Jax Book Nook

  • Unfortunate Delay

    I am afraid I must be the bearer of bad news: due to unforeseen circumstances, the publication of Christmas in Pandemonium will not take place Christmas Day. We are now aiming for a release date next month. My apologies for this double fake, but release dates are always an unsure thing. In other news, Christmas in Pandemonium is a great gift for next Christmas.

  • This Week in Pandemonium: Dec. 16-22

    Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Crazy Kwanzaa, Tip Top Tet, and a Solemn and Dignified Ramadan to everyone who can remember this reference, and the rest of you as well. We are still looking at a Christmas release date for Christmas in Pandemonium. Here’s this week in Pandemonium:

    December 16, 1773—The Boston Tea Party occurs in Boston. Pandemonium residents, upon hearing the news, take sides, with the Loyalist Strangers holding impromptu tea parties with taxed tea and the Witches renaming the local tavern the Green Dragon and getting so drunk that the Witch community wakes up to find themselves dressed as Indians with none of the revelers remembering why or how they got in such a way.

    December 17, 1970–Opportunistic Witch, Carl Goode, publishes How the Minch Stole the Winter Solstice, a shameless attempt to rip off the Dr. Suess classic. Goode is forced to halt publication of the book in response to both copyright infringement suits from Suess’s family and legal action various state consumer protection agencies.

    December 18, 1918—Attempting to emulate the Wright brothers, Schlemiel Berkowitz invents his own flying machines. Berkowitz’s biplane works, but due to the presence of a full moon that night, its pilot transforms mid-flight. The confused beast jumps from the aircraft and runs amok downtown.

    December 19, 1828—John C. Calhoun sparks the nullification crisis by publishing the South Carolina Exposition and Protest. This provides a rare moment of unity in Pandemonium, as the Witches, increasingly dependent on foreign trade, and the sea faring Strangers join forces to reject the Tariff of Abominations. At its zenith, newly appointed Satanic High Priest Beauregard Davis curses Andrew Jackson in the public square, invoking Satan to strike down Old Hickory. Pastor Germain Huggins of the Stranger Church, rather than condemning the act, prays separately for God to do the same.

    December 20, 1860—South Carolina secedes from the Union in response to the election of Abraham Lincoln. The Witch side of Pandemonium attempts to beat the state legislature, voting to leave the Union the day beforehand, but being vetoed by the Strangers. The vote ends with councilmembers challenging each other to duels, leading to the death of three.

    December 21, 1906—Cramner University’s newly formed basketball team plays Kansas, whose head coach is the inventor of the sport, Dr. James Naismith. The Red Devils lose 89-2, and Elphebas Ravenwood is named the team MVP for scoring their one basket and being able to stand while dribbling the ball.

    December 22, 2004—Satanic High Priest Acton Ravenwood publishes his local history of Pandemonium town. He is criticized for cutting out any mention of human sacrifice, slavery, segregation, anti-immigrant animus, and witchcraft, instead focusing on the positives such as the dedication of the Second Satanic Temple as a historic national landmark and Ravenwood’s mother winning the 1960 quilting bee.

    , , , ,

  • Now on Tall Tale TV: Extra Ordinary

    I’m taking a break from This Week in Pandemonium as I have gotten another short story published in Tall Tale TV: Extra Ordinary. Here’s the link: https://talltaletv.com/extra-ordinary/

    I hope you enjoy, and keep an eye out for Christmas in Pandemonium.

  • Christmas Release Date!

    I just received word from my publisher, I Ain’t Your Marionette Press, that we are aiming for a release on Christmas Day. Sounds like an excellent late Christmas present. Here’s this week in Pandemonium.

    December 2, 1957—A group of Fieldhands led by Walter Washington attempt to integrate bus services in Pandemonium, hoping to imitate Rosa Parks. However, when Washington sits in the Whites only section of the bus, the White riders respond by fleeing the bus in mass. Satanic High Priest Blaise Jackson later performs a curse on the bus company, which actually supported the protest.

