Everybody is down on Saruman for breeding orcs and goblin men to make an army of Uruk’hai super-orcs, but Gandalf may just be the absolute worst. Why? It’s obvious: Gandalf secretly directed Hobbit development to breed a ring-resistant strain of halflings. First, don’t trouble yourself with the hilariously non-canon time-slipping in Amazon’s gorgeous but slipshod…
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Adam Henry Carrière, Aug. 5, 1963 – Nov. 26, 2023
Irascible, cantankerous, outspokenly gay, aggressively liberal, aggressively creative, aggressively brilliant. In the last months of his life, Adam found a home with a Las Vegas church called Affirming God’s People UCC. A potential boyfriend took him there, but Adam is the one who stayed. He loved the community, and the community loved him back. There…
Rota Fortunae: Danse Macabre’s Wheel Turns Again
In which your humble servant pens the introduction to the 150th issue of Nevada’s first and finest online litmag. 150 Porte D’entrée ♥ ♠ ♦ ♣
Unfriending the Darkness, Part III: Mooks and Suckers
Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, escaped hanging to serve a sentence in Spandau. Speer was convicted of crimes against humanity, specifically using slave labor to boost war production. He was released in 1966, and he died in 1981. Saw an interview with him filmed after his release. When asked if Hitler was insane, he sidestepped the…
The Wine Ghost, Pt. II: A Japanese Gentleman of Impeccable Taste
In 1992, I started writing an Ambitious Literary Novel, The Wine Ghost. It’s a novel of redemption and recovery on a world-wide stage where we consider the terrible freedom of Frank Boyles, the last Baby Boomer. I have written elsewhere that it took 300K words to achieve the current 100K. The 200K excess words were properly jettisoned or repurposed,…
Unfriending the Darkness, Part II: The Adolescent Mob
Online friends wondering how to bridge the gap in a divided America: You can’t, and you shouldn’t even try. Why you can’t: First, we all know that cynical GOP politicians willing to watch the world burn in order to keep positions of power have placed themselves beyond human aid. That’s over. Forget them. Let’s talk…
The Wine Ghost, Pt. I: Revisiting an Old Friend
Fifteen years on, I’ve started to rework my first completed novel manuscript. It’s The Wine Ghost, in which we consider the terrible freedom of Frank Boyles, the last Baby Boomer. Set in Arizona, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, and Thailand, The Wine Ghost was twelve years in the making. I wrote at least 300,000 words on three continents to…
The Rare Earth Age of Sci-Fi
Sci-fi taxonomists take note: We are now officially in the Rare Earth Age of Science Fiction. Technological change driving changes in human consciousness is not a trope, but a given. Philosophical arguments about organic consciousness versus AI take a back seat to practical considerations of how to deal with the inevitable robot apocalypse. We’re hip…
Tom Bradley’s Energeticum/Phantasticum
Tom Bradley has made me an outcast in my own home. Again. This time, it’s Energeticum/Phantasticum: a Profane Epyllion in Seven Cantos, a handsome volume that begs to be read aloud. After following family members around the house for a few days declaiming choice snippets of Bradley’s vision, I was finally banished to the deck,…
Unfriending the Darkness
Lots of bruised egos and hurt feelings this election cycle. Online friendships have been strained and broken, new alliances forged between unlikely social media partners, and more than one profile suspended altogether due to the rancorous and disheartening discourse of this pivotal campaign season. Our distrust of the corporate oligarchy’s political machinery and our distrust of our fellow citizens has never…
Five Japanese Books of Mystery and Imagination
My blog post onTOR.com to promote The Devouring God. Very exciting for me, as I have read TOR paperbacks since the 1980s. They were almost as much fun as the old ACE doubles! Read the post on TOR.com, along with astute commentary by British horror great Ramsey Campbell (squee) and others. OR: Read it below,…
The Role of the Troll
I rest easy in the long, lonesome place between completing a novel and making the sale, all thanks to a forum troll. It’s not fun, mind you. Agents queried thus far have passed. Contests and direct submissions aren’t panning out either. It’s disappointing, but it’s just business, and these people are polite and professional. I…
Family Romance: Our Cup of Meat
Kendley Fiction confirms it: Bizarro fabulist Tom Bradley exists, and he appears to be entirely human. Taller than most, and much redder, but still. I know Bradley exists because I’ve seen him. He taught alongside me at a Japanese institution of higher learning in the mid ’90s, and I spotted him at a spring semester start-up confab. This was a…
Why So Macabre?
…and from such a nice boy! I found something in a cemetery. I want to tell you what it is. You know I want to, but we’ll stroll through this cemetery first. Don’t worry. It’s a very pleasant spot, something less than an acre cradling the remains of a few hundred souls, and it’s right around…
Blame Horror Movies, Pt. I: The Mystery of Dead Ernest
For decades, Atlantans argued that Dead Ernest was none other than Ted Turner. That’s right. We honestly believed that before satellite Superstation WTBS, before CNN or The Cartoon Network, before Turner Network Television or Turner Classic Movies, this media mogul had dressed as a warbling backwoods ghoul to introduce the Friday night horror movie. It was…
Manifesto
Awaken you dreamersAsleep at your desksParrots and lemurs populate yourUnconscious grotesquesPlease let ’em all outDo it todayDon’t let the loveless ones sell youA world wrapped in grey — Andy Partridge Baron Munchhausen’s post horn was more beautiful than our canned music, the Seven-League Boots more beautiful than an automobile, Oberon’s kingdom lovelier than a subway tunnel,…
A Puzzling Experience
Herr Professor slumps forlorn in the Day Room of the Great Public Sanitarium. He has failed to prove his mental competence to the satisfaction of the Ministry of Mental Hygiene. The Sanitarium’s fearsome matrons, meanwhile, neither know nor care that his tics and outbursts are harmless side effects of chipping in odd gobbets of “gray matter”…
Krankenhaus Rock
Kauboi awakens under the covers. Herr Professor is beside him. Inwardly, Kauboi groans. He has sworn that this would never happen again. Oh, damn the silvery moonlight, damn the imperious urge, damn that irresistible man, and most of all, damn that Romanian quince brandy! But something is different this time. Kauboi hears voices – they are not alone. “We…
Breakfast in Bedlam
Poor Kauboi! Jittery and befogged after a night of “editing submissions,” he can barely hold his mug. He sloshes and dribbles, leaving coffee ring after coffee ring on the damask. Herr Professor watches with amusement as Kauboi tries to pour milk into his fourteenth half-cup. “It is the fault of this accursed udder-shaped creamer,” Kauboi…
Fun & Games 1: Rules and Prizes
Join the fun. Play games on the following pages and send results to jk@kendley.com! Prizes… …range from newfangled ebooks to edifying antiquarian volumes of great moral significance, all depending on your level of involvement as defined below. Rules: 1) Any single game or puzzle (A Frühstück Fracas, Enter the Hospital, In the Day Room) must be completed to the best of your ability….