I HAVE A NEW WEBSITE

Where I'll be living now, while I'm on the web. Please update your RSS feeds. Please drop by and visit. Kick the tires and rummage around in the medicine cabinet. I need some feed back. Get yer butt over there.

Click here to EXPERIENCE THE NEW JHJ..ER...EXPERIENCE.

Interview Round-Up

Yesterday, I appeared on AUTHOR Magazine in an audio interview with Brian Mercer. In the interview, I talk about writing, what does and doesn't work for me as a writer, how I landed my agent, Stacia Decker, my process, my philosophy, and a lot of other writerly stuff. It's hard for me to listen to, because I stammer, some. And everyone keeps saying I have an accent? I don't have an accent.

You can check that out HERE.

Also, yesterday I appeared on The Ginger Nuts of Horror blog run by the inimitable Jim Mcleod. He asked really interesting and penetrating questions even though he's just a disembodied pair of fuzzy red testicles that looks like this:

You can check out that interview, right HERE.

Also, this week, I did an interview with Kristin at My Bookish Ways. It was such a pleasure talking with Kristin, I can't praise her highly enough.

You can read that interview HERE. She was also kind enough to do a wonderful review of SOUTHERN GODS to which she gave 5/5 hats. She said:

There is also another huge component to this story: hope. It shines in Sarah and Bull, especially in Sarah’s love for her daughter, and their humanity and strength elevates this novel far above the usual horror fare.

Thank you, Kristin Centorcelli, for understanding and seeing what so many other reviewers miss. They focus on the blues, or the gore, or the Lovecraftian aspects, but YOU saw the hope at the end. SOUTHERN GODS is, at its heart (no pun intended), a story of one man's redemption. My thanks.

You can read that review right HERE.

Needle Magazine Fall 2011 Cover

Yes, I'm late. Looks like we'll have to do a winter issue to make up for my tardiness. I know. But here's the new cover, hope you like it.

Nipples.

This

From "Writers who don't read" on Salon.com.

There is also something to this growing disconnect between writing and reading that Steve Himmer touched on in his excellent piece that appeared at The Millions: "Yet I can't help but remember that reading -- both the careful selection of books and being given enough privacy to quietly read them myself -- was among the first freedoms I had." Humanity is losing its ability to be alone with nothing but our thoughts. Both writing and reading are solitary acts. They are also liberating acts that can free practitioners of either from reality for as long as someone chooses to read or write. You fall into the moment of the act, commit yourself to it, indulge imagination to the point that it usurps the daily grind -- the tedium of work, relationship troubles, baleful news reports -- and you the reader, you the writer, are all that exist as a sounding board for the words, no matter what their story.

The pervasiveness of social networking corrodes the ability of words to bestow the enchantment of solitude. Being alone is not so much considered a freedom or luxury anymore, especially among teenagers. It's a punishment. Behind closed doors, away from nosey parents and annoying siblings, the connection to friends and the details and distractions of life stream through walls and windows, eradicate distance.

In fact, the channeling of experience through Facebook and Twitter as it happens, and seemingly before a moment is even allowed to pass fully, undercuts one of the traditional tenets of reading and writing: metaphor. In our age of immediacy, the associative distances that shape shift with the diversity of snowflakes are endangered. In the same way that Susan Sontag recognized how photography became the standard of visual beauty, trumping the figures and objects in the photographs, the diminishing of distance has irrevocably changed our sense of how we describe the world we inhabit. Immediacy kills metaphor and its demise unquestionably plays a role in perspectives on craft. Or maybe the bolder point is that craft is of little interest to certain want-to-be writers. In our 15-megabytes of fame culture that favors quantities -- friends, followers, number of comments -- over quality this might be what it all comes down to, because if you can be recognized and rewarded as a writer without being much of a reader, guess what, most people will not try to read James Joyce.

Go over to Salon.com and read the whole article and look at all the advertisements. Clicky.

THIS

A Few Words About Speaking With Journalists

Today I was one of a panel of authors in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette's Style section. What I learned from the exercise: do NOT try to be funny when speaking to journalists. Due to size requirements and whatnot, they (or their editors) will edit out either the set-up or the punch line of any joke, leaving you standing there with your dick hanging out. It's not their fault, honestly. But still. When speaking to journalists, keep it short and say exactly what you mean.

DO NOT TRY TO BE FUNNY.

That is all.

Does this illustration make me look burly?

The Walls Around Us

Just completed a cover for my friend John Rector and his new collection of stories, The Walls Around Us. Rector's probably one of the best writers working today, long or short form. It was a pleasure and an honor to design a cover for his collection.

Get it at the 'Zon. Here.