’s like one of those bad kings you see in the movies, where you know he has neither the right, nor the mind for true leadership, and yet somehow he is the king. The people go unheard, strife increases. The king’s mindless ambition, driven by greed and the thirst for power, forces the country into war. To turn our mind away from the king’s ineptitude, the volume is turned way up on any available distractions.

Now, like in the movies, we’re waiting for a real king to step up.

And we’re still waiting, while we coat our babies with duct tape and mainline potassium iodide.

Special times.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Love, Jeremy.

Semi-Humble Beginnings (1/13/03)

2006-01-01T23:05:00.000-08:00

To those of you reading this fledgling entry, thank you for checking out the new site. I’ll be using these entries to provide voyeuristic peeks into the shrieking, wonderful beast that is my life. I’ll write about inappropriate, very personal things for entertainment’s sake and allow my relationships with people to suffer for the sake of attention.

It’s gonna be great.

For example, I could tell you about the time I took too many yohimbe pills and tried to make love to a bowling ball. But I’m not giving away the golden moments so early in the game.

One thing I promise you. I will not type word one after this moment about my other "money" job with a successful commercial and agricultural lending business. Grass seed and cattle breeding, figure crunching and phone answering. That’s my 9-5 alter-ego for the meantime, until my writing becomes more profitable.

I can’t wait to make that big time "writer money." At this point feel free to picture me typing away with a diamond-encrusted platinum tooth smile. Bling, as they say, followed by a subsequent bling. (I know the majority of writers can concur here, that after that first short story sale it’s all caviar and croquet and witticisms exchanged at the expense of the lower-class while sipping Belvedere in a cocaine-filled hot tub).

Actually, I’m at the stage in my "writer’s life" where I’m happy if my story sales recoup the year’s postage cost. A penultimate bling followed in rapid succession by a final bling.

So stay tuned. And give the site an occasional furtive glance when you’re not busy buying anything I have in print.

2003’s going to be a big year. Until the bomb hits. But let’s not think about that.

Let’s get distracted.