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A boy whose skin is multiple colors. A home that freezes in the middle of summer. A pair of brothers who witness the apocalypse and attempt to fight it. A boy with four arms. A rogue wave that destroys a landlocked city. A house whose occupants experience different plagues each day. The six stories that populate this chapbook slough off the notion of reality, replacing it with an unsettling irreality that may be, upon closer inspection, the work of something sinister. What cannot be explained must still be endured. And so, let there be pestilence.
A boy whose skin is multiple colors. A home that freezes in the middle of summer. A pair of brothers who witness the apocalypse and attempt to fight it. A boy with four arms. A rogue wave that destroys a landlocked city. A house whose occupants experience different plagues each day. The six stories that populate this chapbook slough off the notion of reality, replacing it with an unsettling irreality that may be, upon closer inspection, the work of something sinister. What cannot be explained must still be endured. And so, let there be pestilence.
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Praise for The Dying Horse
"Natural disasters are running wild. The world is ending. Cats are talking. In the wake of an apocalypse, a young man is on a journey, of sorts, and along the way he meets a strange cast of characters who may or may not get in his way. The line between the real and surreal is a thin one in Jason Jordan's wildly entertaining The Dying Horse. With wry humor, Jordan tells the story of a man who just wants to find his way to some kind of home."
--Roxane Gay, author of Ayiti
"When the end of the world creeps up on us, Jason Jordan's The Dying Horse will be our atlas. Showing a genius for blending humanity and WTF?, he builds an apocalyptic road trip/manhunt painted in the colors of the suburbs. In Jordan's world, cats get conversational and every rotted-out corner hides a dose of bleakness and twisted black humor. Trust me, you'll want to play a round of Who Gets the Ax? after reading this book."
--Patrick Wensink, author of Black Hole Blues and Sex Dungeon for Sale!
"The Dying Horse is the most easy-going novella about the apocalypse that I've ever read. When faced with an abandoned interstate not unlike the one in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the narrator simply tells us 'this blows,' and keeps walking. Jason Jordan has done something incredibly tricky here; he presents a convincing timeline for how the world might end, and, thanks to his winning narrator, Erik, makes it seem funny. And, yes, talking cats certainly don't hurt."
--Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang and Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
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Praise for Cloud and Other Stories
"These stories come from two distinct periods of Jason Jordan's life, and while their origins are separated by both years and miles, their contents remain unified, first by the author's taste for high-concept absurdism and then by his ability to convincingly place realistic characters in fantastical situations. With wit and compassion, Jordan offers up these odd little stories not only to entertain, but also to render the world as it might actually be: full of longing, full of hope, full of a bizarre, touching glory just waiting to be uncovered."
--Matt Bell, author of How the Broken Lead the Blind and The Collectors
"'Normalcy' finds dark parody in these pages, with quietly desperate characters suffering through any of a number of grotesque and inexplicable metamorphoses, profound failures of planning, or more generalized disgraces, ranging from unwitting cannibalism to broken halos to ad-hoc heart surgery. In this vision of the world, however, most dreams seem unrealistic, and death itself threatens to be nothing more than a rerun, complete with laugh track, offering no satiation, no release."
--Spencer Dew, author of Songs of Insurgency
"Jason Jordan is a real deal heavy metal saint. Reading this book, I thought to myself, 'If I'm ever in a Louisville street fight, I want Jason Jordan on my side and holding the nunchucks.' Cloud and Other Stories is a beautiful book. It's the type of book you take to funerals. Place it under the crossed hands of the dearly departed, and watch them arise again...to life everlasting."
--Scott McClanahan, author of Stories and Stories II
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Praise for Powering the Devil's Circus: Redux
"The first time I met Jason Jordan he asked me to hold his glasses. I was brave enough to look through them, into a world of cat worship and heavy metal understatements. Do not ask for whom the devil's circus is powered. The devil's circus is powered for thee."
--Mickey Hess, author of Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory
"Here Jason Jordan launches a strangely delightful mix of sincerity and absurdity--each half bolstering the power of the other--with an honesty of gesture uncommon in these times of narrative duplicity."
--Todd Dills, author of Sons of the Rapture
"Revisiting Powering the Devil's Circus is like witnessing the birth of the artist, with the seeds, themes and tenor of all that is come drunkenly lurking and vibrant."
--Ben Tanzer, author of Lucky Man and Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine