All That Weird Jazz

The new anthology I'm in!

AT THE CROSSROADS OF AMERICA’S MUSIC AND THE BIZARRE-‘ALL THAT WEIRD JAZZ’ DEBUTS!

Jazz. A music of improvisation, of passion, of its very own kind of magic. Considered by many to be the only truly original American form of music, it has since its birth in a smoky room somewhere also been tied to the strange, wrapped up in the supernatural, associated with the occult, at least in hints and shadows. Pro Se Productions now brings together several of the most innovative writers in genre fiction today in ALL THAT WEIRD JAZZ, telling the tales of the unusual between the notes, the magic behind the music.

From straight up pulp action to ghostly noir to a dragon who digs Jazz more than anyone else, ALL THAT WEIRD JAZZ takes love for this unique musical styling to an all new level, complete with adventure, thrills, and even a chill or two.

With stories by Kimberly Richardson, MA Monnin, Ernest Russell, EW Farnsworth, James Hopwood, McCallum J. Morgan, Mark Barnard, Davide Mana, and Sharae Allen, ALL THAT WEIRD JAZZ combines the fantastic and unusual with America’s own music for one of the most unique collections of stories ever.  From Pro Se Productions. 

Featuring a fascinating cover as well as logo design and print formatting by Antonino lo Iacono and Marzia Marina, ALL THAT WEIRD JAZZ is available in print at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086Y3ZX4F

This singularly distinctive anthology is also available as an eBook formatted by lo Iacono and Marina for the Kindle at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086XGZN6J

To learn more about Pro Se Productions, go to www.prose-press.com. Like Pro Se on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ProSeProductions.

Jazz Juice is the title of my tale in this anthology. It is about a record collector and early jazz music enthusiast who discovers a record at a sale which claims to be by a famous trumpet player. The disc contains two songs that tell a strange story...and gives directions...voodoo and jazz and a meeting with the devil.

My illustration (not featured in the book)

I am delighted and humbled to be appearing in this anthology alongside such talented authors. I have really enjoyed the other stories in this anthology! Such great atmosphere and magic and compelling characters all around. I hope you will check it out.

Alien Jungles

   Sometimes, writing feels like an alien compulsion; the words well up from within, unstoppable. They will be put down on paper, and they will do it now, regardless of what you want.
   The story is an extraterrestrial entity, taking possession of your body in order to express itself. 

   And other times...You battle onward, abandoned by your infernal Muse to hack through a dangerous jungle on your own. You keep going because you can't just leave that story out there in those wastes. It may have abandoned you, but you will never abandon it. Once you have tasted madness, you will never go back.
   Why?
   Why seems an irrelevant question. To those who know, it does not matter why. It only matters when. When can I do it again? It's that 'sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring' (Annie Dillard, The Writing Life). It's a frantic waltz with the sublime.
   The imagination bubbles and simmers, taking things in, eye of newt and toe of frog, boiling them, changing them. The imagination is a witch's cauldron, frothed by the flames of the senses, stirred by the mundane, the mystical, and the beautiful in life. And it is fraught with peril.
   You have gone out into the fetid coiling vines, the nest of vipers and of bird eating spiders. You are unarmed, unprotected.
   "I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." (William Butler Yeats, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven ). You are exposing your soul when the reader opens your pages.

   It is a danger worth risking, a peril both terrifying and delightful. What kind of alien entity is controlling you? You suspect it is not a terrible black chitinous endoparasitoid. You suspect it is more of an ethereal silvery exctoparasitoid that only occupies you briefly as a cocoon and then develops fully outside of you, a papery butterfly covered in colorful wings and filled with magic.

   Metaphors can be dangerous, especially when mixed. Ravenous mongrels, those.

   Be careful, be wary. The jungle is deep. The way is difficult but the rewards are bountiful.

                                                                     *

   

      I was supposed to talk about what inspired me to write, but I got sidetracked into a metaphorical murmuring. I can't really nail down where my inspiration comes from. As I've indicated above, it seems a very myriad source. I am often inspired by very vague mysteries, an image, a sound that holds a feeling, theme, or certain psychological sensation. Visuals especially. I can watch a film and be captured by a single shot, inspired by the possibilities of one image. I'm always inspired by other books. Little fragments here and there break off of material I read, see, or listen to and collect inside me. The writer is not only a cocoon but a fertile field where seeds are sown and grow into wild new hybrids. Ravenous mongrels. The fields become wild again, jungles.. Bountiful jungles.