    December 3, 1917—Stranger businessman Franklin Maplethorpe starts his own automobile company and begins an assembly line in Pandemonium. Maplethorpe attempts to turn the North side of the Line into a company town, with company stores selling bones, salt and rum in exchange for company issued currency. This experiment ends when the workers unionize, leading to the end of the company and Maplethorpe’s humiliating bankruptcy.

    December 4, 1634—A group of thirteen Strangers attempt to start a second colony on the South Carolina mainland called Miller’s landing. The settlement lasts for four months and is then mysteriously abandoned, with only the word “False Shepherd” written on a trees as the only clue as to why.

    December 5, 1933-Prohibition ends. The bootlegging Witches celebrate by bringing boxes of mason jars full of moonshine to the North side of the Line and getting intoxicated in front of the teetotaler Strangers, as well as local law enforcement. This doesn’t end well, however, as alcohol remained illegal in South Carolina until 1935. Approximately one-third of the Witch community wakes up the next day in the drunk tank.

    December 6, 1865—The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is officially ratified, abolishing slavery within the United States. The Fieldhand community rejoices, with several freedmen choosing to move North. The Witch community mourns, as plantation owners wake up to find their house servants have abandoned them. Unable to care for themselves, no fewer than seven former slave owners in Pandemonium commit suicide.

    December 7, 1941—A day that lives in infamy. With the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States enters World War II. Several Pandemonian citizens serve in the war, first and foremost being Medal of Honor Recipient Bunim Greenblatt, who takes out an entire German division one night during a particularly clear full moon.

    December 8, 1992—Damien Brody opens fire in The Athena Oratorium, Pandemonium’s famous jazz club, killing four people including a promising saxophone player named Mable Jefferson. When asked why, Brody answers “they won’t go away.”

    , , , ,

  • This Week in Pandemonium: Nov. 25-Dec. 1

    Happy Thanksgiving! Spend some time with your family this week and enjoy some turkey. Here’s this week in Pandemonium Nov. 25-Dec. 1

    November 25, 1783—Evacuation Day in New York City marks the end of the revolutionary war. In Pandemonium, no fewer than thirteen Stranger families with loyalist sympathies pack up and leave, most of whom immigrate to Canada. The Witch mayor, Elphebas Ravenwood, stands at the bridge leading to the mainland and waves them out.

    November 26, 1941—President Roosevelt signs a bill that formalizes Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November, leading to the first Thanksgiving the Strangers and Witches actually agree on. The Witches has previously celebrated “Resentmas” after President Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation, and the Strangers refused to acknowledge President Washington’s 1789 proclamation. The two sides bury the hatchet with a common meal in the town square, which quickly devolves into a fist fight.

    November 27, 2004—Harvey Flom, Pandemonium’s first gay councilmember, is shot dead outside his home. The assassin, a Witch named Harry Blackroot, claimed to not know Flom was gay, but shot him over a three-cent sales tax increase.

    November 28, 1896—In an attempt to drum up sales for motor cars, famed inventor Frank Duryea holds a motorcar race on Pandemonium’s city streets. Despite the lack of other cars, Duryea runs off the road and falls into the sea. While Duryea survives the ordeal, he understandably fails to sell a single car.

    November 29, 1864—Members of the pro-Union Stranger militia attempt to sabotage the Confederate city government using nitroglycerin to blow up the historic town meeting hall. Nitroglycerin is very unstable, which the Stranger militiamen soon discover upon handling it, blowing themselves up before reaching the meeting hall.

    November 30, 1953—The first modern example of a meteorite striking a human being occurs in Pandemonium when such a space rock crashes through a Fieldhand woman’s roof and strikes her in the hip. The woman, Gladys Jackson, suffers a nasty bruise but no other injuries. Satanic High Priest Blaise Jackson preemptively states the Witch community had nothing to do with this.

    December 1, 1874—In the midst of reconstruction, Field Servant Marcus Johnson founds Jameson University for freed slaves. However, Jameson University sadly closes nine years later due to lack of financial support and harassment by local authorities. Fieldhands pursuing higher education would attend other historically black universities in South Carolina such as Allen and Benedict.

