This is the big one. This is the one you've all been waiting for.
Own it. On paper. Here.
Review it. On Amazon. On Goodreads. On your blog. Whatevs.
Be the first person to review Undomesticated (let us know on twitter or by email) and receive acres of free swag. Even if you hated the book and left a scathing, savage review!
Finally, two years after the project was first announced, Jeffrey Scott Holland's Undomesticated is now out on early soft-launch release to pre-paid JSH Book Club subscribers! The official print edition will be available on CreateSpace/Amazon within a week, with an ebook version to eventually follow!
We've already received two reports from subscribers:
"Has [as] many characters as Twin Peaks, and is almost as hard to follow! I'm going to have fun trying to piece it all together :-)" - S.A., Louisville, KY
"Thank you for sending the advance, I've read it twice already. Reads like watching a good movie that always keeps me guessing where it is going. There has to be a sequel and it has to be soon. Start writing it now, Mr. Holland!" - R.Q., Bardstown, KY
Expected hot on the heels of this release: the long-awaited dream journal Transmissions from Agent J, and the LONG-long-long-awaited science fiction "epic" Solar Station A! (Still in literary limbo: a sequel to The Moleskin Checklist entitled The Tract of Blood and the historical romance Matilda Heron.)
After setting up for myself the impossible-sounding goal of writing a novel a month, I changed my mind this summer. Partially because I've just been way too busy with a number of more immediately pressing projects, but also because I've been chewing over exhortations from fans to write longer novels.
I know, I know, the whole point of this was to write pulp fiction, right? Short. Sweet. Punchy. In and out. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am, now go buy the next one. Classic dime novel headspace. Immediacy, action, results. But you know what? I'm going to give non-brevity a stab. Some of the short novels I've been working on all year are going to end up being long novels, doorstop-sized tomes that the kids of today seem to love. [Update, 12-30-2017: It didn't happen. Undomesticated is about the same length as my usual novels!]
One of those novels is The Tract of Blood, a sort-of sequel to The Moleskin Checklist. Another is the "great American werewolf novel" I've been hinting at since last winter. It's called Undomesticated, and concerns a Florida funeral home director who gradually becomes aware that werewolves, for lack of a better word, walk among us. But are they the classic horror-movie werewolves, or something more akin to zombies or... feral humans?
Of course, writing stupidly longer novels takes time. It took Ralph Ellison almost his entire lifespan to write two novels and they weren't even particularly large ones. And time is a luxury I scarcely remember these days, what with all the other little nothings I do that hopefully add up to something. But I've always held to the maxim that when you find you have bitten off more than you can chew, increase your effort and bite off even more.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I must go feed the cats.
- - Jeffrey Scott Holland, The Everglades, Florida, 10-29-2015.
The second RV & OI novella from Jeffrey Scott Holland, Flinging Soup in the Face of Darkness, has arrived!
The story concerns the tiny adventures of a pair of eccentric street buskers calling themselves "Retrovirus" (RV) and "Opportunistic Infection" (OI) and has the added virtue of being based on a true story. (You can read about the real-life RV & OI and their homemade tape and indie comic book empire here.)
Unlike standard JSH Book Club selections, Flinging Soup in the Face of Darkness will not be available through Amazon and will be released in print format only, each copy handmade with rather primitive and lowbrow production values. Each book will be a unique art-object unto itself, held together with string, glue, gum, tape, and who knows what else. Each and every copy is signed and numbered by the author.
Flinging Soup in the Face of Darkness is approximately 50 pages long and costs a mere $9.99 postpaid. Order copies directly from the JSH Book Club at our mailing address. The four volumes will be eventually collected into one greater compendium, so these individual editions are strictly limited!
The RV & OI books aren't for everyone. In fact, we're not entirely sure who, if anyone, they're for at all. But fear not: more traditional JSH fare is on the way. The Invisible Ranch (a weird western), The Tract of Blood (the sequel to The Moleskin Checklist), Transmissions from Agent J (a collection of texts that skirt the line between dream-journal and autobiography), and Matilda Heron (a dark historical romance) are all coming in the future!
Water Towers Look Like Martians, the first of a projected series of four "RV & OI" novels (well, novellas, really) by Jeffrey Scott Holland, is less than two days away!
The story concerns the tiny adventures of a pair of eccentric street buskers calling themselves "Retrovirus" (RV) and "Opportunistic Infection" (OI) and has the added virtue of being based on a true story. (You can read about the real-life RV & OI and their homemade tape and indie comic book empire here.)
Unlike standard JSH Book Club selections, Water Towers Look Like Martians will not be available through Amazon and will be released in print format only, each copy handmade with rather primitive and lowbrow production values. Each book will be a unique art-object unto itself, held together with string, glue, gum, tape, and who knows what else. Each and every copy is signed and numbered by the author.
To be officially released on March 31, Water Towers Look Like Martians is approximately 40 pages long and costs a mere $9.99 postpaid. Order copies directly from the JSH Book Club at our mailing address. The four volumes will be eventually collected into one greater compendium, so these individual editions are strictly limited!
(Meanwhile, the next "real" JSH novel is likely to be the weird western epic The Invisible Ranch with a projected release date of June 25!)
At long last, Jeffrey Scott Holland's The Alternation of Night and Day has been released in both paperback and Kindle ebook formats! Originally announced in November 2013, the novel had originally been intended to follow closely on the heels of The Bartender and The Seventeenth Island but became a casualty to the yearlong lull during which the author moved to Florida and became distracted by warm weather and Wicked Weasels.
The story, set in 1936, concerns Louisville welterweight boxing champion Daniel O'Corbin, who in a short span of time is confronted with personal and professional woes: his erratic girlfriend walks out on him, and his boxing manager pressures him to throw a fight and ruin his perfect unbroken string of wins. Some unexpected visitors try to convince him that perhaps a trip to New Orleans to visit a voodoo priest might solve all his problems.
It's a new JSH Book Club giveaway!
On Valentine's Day, a lucky winner's name will be drawn to win a FREE copy of the print edition of The Devil and Daniel Boone, the first of the neverending series of peculiar pulp-fiction lowbrow literature-objects.
As with last month's Moleskin Checklist giveaway, all you have to do to enter is send a DM (direct message) via Twitter to either @catclawtheatre, @jshbookclub, @telecrylic or @schachtons.
This edition is already destined to be a collector's item as all JSH Amazon/CreateSpace books will eventually be replaced with in-house hardcover versions.
If you already entered in the Moleskin Checklist drawing, your name will automatically remain in the hat for this one!
