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Jordan Krall
Jordan Krall is an author of Bizarro fiction who lives in New Jersey with his wife, son, and stepdaughter. His two books PIECEMEAL JUNE and SQUID PULP BLUES have been published by Eraserhead Press, an independent publisher based in Portland, Oregon.
The work of Jordan Krall is for those who like a good dose of weirdness in their fiction. His second book SQUID PULP BLUES is a collection of three weird noir tales and has been called “an intriguing mix of film noir storytelling strained through a colander of pure bizarro” by Tom Piccirilli.
Though he never shies away from the gruesome or the perverse, Jordan does not let those elements drive his stories. Instead, he relies on fast-paced plots and quirky, three-dimensional characters. As a New Jersey native, Jordan also enjoys using his home state as the background to most of his work.
Jordan’s influences include Jim Thompson, Elmore Leonard, William Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, Richard Stark, horror movies, Spaghetti Westerns, and film noir. His work crosses many genres including horror, SF, dark fantasy, and crime fiction yet they all contain a distinctive touch of Bizarro. Author Carlton Mellick III says, “Jordan Krall is a bit like Jonathan Lethem meets the Coen Brothers with an H.P. Lovecraft fetish. His tales will quickly grow on you. Read two books and you'll be addicted."
SQUID PULP BLUES
excerpt...
courtesy of Eraserhead Press, FEB 2008
Through the filthy windshield, Red Henry Hooper watched the two men bring their duffle bags into the motel room and close the door behind them. He waited sixty seconds and when the door didn’t open back up, Henry got out of the car. The Solar Lodge Motel was located just off the Garden State Parkway outside of Thompson, New Jersey. Despite having grown up in the area, Red Henry had never actually taken notice of the place and was now struck by the feeling that he had traveled back in time to the late 1960s, which was the last time the motel’s architecture was in style. It was a shit-hole yet it obviously had enough customers to stay afloat in the world of Holiday Inns. Henry suspected that the management supplemented their income by allowing illicit business to be conducted in the rooms. He stood next to his car, staring at the yellow and brown L-shaped motel and wondered how many crimes had been committed in those rooms, how many infidelities, how many drug deals, how many scumbag porn shoots. He started walking toward Room 12 where the two men had gone in just a few minutes ago.He stood in front of the door and listened. The television was on. They were watching The Golden Girls. I’ve seen that one. The one with the flashbacks and shit. Yeah, that’s a good one. Henry looked around and saw a man looking at him from the other side of the parking lot. Fuck’s his problem? If the guy stared any longer, Henry decided he’d go over there and put a knife to his throat. He’d say, “You staring at something, pal?” and watch as the guy would most surely start pleading for his life, saying he had a family and that he wasn’t meaning to stare. That’d be funny as hell, Henry decided but wished it didn’t come to that because he didn’t feel like wasting his time. Besides, the last few years taught him to think about the consequences before he acted, something the he had usually never done before.He tensed up when he saw the guy reach for something in his jacket. Henry relaxed when he saw him pull out a cigarette lighter and walk away. Red Henry turned back toward the room door.
For more of SQUID PULP BLUES, get your copy today
PIECEMEAL JUNE
Eraserhead Press, 2008
Kevin lives in a small apartment above a porn shop with his tarot-reading cat, Mithra. He has gotten used to Mithra bringing him things from outside: dead mice, Twinkie wrappers, donut scraps, houseplants, and the occasional rabbit head. But one day, Mithra brings him an ankle... a sweaty piece of rubber-latex shaped like a human ankle. Later, he is brought an eyeball, then a foot. After more latex body parts are brought upstairs, Kevin decides to glue them together to form a piecemeal sex doll. But once the last piece is glued into place, the sex doll comes to life. She says her name is June. She comes from another world and is on the run from an evil pornographer and three crab-human hybrid assassins. Piecemeal June is a reality-bending journey into love, sex, death, and a bizarre parallel world of butchered flesh.
WARNING: Some language may not be suitable for all ages
SQUID PULP BLUES
On the surface, Thompson looks like any other blue-collar New Jersey town. But beneath the working-class exterior lies a bizarro world of fetishistic crime, sleazy motels, and squid.
In these three bizarro-noir novellas, the reader is thrown into a world of murderers, drugs made from squid parts, deformed gun-toting veterans, and a mischievous apocalyptic donkey.
THE HABERDASHER
Red Henry Hooper just got out on parole. He meets his friends, fellow small-time criminals Dix Hayden and Grant Minissi, in a cheap motel room to drink a couple beers and perhaps plan another job. Things go sour when Grant takes some bad drugs. Meanwhile, in the next room, strange things are happening that will make Henry’s day even worse: a woman is missing her feet and a notorious local gangster Robert Hapertas (aka The Haberdasher) is on his way. And he’s not pleased.
THE LONGHEADS
Tommy Pingpong knew it was a mistake sending his partner Jake into the meeting with their boss. Now they were on the run from Peachy, a diaper-wearing gangster who would like nothing better than to kill the both of them. On top of that, the deformed war veterans called the longheads are buying up all the guns in town, planning something big that’ll have severe implications for the town of Thompson.
THE APOCALYPSE DONKEY
When Simon Palmer took the black envelope from the tall man in the parking lot, he didn’t know that this case of mistaken identity would make his day take such a weird turn for the worst. When the man finally realizes that he gave the envelope to the wrong guy, Simon is thrown into a dangerous cat-and-mouse game that finally leads to a sleazy carnival of squidy violence.
