Specimen #6

In honor of the release of my collection THIRTEEN SPECIMENS from Delirium Books (see my post of July 4), in oh-so-affordable trade paperback form, I am posting thirteen entries that will each feature an excerpt from one of the thirteen pieces in the book. In addition, each post offers an odd little specimen from my personal life. I’ll leave it to you to decide which, fact or fiction, is more compellingly disturbing. Here’s the next item on our tour… 

(1) From the poem SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX WOMEN:

67. LIZ’s squirming babe was fathered by the great Old Ones.

68. When she grew up, CHRISTINE was awfully fond of stabbing nuns.

69. RHONDA likes to flay living sheep with just her teeth.

70. Peeling off her own skin, JODY shows what writhes beneath.

(2) NAHKTAYH is here! 

 …And NAHKTAYH would be PUNKTOWN in Russian. (I can’t reproduce my first name as given in Russian characters, but my last name translates into “Tomac.”) Yes, at last the Russian translation of PUNKTOWN, published by U-Factory in Ekaterinburg, Russia, is here and it was worth the wait. Five copies arrived in brown paper wrapped in string, a little worse for wear but still beautiful. I love the format: it’s a slim, undersized hardcover without a dustjacket, the art printed on the covers themselves. The general colors are a Halloweeny orange and black, with the title running vertically down the front in red (NAHK) and black (TAYH). Running down the left side is a beautiful painting of a punk in the foreground, maybe an Asian or black person judging from the skin tone and hint of a profile, with a very nifty red mohawk and various piercings. In the background is a really cool maze-like city, people milling on its roofs and somebody running down the street, stretching off to a greenish sea, and with an exploding moon or planet (whoa!) on the horizon. Superimposed over the top of the art and fading downwards are rows of characters and numbers meant to portray computer data. It’s really gorgeous; perfect for this, and I imagine it was commissioned for the project rather than being a pre-existing painting. The interior pages are very thin and delicate, reminding me of books printed in Vietnam. The table of contents appears in the back (hm!), and the collection complements the original, Ministry of Whimsy version of PUNKTOWN with its nine stories (as opposed to the later, expanded edition of PUNKTOWN from Prime). It works out to be 190 pages, roughly, to the original’s 120. Anyway, I’m sooo pleased with it — its format makes it very agreeable to hold and ogle. But then, I feel that way about all my books!

All Russian goodness aside, don’t forget my collection THIRTEEN SPECIMENS: https://www.horror-mall.com/THIRTEEN-SPECIMENS-by-Jeffrey-Thomas-Trade-Paperback-p-18122.html