LUCKY THIRTEEN

Delirium Books has just released the trade paperback edition of my collection THIRTEEN SPECIMENS, which they brought out as a limited edition hardcover (150 signed copies) back in 2006. I’m very, very gratified about this, because I feel this is one of my very best collections and I’d always wanted it to have a wider readership. I’ll share a few thoughts on the contents, starting with the cover, which I supplied (I did the type for it, too). This was a still life I photographed digitally in my home, consisting of such items as a Mexican Day of the Dead figure (a writer at a desk), a glass African bust with dried red decorative twigs inside it to look like veins, a stuffed baby alligator that my grandmother acquired on some vacation and which I coveted as a child, a rubber alien embryo in one specimen jar and in the foremost jar, a mysterious organ I fashioned from Playdough while conversing with my ex-girlfriend on the phone…and so on. Now on to the stories.

The first story, THESE ARE THE EXHIBITS, first appeared as a signed, 100 copy “chapette” produced by the bookseller Camelot Books. This odd little experimental tale is Delirium Books’ founder Shane Ryan Staley’s favorite story in the collection.

TITLES OF POEMS NOT WRITTEN is a rhyming poem made up of the titles of poems that have never been written. It may be my favorite of my poems.

CLOSE ENOUGH is set in the alternate universe of my novel “Boneland,” and takes a surreal look at the Vietnam War, and the effects of violence removed from us — just barely — through the eye of a camera or the screen of a television. The aforementioned ex ladyfriend inspired the love interest in the story’s framing device.

SYMPATHETIC IDENTITY DISORDER was an imaginary illness that I conceived of for the anthology “The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases.” It was rejected for that (I think because it bore a similarity to another accepted story) but I’m not ashamed to admit it, because three other pieces of mine made it into the book. My brother Scott used a rejected piece from this anthology in one of his own collections, and you’ll see an ailment invented by China Mieville reprinted in his collection “Looking for Jake.” I altered the format of this story a little so as not to follow the one used for the contributions to the “Lambshead” anthology.

AMERICAN CCHINNAMASTA first appeared in the e-book “Of Flesh and Hunger.” One of my gorier works, as befits the Indian goddess that inspired it. A story of cultural and familial identity.

SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX WOMEN is a poem with a bit of an Edward Gorey feel, I guess. At one time I was planning a collection entitled “666 Women,” and if I recall correctly the women in the collected stories/poems would total 666…but this is all that remains of that idea.

MONSTERS is a Punktown story utilizing a favorite theme of mine, the subjugation of women by certain cultures, and violence against women in general. This will soon be reprinted in my Punktown collection “Voices From Punktown,” from Dark Regions Press.

OCTOBER 32nd was inspired by the fact that, as a night shift worker, I have missed out on too damn many Halloween nights over the years…so here’s a Halloween night that just won’t end.

THE MASK PLAY OF HAHOE BYEOLSIN EXORCISM is almost entirely autobiographical. On my first trip to Vietnam there was a problem with my visa and I was forced to get back on a plane and leave the country immediately, so at the advice of a customs agent I returned to South Korea and spent four days there acquiring a new visa from the Vietnamese embassy, buying new plane tickets to replace the ones I’d used being deported, etc. Despite the nightmare of all this, I got just as much out of my time in Korea as I did upon returning successfully to Vietnam for the remainder of my trip. I stayed in the guest house described, stared out the bathroom window at a pretty worker in a factory across the street, and a story began to crystallize. I’d love to return to Seoul one day — it may be the most fascinating city I’ve ever been to, a compelling mix of the ancient and modern, the east and the west — but under less stressful circumstances.

SCARED SHIRTLESS takes the form of a t-shirt design, and after writing it I actually turned it into a t-shirt you can buy, here: http://www.cafepress.com/scaredshirtless. That is, if you don’t mind people lingering close to you, ogling your body as they read it. (And buy a shirt for your dog, while you’re at it!)

THE BURNING HOUSE takes place in the universe I created for my novel “Letters From Hades,” and subsequently revisited for the novella “Beautiful Hell” in Delirium Books’ “Ugly Heaven, Beautiful Hell” (with Carlton Mellick III). This is one of my very favorite short stories, and has been reprinted in “Voices From Hades” from Dark Regions Press, which collects all of my Hades short stories. My brother Scott and I used to love what we called Schrader Endings, after the screenplays of Paul Schrader, whose work includes “Taxi Driver,” “Rolling Thunder” and “The Yakuza,” all of which end with a violent, self-destructive, “Wild Bunch” sort of shoot out. I was going for the Schrader Ending to end all Schrader Endings in this story, and there’s a nod to the John Wayne movie “The Searchers” as well.

ON MAKING CLAM CHOWDER was a fun little piece I wrote as a challenge posted on the old Terror Tales message boards, for some project or other that I don’t think ever saw print. It had to be a story with 100 words, and this is 100 words exactly, including the title. But don’t really try this recipe at home.

DOOR 7 was written at a time when I felt absolutely desolate, largely due to the dissolution of my relationship with the aforementioned ladyfriend — though this complex relationship wasn’t entirely to dissolve until, I guess, about a week ago, when I found that this (unhappily) married and unattainable love of my life, whose near obsessive love for me I had counted as unassailable, has become seriously involved with a new lover. (She has been the inspiration for the demon Oni in “Beautiful Hell,” Mai in the yet to be released “The Sea of Flesh and Ash,” and partly the inspiration for certain sad events in “Blue War.”) The soul moans, at the bottom of its abyss. In any event, to complement the mental landscape of DOOR 7’s protagonist, I wanted to portray an America that is crumbling, decayed, blighted, and so it’s sort of a companion piece to “Boneland” in that way. Since it was written, the factory complex I describe — inspired by an actual place down the street from my home — has been torn down and replaced with a shopping mall, and I’ve had to move out of that house, which I can no longer afford, and move into a tiny apartment. I’m even having to give up the dog whose walks with me inspired the protagonist’s walks with his ”son” in a stroller (this dog also plays a part in a segment of “Boneland”). Well, times change, the soul is scarred more deeply, and we never know what new despair awaits for us behind that next enigmatic door.

Order the trade paperback of THIRTEEN SPECIMENS here: http://www.horror-mall.com/THIRTEEN-SPECIMENS-by-Jeffrey-Thomas-Trade-Paperback-p-18122.html