Jersey Devil Press

Not too long ago (as Jersey Devil Press hasn’t really existed long enough for anything to be considered “long ago”) we, the editorial staff, sat down at our respective laptops and banged out an About Us section that more accurately defined what we, as a magazine, were in fact about.  It was an agonizing ordeal, swallowing hours of our time and taking years off our respective lives.  There was sweat and there was blood, largely because Monica’s heating is insane and my desk has sharp edges.  Neither of us will admit to tears, though.  But you get the gist.

Were we successful in our Abouting?  If e-mails from complete strangers in California are any indication, then hell yes.

[Editor's Note: As per Mr. Holt's request, editor's commentary is in red.  Links are also in red.  There is going to be a lot of red.]

Dear Jersey Devil Press People,

As is the want of every as-yet-undiscovered-whatever (which with my being in California instantly makes me an aspiring actor [In Pennyslvania, they're apparently puppeteers.], which is inaccurate as I do not nor have ever waited tables wearing a white button up shirt and black slacks), I was perusing the lists of online magazines and journals who will publish nearly everything that is incomprehensible and poetic and yet will turn down my incomprehensible and poetic because it does not meet their “current needs at this time.” [I promise to never use the phrase "current needs" when we reject you.]

Somehow I accidentally stumbled onto your website [Destiny?] and accidentally discovered that there existed within Jersey Devil Press a commodity significantly lacking in nearly every other magazine/journal/press in the current publishing landscape [Latina editors?], that being an actual sense-of-humor and an acute sense of mortality [Oh.].

I regretted that I failed to read up on what a Jersey Devil was.  [That's a shame.]  I assume it’s some kind of “thing” that exists in Jersey [We also have Werebears.] (Or do you prefer non-Jersians to call it New Jersey?  I’m not sure of the local custom.  I don’t want to offend.  I mean I know Anthony Bourdain is from New Jersey but you may hate both him and his show on the Travel Channel… which I can respect.  [Kind of.  From the little I've seen he comes across as an arrogant tool.]  Forget I mentioned it.  [OK.]).  But whatever it is, I’m sure it’s good/bad and easy/difficult to deal with.  [Yes.]  For that matter I really didn’t read much more after that but I swear to God I’m looking at the pdf of the October issue right after this email.  [Man, you better have.  You too, current reader.  And read the November issue while you're at it.]

Anyway, good job and stuff.  [Thanks!]  Hope you guys don’t succumb to being serious artists and writing poems about red wheelbarrows… beside white chickens.  [We don't have any stories about chickens, but this one is about cows.]

Abstractly,

Caleb Holt

[Incidentally, as Caleb was so kind to point out, Kate Delany's Jersey Fresh was about the interaction between a Jerseyan and a Californian.  Much like this.  Crazy.]

[Side note:  To the authors of stories not linked to, we apologize.  We tried, but there're only so many ridiculous tangents we can string into a cohesive post.]

Word up, peoples. Jersey Devil Press, Issue Two, is now available for your reading enjoyment.

We’ve got seven stellar short stories from the likes of Meg Tuite, Julie Brown, Sonny James Traylor, Ryan Werner, Tom Mahony, Richard Radford and Milan Smith, all guaranteed to cure your impending sugar crash.

You can find the issue online here, or download a .pdf of it here. So get to it.

Ryan Werner



I wrote the script for A Midsummer’s Wet Dream a week after I got fired from the gas station and a month before I graduated college. I got drunk and sent it to the first adult video company that came up on the internet. Two weeks later I got a check for $175. The day before I graduated college, I got a copy in the mail. I applied at the Adult Warehouse in the next town over and got the job. Graveyard shift.

The clientele were nice. Not in the same ways that a glass of water or a nap are nice, but in the sorts of ways that make them socially upstanding within the context of a store that sells dildos. Virtuous people were everywhere, and I’d take notes on the inside of cigarette cartons as Ms. Asian-Woman-Buying-Imitation-Astro-Glide-In-Bulk told me what makes her feel sexy. She’d leave knowing that it’s all for her when the typically demure Ishokino turns to the strong American Buck in Cumzilla and says, “Bring your white to my face.” My parents told everyone I was in the self-esteem business.

I eventually quit and moved to L.A. Lots of people do it, I realize that, but most of them end up involved with sex on tape only after trying to be in the real movies or on television. I just wanted to see how many different ways I could sneak twenty minutes of story between two hours of fucking. I did the parody circuit at first: Men In Black Men, Fellatio Gump, Schindler’s Lust. I did Gummed With the Wind and Jurassic Pork for the nursing home crowd. The studios kept buying. I was doubling up on my student loan payments. I bet they don’t teach how to write a cumshot in MFA workshops. Not on purpose, anyways.

Fucktasia moved me away from just writing. I wasn’t producing with names or anything—just amateurs who wanted to take a chance—but I was producing. I got calls from studios wanting me to come in and tell them how to shoot the reverse-cowgirl position. I even kept getting calls from home, mainly curious ones that stopped more than they ended.

“Are you eating well?”

“Yeah, Mom. One of the girls made me chili the other day.”

My parents have an old phone, and I could hear Mom twist the cord around her finger.

“Is she clean?”

“Well, she didn’t make it with her cunt, if that’s what you mean.”

She handed the phone off to Dad, and only when she was out of the room did I say, “Hey Dad, did you see Fucktasia?” But I know they don’t care about that sort of thing. The sex, maybe, but not the craft. Most people are like that. Consciously, at least. If someone happened to look, he could see the wrench as Chekhov’s gun in Ballcock or hear Carver’s dialogue in the Vixen Vampire series. When the storm hit the dejected leading man right before the three-way in Mother Nature’s Muddy Fields, he could see King Lear’s pathetic fallacy, and know.






RYAN WERNER has got a body built for sin and an appetite for passion.