June

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kld: I am filled with radiant white energy. Agape love is what I offer. Though short of stature and of hair, I am big of heart and package.

jl: Please explain "agape love" as compared to the regular "slam, bam, thank you ma'am" that most men offer.

kld: Let it be known that I’m no ordinary man. I don’t use people for pleasure. I don’t play power politics with them. Let’s cut the chit chat and wet-wire our brains together. Feel that one-on-one neural connection, baby. Feel true love surge without condition. It’s love for love’s sake...the greatest thing that can be shared.

jl: Please describe yourself as a writer.

kld: Sexy sweet like D-Con laced chocolate pudding; tangy yet artificially sweetened; green apple sour; rancid like a rotting cow.

jl: When did you start writing? When did you first become a published author?

kld: I wrote my first story at age 2. It was about sex and death, or something stupid like that.

At any rate, I became a published author in the fall of 1995 once THE BLUE LADY printed one of my early horror tales. Since then, I’ve had over 130 pieces published in 10 countries. Venues range from "The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers" (Carroll and Graf/Constable and Robinson) to "Bust Down the Door and Eat all the Chickens" (Millstream Books). jl: How many books/chapbooks have you released? Where can readers find them?

kld: 7,653,724,642, give or take.

Actually: One novel, three poetry chapbooks, and two short fiction chapbooks.

Amazon.com is the best place to find my novel. For my latest poetry chapbook, check out samsdotpublishing.com. My fiction chap (from Eraserhead Press) is no longer in print, but another one is presently in PDF format over at bizarrEbooks.com. There’s more info over at my webpage, too: users.chartertn.net/mbs/kldwriter/

jl: What is your favorite Lionel Richie song?

kld: Penny Lover from CAN’T SLOW DOWN (1983). It makes my panties explode in tandem with my brain.

jl: What does the circus embody for you?

kld: Sex and death; life and love; jesus and satan; pants and walruses; pineapples and squid; brainworms and sandwiches.

Did I mention "death"?

jl: Tell us about the projects you have edited. Are there any forthcoming editorial projects for you?

kld: BARE BONE: The 4th issue will be released shortly. Should be full-color and bar-coded this time around. Roughly 160 perfect-bound pages, too. Donald Burleson’s story from the first issue was reprinted in "The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 13". A few more have received Honorable Mention in "The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror".

In short, BARE BONE is hot­like a fresh buttered kitten baking at 350°.

Oh yeah! I’m doing a speculative walri (plural of "walrus") antho, too. Seriously. This will be the best damn pinniped collection on the planet.

jl: You seem to have a massive body of work. How do you maintain your output?

kld: By ignoring such concepts as "job", "family", "life", etc. By being devoted. By trying (and failing) to write every day of my miserable, shimmering, rat-like, silky-smooth life.

jl: Eraserhead Press has published both a chapbook and a novel of yours. How did you come to be involved with EHP?

kld: Why must you ask such questions?

At any rate, it happened when I was surfing the Net. It was the Fall of 1999 and EHP published a webzine, but no novels.

Once I learned EHP also published chapbooks, I decided to write THE GRAND DICTATOR­a circus-midget-commune and end-of-everything based concept that had been jellifying in my brain for over a year.

Well, Carlton Mellick III accepted TGD. This encouraged me to pen additional weirdo novellas (ZEN AND THE ART OF MURDER and THE CHURCH OF THE BYRDS VS. THE CHURCH OF LIONEL RICHIE). I remember thinking: "I’d like these novellas published together—but that won’t happen."

Then, as if by sex-magic, it freakin’ happened! Eraserhead started publishing novels and the three-novella collection dream became reality.

Finally, in 2001, I built a textual (as opposed to "sexual") bridge that connected these novellas, thus turning them into ONE book-thing.

jl: Who/what are influences on your work? Did any events in your life early on push you into becoming a writer of the bizarre?

kld: Pugnacious Jones is my greatest influence. If we had not have a little talk about circus midgets back in October of 1998, I would not be the glamorous, penniless, vomit-strewn, smooth-assed writer that I am today.

My life is one bizarre event. That’s all you need to know

jl: How do you feel about collaborative writing? What collaborative works have you done?

kld: I love it! When it works well, it’s like the agape mind-meld I spoke of earlier. Two styles/two voices become one style/one voice. It’s like text-sex.

Can you dig? Yes, I thought you could...

Anyway, Carlton Mellick III and I are presently co-writing a book-thing. Can’t say too much or all the ears-in-the-wall will pick up on our never-before-imagined concept. (Fuck the ears-in-the-wall. Fuck ‘em.) I’ve also collaborated with satan165 (a 8,000+ word story to be published in SICK) and Jeffrey A. Stadt (a short, absurdist psuedo-play about masturbation clowns).

Of course, I can’t forget Pugnacious Jones. Must never forget Mr. Jones­oh hell no.

jl: What goals do you have? How long do you see yourself writing?

kld: To make at least $15,000 dollars a year by writing/editing alone. Then I can die happily in the gutter, covered in whore perfume and malt liquor. Also, for old times sake, I’d like to have a horror novel published.

In regards to your second question: Forever, baby. Forever...

jl: If you were to pursue making that big horror novel, what could we expect from it?

kld: Zombies. If there’s any horror trope I still embrace, it’s zombies. They are so sugar-sweet, yummy in my tum-tum tummy. I eat ‘em up.

Of course, I want them to do more than shamble around and eat people. And there’d be other stuff going on, like mass psychoses, fire raining from heaven, and gods riding strange chariots made of flesh­crap like that.

jl: Electric eel, iguana, or fruit bat?

kld: How about a "fruity electric iguana-bat"? Or an "electric fruit eel? Perhaps you’d care for some "batty electric fruit"? It’s my favorite. Yummmm.

jl: What's your relation to William Burroughs?

kld: I think we may have met in a dream. Either that or I ran over his cat with my Big Mean Green Machine.

jl: Please compare salami and your poetry.

kld: Both are spicy and phallic.

jl: Any predictions about the writing underground? Any trends or new writers to watch for?

kld: I predict the underground dwellers will, at some point, rise like zombies. We subterranean brothers must maintain our spirit, our moxy, and our will.

Oh yeah, and our balls, too. Those are important.

Watch for Eraserhead Press writers. Watch for some of the people on The New Absurdist, too.

And watch for less mainstream things to become more mainstream as time passes. It’s entropy, baby. Things are only going to get more chaotic.

So dance with it. Dance with it or die.