    , , , ,

  • This Week In Pandemonium Nov. 18-24

    While we are talking about Christmas in Pandemonium, I should note that I’m putting the final touches on the first draft of the sequel. I actually plan to write a seven-book series. Here’s this week in Pandemonium Nov. 18-24

    November 18, 1880—Elizabeth Davis, a Witch, is arrested for attempting to vote illegally the Pandemonium Town Meeting Hall, as South Carolina had not approved women’s suffrage at that time. Of course, given that she was 12 at the time, Elizabeth Davis would not likely be allowed to vote today.

     November 19, 1863—Abraham Lincoln gives the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg. Pandemonians will die fighting for both sides of the civil war. Col. Robert Davis of Pandemonium serves under Gen. Lee at Gettysburg.

    November 20, 1968—Pandemonium becomes the first city in the southeast to install a computerized traffic light. Visitors from other towns in South Carolina, normally there to protest the Satanic Temple, proclaim it to be witchcraft.

    November 21, 1877—Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, notable here only because Fieldhand inventor Ely Jameson claims to have created one two years earlier, only to have Edison steal his idea.

    November 22, 1963—President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. It is reported, inaccurately, that Witch children at Bothwell school, a segregated institution, cheer when they hear the news. Satanic High Priest Blaise Jackson, a staunch opponent of integration, offers a spell of healing to the Kennedy family at the next Satanic ritual and lectures the press on telling sensationalist lies in his sermon.

    November 23, 1920—Dravidius Ravenwood goes into business as “pharmacist” selling “medicinal liquor” during the height of prohibition. While this practice is greatly restricted by the federal government soon thereafter, Ravenwood’s pharmacy is soon the busiest place in town. He later builds a speakeasy in the back of his establishment.

    November 24, 1717—The infamous pirate Edward Teach, commonly known as Blackbeard, makes port in Pandemonium to deal with some Stranger smugglers who took what he considered to be his booty. David Fincher is tied to the front of the Queen Anne’s revenge as it sails back out to sea while Teach takes Fincher’s fifteen year old daughter as his wife.

    , , , ,

  • This Week in Pandemonium: Nov.11-17

    Alright, after a short break for Halloween and election season, we are back to This Week in Pandemonium, now for the week Nov.11-17.

    November 11, 1620—The Bargain is signed, forming the basis of Pandemonium’s city government. After drafting the town’s founding document, Thomas Cramner and John Miller famously shake on it, beginning 400 years of cooperative governance.

    November 12, 1918—Armistice Day: World War I ends. Pandemonium arranges a parade of its veterans. The Witches object to allowing Fieldhand veterans to march, leading to the event’s cancellation.

    November 13, 1891—The first Ze’ev begin arriving at Ellis Island. Contemporary records indicate that passengers on board the same ships would often report seeing large beasts prowling the halls of the ship on a full moon. When asked by immigration officials, several Ze’ev merely smile and attribute it to “too much vodka.”

    November 14, 1960—Pandemonium public schools are desegregated by court order as six-year-old Trudy Jackson becomes the first Fieldhand to attend kindergarten with whites and Thomas Cramner elementary school. School ends early that day due to several bomb threats being made on the building.

    November 15, 1969—A group of Witch parents send a joint letter to the Public Broadcasting System, protesting the broadcast of Sesame Street for its portrayal of a racially diverse neighborhood existing in harmony and friendliness. PBS ignores the Witches, who then send the broadcaster a doll in the mail. The doll is burned after employees who touch the doll die in a car crash the same day.

    November 16, 1939—The Hickory Tree, a confederate nostalgia movie sponsored by Grand Dame Elizabeth Davis, comes out in theaters, making it the first portrayal of Pandemonium on film. While the movie is later critiqued for its relatively benign portrayal of the antebellum south, the film provides several roles to black Americans at a time when Hollywood regularly used black face, giving many African Americans a foot in the door of the movie industry they previously didn’t have.

