Jedediah Smith

From pulp horror to avant garde poetics, writing that hits hard by Jedediah Smith

Tag: fiction

  • Only 2 More Days! Kindle Countdown Deal on Esau’s Fables

    First: Huge thanks to those who have already purchased the book during this Countdown. I am honored and full of hope that you will enjoy the book.

    Esau’s Fables: Prose Poems by Jedediah Smith now available as a Kindle Countdown Deal for $0.99, marked down from its original list price of $6.99, from November 8, 2025 to November 15, 2025.

    Details:
    Publisher‏: ‎ Mount Diablo Books
    Publication date: ‎ January 23, 2025
    Language: ‎ English
    File size: ‎ 2.9 MB
    Print length: ‎ 111 pages

    Working in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, John Lennon, and Jorge Luis Borges, Jedediah Smith uses surrealism and the absurd to travel easily between Homeric battle fields and Universal monster sets, quantum physics and the Fortean paranormal, archetypal mythology and modern pop culture. As the author puts it himself in “Carnival Road,” the a story about an unpaved lane that is in some inexplicable way hallucinogenic, each parable “creates its own logic that is neither symbol nor allegory but an insistence upon a world of its own making, where images connect in ways that cannot be explained, only experienced.”

    From Esau’s Fables:

    The Last Manson Girl

    A news report states that the last Manson girl surrendered to authorities today.
    She had been married to a police officer.
    She had become a grandmother to sixteen, a great-grandmother to four.
    She had hosted a public-access talk show for ferret owners in LA.
    She smelled like cinnamon and nutmeg.
    She decrypted the Voynich manuscript which gave her the gift of powwow.
    She raised organic vegetables in an urban garden and chanted to keep the gophers away.
    She had been seeking a return to the Edenic among the butchers of living flesh, a paradise under the red and black flag of the ax.
    She has kept a journal since 1970 which runs backwards toward the Fall.
    She might save us all.

  • Starting Today! Kindle Countdown Deal on Esau’s Fables

    Esau’s Fables: Prose Poems by Jedediah Smith now available as a Kindle Countdown Deal for $0.99, marked down from its original list price of $6.99, from November 8, 2025 to November 15, 2025.

    Details:
    Publisher‏: ‎ Mount Diablo Books
    Publication date: ‎ January 23, 2025
    Language: ‎ English
    File size: ‎ 2.9 MB
    Print length: ‎ 111 pages

    Working in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, John Lennon, and Jorge Luis Borges, Jedediah Smith uses surrealism and the absurd to travel easily between Homeric battle fields and Universal monster sets, quantum physics and the Fortean paranormal, archetypal mythology and modern pop culture. As the author puts it himself in “Carnival Road,” the a story about an unpaved lane that is in some inexplicable way hallucinogenic, each parable “creates its own logic that is neither symbol nor allegory but an insistence upon a world of its own making, where images connect in ways that cannot be explained, only experienced.”

    From Esau’s Fables:

    Triton’s Trumpet

    A man’s wife mailed his daughter a box of seashells from the ocean. Cupping them to her ears, she loved to hear the waves crashing and roaring, each in its own pitch, loving best that of a Triton’s Trumpet, bigger than both her hands together, gripped around it intently.

    That night she took it to bed with her. Hours later her father was awakened by her crying. In the girl’s room he sat on the side of her bed and told her, There was a girl crying. Her head ached with sound, and when I cupped her mouth to my ear, I could hear waves. Did you see her? She was here, I’m sure of it.

    The next night, the girl closed Triton’s Trumpet in her dresser drawer. Hours later her father was awakened by the house creaking as it tipped like a ship. In the girl’s room he sat on the side of her bed and said, There was a girl choking. She lay on her back while saltwater sputtered and plumed from her mouth as if she were a beached whale returned too late to the sea. Did you see her? She was floating still on the water’s surface.

    The next night, the girl smashed the Triton’s Trumpet into small fragments. Hours later her father was awakened by the sharp scent of rust on the water. In the girl’s room, he sat on the side of her bed and said, There was a girl being razed. Sharks swirled through the currents of water and air, whipping their heads from side to side in a frenzy of teeth shivering her into fragments. Her eyes met mine while it continued, and there was disbelief. You believe me, don’t you?

    In the morning, he placed all the fragments of his daughter he could find into a box lined with crumpled papers and mailed them back to her mother in the ocean.

  • Learning to Dance: a fable

    A young boy kept his neighbor’s foot under his bed. It lay among the dust bunnies, idle, bereft, still wearing its oxblood leather shoe. The boy had not forgotten the foot, but he rarely took it out anymore.

    Months before, the boy had stolen it on impulse. He had seen his elderly neighbor napping in a hammock in his backyard. Cleverly, he took the foot without waking the old man.

    For a while, the boy thought the foot a marvelous toy. He made it march about his room. It would kick through the boy’s green plastic army men in great mock battles. He dressed it in his mother’s pumps, painted the toes, and practiced his pose. Occasionally, the boy would feed the foot, peeling back the shoe’s tongue and tenderly hand-feeding it oats or kernels of corn.

    With time, the games grew crueler. The boy would swell like a lion and ambush the foot or tickle its arch until it cringed in a corner. But soon he became bored and ignored the foot and felt depressed.

    The boy turned to his neighbor for help.

    I have lost all joy in the things of this world, the boy would say.

    The old man could only weep, while hopping on one foot.

    Life seems very long, the boy would cry. How my days stretch before me.

