Category Archives: New Issue

So Long, and Thanks for all the Issue Twenty-Fives

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Well, this is it. The first and only quarterly issue of Jersey Devil Press, and the twenty-fifth and final issue with me as editor. From here on out, the magazine is in the gnarled, twisted, possibly blood-soaked hands of Mike Sweeney. May God have mercy on us all.

Giving up the editorship of Jersey Devil Press was not something I took lightly. There were some personal reasons, some professional ones. But a big factor — probably bigger than it should have been, given that this is an online magazine — was that I didn’t want to sever JDP’s Jersey roots. I could have carried on, sure — I am, and always will be, a Jersey son — but it wouldn’t have been right. You can’t run a magazine from the middle of the desert and call yourself Jersey Devil Press. And renaming it Chupacabra Press was completely out of the question. No, Jersey Devil Press needed to stay in New Jersey, even if it was only a technicality.

Choosing Mike Sweeney was much more than a technicality, though. He has always been one of my favorite writers, and he embraces everything Jersey Devil Press is about. He’s jumped into his new position feet first and guns blazing. Yes, that’s kind of a mixed metaphor, but that’s also exactly how awesome Mike is. And thankfully, he’s not alone. Samuel Snoek-Brown and Laura Garrison are cannonballing in along with him, blades drawn. With a little luck, the three of them will make it well past issue fifty. And possibly star in a new action blockbuster.

These past two-plus years have been great, and the magazine’s surpassed almost all my expectations. Thank you for helping with that, and for making Jersey Devil Press what it is today.

Speaking of what Jersey Devil Press is today, sic your eyeballs on the most panda-lovingest, vestigial tail talkingest issue we’ve come up with yet. The online version of Issue Twenty-Five is here and the .pdf is here.

Happy Holiday Half-Issue!

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It’s that time of year again. Halloween has come and gone, so it’s time to bust out the ornaments and the awful music. Thanksgiving? What’s that? Corporations are spending millions of dollars to convince us to buy billions of dollars of crap, all in the name of whatever religious holiday they can appropriate. And if you try to fight this rampant capitalism, people call you things like “scrooge” and “grinch” and “get a job, hippie.” It’s almost like people want to go into debt to prove they haven’t forgotten their friends exist.

Well, we haven’t forgotten you exist, dear readers, and we’re going to prove it without dropping a dime. This is the 2011 Holiday Half-Issue, our gift to you.

We’ve got a new Thanksgiving-themed story, “Almost Every November,” from Eirik Gumeny; the delightful and uplifting “The Resurrection of Old Saint Nick,” from Samuel Snoek-Brown; “Chinese Take-Out,” from Stephen Schwegler, a mouth-watering, Christmas-flavored semi-sequel to “November;” and, from Laura Garrison, “The Long Happy New Year of Dora Wellington,” which is either about a Kwanzaa celebration that goes terribly wrong or the long happy New Year of Dora Wellington. You’ll have to read it to find out.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get in line at Walmart. I hear they’re selling a giant TV for slightly less than they normally do.

You can download the Holiday Half-Issue by clicking here, or read it online here.

Two Years, Suckas!

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Hello and welcome to the twenty-fourth, and last, monthly issue of Jersey Devil Press. That’s right, we’re going quarterly from here on out.

When I started JDP, I told myself I’d give it two years. And while I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, it’s also taken up a lot more time than I thought it would. Time that I – we, all three of us – have less and less of nowadays. So rather than force ourselves to finish twelve issues a year, we figured easing off a bit on the journal part would be the best thing for Jersey Devil Press. And for us. The last thing we want to do is get completely burnt out and close up shop.

That said, if anyone’s interested in signing on as a reader or taking over as editor of the online journal, let us know.

But this is not a time for being maudlin. This is a time for the September issue, with vikings, llamas, and space Nazis. Oh my.

We start with, as Stephen Schwegler put it, “the saddest story I’ve ever read that had ‘balls’ in the title,” also affectionally known as “Where Did My Balls Go? or, The Story of Oliver: A Canine Memoir,” by Shannon Derby. Next is the writer free-for-all “Colony,” by Samuel Snoek-Brown, followed by Christian A. Larsen’s “Projekt Gesichtskreis,” the aforementioned, and incredibly hard-hitting, story of astronauts and Nazis. After that is Rowdy Geirsson’s essay on the modern-day Viking movement, “Fear and Loathing in Western Sweden.” And bringing up the rear is Vincent Purita’s tale of alpacas, drugs, and idiot hipsters, “We Love Lucy.”

Have at it. Online issue is here and the .pdf can be downloaded here.

See you in December.

Or, you know, before that. What with the books and the Brilliant Disguises and the First Twenty-Twos and all.