    November 17, 1975—A charter plane carrying the Winthrop University football players crashes into the Smoky Mountains at 1 am in the morning, killing all 40 players on board. The tragic accident occurred after a thrilling win over UCLA on the West Coast, but before Winthrop’s traditional rivalry game with the Cramner Red Devil’s. Deprived of their best players, the Buccaneers lose to the Red Devils 47-0 the following week despite being heavily favored before the accident.

    , , , ,

  • A Modest Proposal

    Hello, everyone. I thought we would get back to a Week in Pandemonium after the election. Now, I have waded into politics on this blog before, and it went disastrously. Still, I’m inclined to weigh in again as I am a recovering political junkie. In the interest of avoiding a Twitter war, I will avoid saying much about the current election other than that I voted for Harris for President and for Republicans down ballot. Instead, I’ve decided to lay out an idea that I’ve been munching on for a while. Hear me out: we need a real government and a fake government.

    We currently live under a system called liberal democratic capitalism which is characterized by two phenomena: 1. It has minimized the amount of violence, disease and starvation humans beings deal with on a daily basis while maximizing freedom, wealth and our lifespans. 2. It makes us feel like shit. This second point exists in tension with the first point.

    Consider: right now, in America, we have an awesome economy despite having a worldwide epidemic just four years ago. Unemployment is four percent. Inflation was a problem for a while, but has recently come down to normal levels. Wage growth is strong, amazing devices are being created every day to improve our lives, and while there’s more war than there was say, ten years ago, historically, the amount of state-on-state conflict and the deaths caused thereby are at all time lows.

    Yet, if you look around, everybody is miserable. Why? The way we got here is stunningly unnatural and counterintuitive. Human beings expect society to get better when we put aside our differences, rally around a competent and moral leader, and make common sacrifices for the common good. That’s not how our system works. Our system works by assuming human beings are selfish, because they are. Rather than asking people to come together, capitalism encourages people to compete against each other for the base motivation of money. Our government is run by clowns, and our system of government works by dividing power and pitting the clowns against each other in order to minimize the damage they can do. In a liberal society, there’s a great deal of skepticism that we could ever agree on what the “common good” is, much less agree to make personal sacrifices for it.

    The end result, as I see it, is that We the People are constantly endangering the Golden Goose because we vote based on our erroneous guts rather than the available evidence. How do we fix this problem? We need two governments. The first government could be the government we have now, exercising roughly the same powers. It would have checks and balances, a division of power, and a Bill of Rights. The only difference is that to vote for these people, every person would have to pass the same citizenship test that immigrants must pass to become U.S. citizens. Most people would fail.

    For those people who can’t pass the test, or who don’t bother, there will be a second government which is basically an elected monarchy with no power. Yes, 90% of the public wouldn’t vote for the President but for a King or Queen whose job it is to say and do things that make the public feel good. When a recession happens, the real government can take measures to solve the problem while the Monarch can pass out food to poor people for the cameras. During war, the Monarch can serve in the military and sell war bonds in commercials while the real government, made up of uncharismatic technocrats who don’t know which end of the gun to hold, allocates the necessary money to achieve the war’s objectives and appoints generals who conduct the war per their expertise. On social issues, the Monarch would either rail against Christian Nationalists or Transgenderism depending on which party won the last fake election. I assume one party would run someone like Tucker Carlson and the other party would run someone like Marianne Williamson.

    The purpose is to have one government do the things necessary for a stable, prosperous society and to have another government that makes people feel good. You could even bribe people to vote for the fake government with paraphernalia or beer. Respectable news organizations could continue covering the real government, while an alternative ecosystem would cover the fake government like how ESPN covers sports and wrestling. The way I see it, if the public is going to treat elections as a form of entertainment, let’s stop fighting it and build a system that incorporates that tendency. If you don’t know which branch of government passes laws or you think the unemployment rate is currently 50% or you believe we need to withdraw all of our troops from Agrabah then please vote for a powerless king, not a public servant.

  • Pandemonium: Halloween Recap

    Happy Halloween everybody!! I thought this would be a good time to give everyone a recap of Christmas in Pandemonium rather than give you another Week in Pandemonium. The reason being that one of the major events in Pandemonium History takes place on Halloween.