    After weeks of such talk, the old man spoke. Give me your hand, he said. I’ll teach you to dance.

    from Esau’s Fables: Prose Poems

    The book will be available as a Kindle Countdown Deal for $0.99, marked down from its original list price of $6.99, from November 8, 2025 to November 15, 2025.

    Details
    Publisher‏: ‎ Mount Diablo Books
    Publication date: ‎ January 23, 2025
    Language: ‎ English
    File size: ‎ 2.9 MB
    Print length: ‎ 111 pages

    Back cover image

    Working in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, John Lennon, and Jorge Luis Borges, Jedediah Smith uses surrealism and the absurd to travel easily between Homeric battle fields and Universal monster sets, quantum physics and the Fortean paranormal, archetypal mythology and modern pop culture. As the author puts it himself in “Carnival Road,” the a story about an unpaved lane that is in some inexplicable way hallucinogenic, each parable “creates its own logic that is neither symbol nor allegory but an insistence upon a world of its own making, where images connect in ways that cannot be explained, only experienced.”

  • Who Ordered the Cocoa?

    That evening as always, my wife and I were at home reading on the couch.

    According to this, she said, more children disappear every year.

    Looking up from my newspaper, I asked, How can that be when on our block children are running everywhere? I picked six out of the orange tree this morning.

    Getting up, I headed for the kitchen to make a sandwich.

    Could you fix me a drink while you’re up?

    The usual?

    Naturally, she said, and I walked straight through the kitchen, out the door, and into the house next door. I picked up the book I had left in my chair and sat down.

    According to this, I said to my wife who sat in the other chair, the oceans are still rising.

    How can that be, my wife asked, when you just read me a story about how we’re running out of water?

    Getting up, she headed for the kitchen.

    Could you fix me a drink while you’re up?

    The usual?

    Naturally, I said.

    When she handed me my drink, I looked up and asked, did you just hear the paperboy?

    There are no more paperboys, she said, just screaming children.

    I got up and headed out the front door to see. Walking across the lawn, I entered the house next door through the kitchen and took the drink to my wife.

    Sorry to put you to so much trouble.

    No trouble, I said, picking up my newspaper and sitting back on the couch.

    According to this, I said to my wife, they are running out of paper and will stop printing these soon.

    I know, she said. They stopped months ago.

    I realized I was not holding a newspaper but a cup of cocoa. Oh yes, I said, now I remember.

    I headed upstairs to a bedroom. Inside thirty or forty children were jumping around, screaming and fighting with pillows, and I had to shout to be heard, Who ordered the cocoa?

    A selection from Esau’s Fables, available from Amazon in softcover and Kindle.

    “Prose poems. Working in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, John Lennon, and Jorge Luis Borges, Jedediah Smith uses surrealism and the absurd to travel easily between Homeric battle fields and Universal monster sets, quantum physics and the Fortean paranormal, archetypal mythology and modern pop culture.”

  • What is the State of Horror Publishing Today? Part 1: Magazines

    As a writer with a backlog of unpublished stories and novels, this question concerns and worries me. The Big Five are swallowing up smaller imprints; the corporate houses refuse to read unagented manuscripts; agencies are closed to new clients; self-publishing is turning into a revenue stream for everybody but writers–these are just a few topics worth exploring.

    But for today, the topic is horror magazines. Just how many horror fiction periodicals are still out there taking submissions and paying a professional rate? Ever see pictures of magazine stands back in the 30s and 40s? The shelves were so crowded with story-based pulp magazines with those garish, crude, beautiful covers that they looked like a time-lapse slide of cells dividing and subdividing. And that’s exactly what the genres were doing: action divided into western, detective, horror, and war. War divided into sea, land, and air fighting. Air divided into titles focusing on aviators or dogfights or Zeppelins or … you get the picture.

    We are in a reverse age: massive cellular collapse. Because the answer to my question, as of September 2025, is one. Uno. Eins. Not nada but its closest neighbor. Right now, only The Dark fits the criteria: horror fiction, professional, and open. And of the others that claim to still be a going concern:

    Deadlands plans to reopen to submissions in December of this year

    Cosmic Horror Monthly for one week in January of 26

    Nightmare “hopes” for January of 26 as well

    Pseudopod…is weird to mention; the others do print, electronically at least rather than on paper with all its attendant substantiality. Pseudopod posts audio clips of stories. I guess that counts as a periodical of sorts these days. Regardless, they are closed until Aug 26, when they’ll accept submissions for 10 days.

    That’s it. All other titles either shut down or closed to submissions Until Further Notice.

    Not much to nurture a community of writers. Not much to keep potential readers interested and entertained. Not much to provide a path to full book publication. Certainly nothing with which to interest the big media of gaming, comics, television, and movies. They get nearly all of their stories in-house. Hard to believe that once upon a time, a show like Alfred Hitchcock Presents could produce 7 seasons of 35+ episodes each, all based on stories from popular mystery magazines like Ellery Queen and Hitchcock’s own.

    Which begs the question: how does Ellen Datlow in her yearly series The Best Horror of the Year–entitled with all the same humility that went into naming the “World” Series in baseball–find candidates to fill its table of contents? In a word: anthologies. Are they picking up the slack from the near-extinction of story-based magazines? Well, since many of them are closed to the hoi polloi by the aforementioned gatekeepers of corporations and literary agencies, I’d say no. But that’s a subject for my next newsletter.

    Before I sign off, one more question. Am I wrong? I’d love to be. Please comment if you know of any mags I have missed that fit the criteria: horror fiction, professional rates, open to submissions.

    Speak freely,

    Jed

    Cross-posted from: