There’s a small whiteboard mounted above my computer, a to-do list – although I call it a could-do list to take some of the pressure off. At the beginning of the year, after some days of long and sober (and occasionally not so sober) reflection, I wrote down a handful of things I wanted to accomplish over the course of 2023: work on Expiration Date, the sci-fi rewrite of my old transplant novel; put together some more stories for the Los Fantasmas universe; publish more personal essays and articles.
Instead, I’m starting a Kickstarter for a pair of weird fiction anthologies.
The first anthology is GREATER THAN HIS NATURE, a collection of thirteen(ish) short stories based around mad science, and which will definitely include some kind of atomic monster story if I have any say in things, which I do. I’m also going to make stories from chronically-ill and disabled writers a priority.
OPEN ALL NIGHT, meanwhile, is about retail and service work, and the graveyard shift. There’s certainly something peaceful about being alone and awake while the rest of the world sleeps, a comfort that comes from the flicker of fluorescents – but it doesn’t take much to turn that feeling on its head. A noise, a shadow, a weird glitch you wouldn’t think twice about in the daylight. Anyone who’s ever run inventory at three in the morning knows what I’m talking about.
Both books will be open to general submissions once the Kickstarter is funded.
Similar to when I started Jersey Devil Press a million years ago, the Electrical Sweater anthology series is a chance to plug a hole in the indielitosphere and collect stories from genres and subgenres that – at least in my travels – are underserved. Bizarro with a heart, sci-fi for slackers and stoners, weird fiction (with a lower-case “w”) that doesn’t get bogged down in all the New Weird pretension and posturing.
Moreover, with the chosen themes of “mad science” and “the graveyard shift,” I think there’s a chance to really tear into things like climate change and the pandemic, wage inequality and worker oppression, but, y’know, in a fun way. Like The Menu, but with even more cannibalism and uncomfortable laughter.
Speculative fiction, and genre fiction more broadly – and bizarro and comedy, more specifically – really don’t get the respect they deserve. Because genre fiction is popular and mainstream, and not seen as “serious” literature by the, like, four old white guys who make the rules, people don’t take the writing seriously. Because comedy and bizarro are full of fart jokes and man-eating butts, no one thinks they have anything real to say. Which is, of course, bullshit.
Strangely enough, other mediums like TV and film – and, obviously, comic books – are pushing back against this. But not publishing. I mean, Doom Patrol and Peacemaker – despite their sordid comic roots – were both critically lauded. Triangle of Sadness has a fifteen-minute vomit montage that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Monty Python movie, and people are acting like it’s Citizen Kane. And just a few days ago, Everything Everywhere All at Once won all the Oscars – and that movie involves martial arts, hot-dog fingers, and a guy jumping ass-first onto a buttplug-shaped trophy.
That’s what I’m trying to do with Electrical Sweater. I want to bring that kind of brilliant, butt-first nonsense into literature. I want everyone who’s ever gone to a submissions page and felt themselves deflate upon seeing the words “no comedy” or “nothing transgressive,” to know that they’re not alone. I want all those stories that editors and agents and publishers have loved “as readers,” but that “don’t really fit with what they’re doing right now” – I want those stories to have a home.
Now, I think we have a few minutes for some questions, if anyone – you, in the back, with the hat.
Why a Kickstarter? Well, because (a) I want to pay my writers and, hahaha, there’s not a chance in the coolest corner of Hell that’s happening without fundraising. And (b) because it turns out I really, really like making books. I know a lot of writers, and regular people, too, hate all the fiddly formatting, the hassle of printing and proofing, but I kind of love it? I think it might be my happy place.
Is there a chance Electrical Sweater will happen if the Kickstarter fails? Maybe? But it’ll be as digital books and no one will get paid. Which, as mentioned above, is not what I want to do. Support the series now and we’ll never have to find out!
What’s the future for Electrical Sweater and Norway’s Bravest Son? In a perfect world, the Electrical Sweater series will continue with one or two increasingly-specific anthologies every year. Like, “things to do in Denver when you’re dead and have eight heads in a duffle bag,” or all writers have to use the same opening line, something involving peanut butter and a moose or something. I’d also love to start putting out novellas. But we need to fund these two books first!
What’s up with that name? Electrical Sweater? It’s a nonsensical extrapolation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? To wit: Do androids dream of electric sheep? Do electric sheep give electrified wool? Can you wear an electrical sweater? Also, I was wearing a sweater when I started brainstorming this, and I thought it sounded cool.
And Norway’s Bravest Son? That’s from Warren Zevon’s “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.” It’s also a play on my first name and the fact that I’m named after a Viking, despite being, emphatically and genealogically, not a Viking. I do occasionally look like one, though.
What’s that link for the Kickstarter again? I’m so glad you asked; what a perfect note to end on. You can find the Kickstarter by clicking on these words right here, or copying and pasting the following into your browser:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/egumeny/electrical-sweater-weird-fiction-for-weirdos
You can also use that copied link to share this Kickstarter with all your friends and any writers that you know! In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that I implore you to do that. Help get GREATER THAN HIS NATURE and OPEN ALL NIGHT into the world. Long live the strange! Spread the gospel of weird fiction!