Aphorisms Should Be Peaks

Do you love speculative fiction, but you’re tired of all the dark and depressing stories out there? I love dark stories as much as, or if not more, than anyone, and I feel there’s a place for them in literature. However, sometimes a ray of sunshine hits me, and I write a story with a happy ending. So, please support my creative ventures and buy the anthology “ Sunshine Superhighway ,” put together by the very cool editor, Jessica Augustsson of JayHenge Publishing. My short story, “Deep Dreams,” appears in the collection, and I wrote it with the feedback and suggestions of my writer friends in Tulsa—the lovely people in the writing groups of Nevermore Edits and Tuesday Night Publishing. I’ve finished reading the entire book, and I feel very lucky to be included among the authors. This is a proud achievement for me, so please support it! Click on the beautiful cover below to head over to Amazon.com, pick up your own copy, and leave a review telling us how much you loved it! Let’s t...

 Hello friends! I hope that you are all happy and healthy and doing well. Yes, Joe is still alive and around! I had a health scare recently, but I'm still in decent shape for 48 and still skateboarding—as this video below will attest. My brother and I love cruising down the downtown parking garages on quiet Sundays. Happy Halloween! Have you put out your jack-o-lanterns? If you need something to do on Halloween night, listen to this kick ass narrated fiction written by yours truly, " The Testing of Affa Eash ," and produced by the incredibly talented Matthew Mohn. Oh—and the incredible acting of his daughters and wife. Please, please, follow the link below to the YouTube page and leave a comment if you like the story and narrated fiction. This is a labor of love, and the comments keep us going! I'm pumped that some very cool horror writers have been listening and have left comments!                             ...

Hello friends! A long, long time ago, during the mid 1980s, two home-schooled boys sat around geeking out about science fiction, fantasy, and horror. They loved short stories and narrated stories, so they checked out sound-effects records from the library and produced their own narrated fiction using a tape recorder. The boys grew old and traveled the world, one got married and had kids. In their forties, during the initial shutdown due to the coronavirus, their passion was rekindled. They decided to return to narrating fiction. Yes, Matt and Joe are at it once again. We're starting a podcast! TALES OF THE FANTASTIC PODCAST is for those of you who love to write genre fiction as much as we do. Each episode will start with a discussion of our favorite influences. After that, we'll have a short talk about writing practices. At the end of each episode, we will feature a five to ten minute narrated story! Matt and I write the stories and we make the sound effects, and we...

Look upon my life and don't do the things I do. Don't separate yourself from the people around you because of shame or doubt. Don't be a self-involved and inward-focused mooncalf.   I used to jest that I'm writing a book titled  The 1,000 Habits of a Highly Ineffective Person , but now I'm actually reminiscing about life and writing more about my past. I'm actually thinking about my time abroad and putting it into words. Today, I finished the final touches on a short story about the time I went to a friend’s house to see the spirit of his deceased younger brother conjured by a Tamil witch . . . and it’s not fiction.  I'm thinking about the values of the beautiful people I lived around in Tamil Nadu and other places, and how community and family should be stronger values in my life and eclipse the “rugged individualism” that the U.S. system installed in me.   For stupid reasons, I gave up on the dream of writing after I pursued an MF...

Hello friends! Did you know that the term "swords and sorcery" was coined by one of my favorite writers, Fritz Leiber? He used it in a letter responding to another author by the name of Michael Moorcock. Of course, Leiber is famous for his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories and books, and Moorcock is famous for his Elric of Melnibone series. Around the age of thirteen, I was introduced to the genre by my best buddy, Matt Mohn. I had read and heard of Tolkien and Lewis, but I wasn't yet indoctrinated into the world of swords and sorcery. From that point on, I spent long nights under my blankets with a flashlight while reading Robert E. Howard , L. Sprague de Camp , Clark Ashton Smith , and other greats. So this month, I am proud to have a short story included in a fine online publication,  Swords and Sorcery Magazine . The story is titled " Bringing Down the Mountain ," and it is about a young Viking lad who saves his family and home from a rampaging ice ...

I haven’t revealed this to many friends, but the first horror short story of mine that was published was a dream. Almost scene-for-scene, the entire plot was somehow written and directed and screened by my sleeping brain. Like many, I’ve always avoided spiders. They may be friendly little critters that eat flies, but I avoid them. They creep me out. One night long ago, I dreamed of a colossal alien spider-thing that descended from space in a weird lightning storm. The bloated giant hovered over a Midwestern suburb, and from its hull, hundreds of its long-legged young dropped down on hawsers of webbing. But the beasts had no heads or faces—they were just bodies with legs. To communicate and try to convince humans to submit to the new ravenous overlord, they would decapitate people and stick the heads on their own bodies to speak.  Crazy, huh? I’ll sit and work on a plot for hours and then write a story that is rejected time after time. But that one story given to me by...

Hola amigos! I sort of feel like my life is complete. Check out the ISFDB ! There's now a listing for J. N. Cameron ! And I'm super happy that The Toilet Zone is listed with Weirdbook 38 , two publications I am extremely proud to be a part of. Speaking of The Toilet Zone , it has been receiving well-deserved attention. Here's a review from IndiHorrorWriter.com ! If you do a quick search, there are more reviews out there from writers like Brian James Lewis and others. What's next? I have two short stories in quality anthologies in 2020, and another to be published in 2021. I continue to write daily, now that I'm free of my soul-crushing job and living on the severance package. People keep asking me about writing a novel. I've written three, but I hate them all and continue to work on short stories. The words of Prof. Doug Unger still ring true to me..."Joe, you need to focus on revision." I'm an amateur who needs to spend more time...