    For those of you wondering what I am talking about, my soon-to-be published novel, Christmas in Pandemonium, takes place in a town on the eastern coast of South Carolina founded by two groups of people in 1620: a coven of Satan-worshiping Witches and a crew of pirates, called the Strangers, who ferried them to the new world for a price. After seeing their passengers commit an act of human sacrifice on board, the Strangers turn into religious zealots who kidnap the Witches next sacrificial victim and burn her at the stake, for being a Witch, of course. This happens Halloween night, 1620. Unfortunately, the following All Saints Day, they learn that the woman they burned the night before was actually a Stono princess the Witches had taken the day before. When the princess’s father, a Stono War Chief, finds out his daughter is dead, he threatens to kill both the Strangers and the Witches. However, the two groups put their differences aside, kill the Stono, and found the town of Pandemonium. 400 years later Pandemonium is still there, now with a surplus of ghosts and a group of Jewish werewolves who immigrated in the 1890s.

    In the modern day, the Witches have become the most lackadaisical Satanists in the world, replacing human sacrifice with the crushing of a bug. The Strangers have sold their church to Prosperity Gospel preacher Miles Simon, leading to Simon discovering the existence of Theo, an Irish vampire in the church’s crypt. Simon tries to convince Theo to hypnotize people into giving Simon money, but Theo turns him down. Simon then resurrects Theo’s rival, Scratch, who is a theocratic vampire, to do what Theo wants. Scratch has other ideas however, and it’s up to the locals to bring him down. The book should be published soon through I Ain’t Your Marionette Press. I’m planning a series of seven, so fingers crossed. I’ll have further updates in the future, but for now, I just wanted to remind everyone of what all this promotion is about. Happy Halloween, enjoy a few horror movies and make a mental note to check out Christmas in Pandemonium as we approach the holidays.

    , , , ,

  • This Week in Pandemonium: Oct. 21-27

    Thanks to everyone who came to meet me and buy books at the West Virginia Book Festival last Saturday. I had a blast and I hope you all did as well. Here’s this next week in Pandemonium:

    Oct. 21, 1949—Fieldhand Solomon Jones and Stranger Julian Maplethorpe appear before the House of Unamerican Activities Committee, the only two Pandemonians to answer for possible communist ties before the infamous committee. Jones is convicted, while Maplethorpe is acquitted, a result largely attributed to his family connections.

    Oct. 22, 1844—After the Great Disappointment, Stranger Pastor Harvey Longfellow publicly comments that the Millerites were welcome at his church, causing the Witch population to fear the Strangers will outnumber them. Satanic High Priest Beauregard Davis responds to this panic by assuring his flock that any Millerites who come to one of Longfellow’s services will “merely be setting themselves up for another disappointment.”

    Oct. 23, 4003 B.C.—The date for the creation of the universe based on Stranger Pastor Robert Winthrop’s reckoning in the 17th Century. Winthrop came to this number by taking the calculations of James Usher and simply subtracting a year, just to make a point.

    Oct. 24, 1910—Dravidius Ravenwood, a Pandemonian Witch, successfully goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Many consider this attempt a failure, however, as though Ravenwood did go over the falls in a barrel, he did not survive the attempt.

    Oct. 25, 1964—A charter plane en route to Pandemonium Airport, which is a few runways on the coast, crashes and skids into the Atlantic Ocean, killing the pilot and two passengers. Evangelical Christians blame the presence of the Witches until a subsequent autopsy determines the pilot was drunk.

    Oct. 26, 1890—In preparation of writing her investigative report Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases, Ida B. Wells visits Pandemonium, the site of multiple lynchings during the Jim Crow era. Far from hiding this grim part of local history, several Witches actually approach Wells and brag about their participation in many such lynchings.

    Oct. 27, 1840—The Witch and Stranger mayors of Pandemonium unite in an order expelling all Mormons from the city of Pandemonium. At the time there were no Mormons in Pandemonium, nor are there any there today really, but the mayors and city council wanted to be sure. The expulsion order remains on the books today, though no one has attempted to enforce it.