Title：Jeffrey Thomas - Punktown 08 - Voices from Punktown # SSC.mobi

Introduction

by Jeffrey Thomas

I’ve introduced earlier books—and filled many an interview—with words on the origins of my milieu of Punktown, and so for this collection I’ll forego that, if more for my benefit than your own. But with those earlier books in mind, I will put into perspective the collection you now hold in your hands, in regard to what has come before and when. As of the time of this writing, the Punktown books that have previously appeared are:

PUNKTOWN, short story collection, Ministry of Whimsy Press, 2000

MONSTROCITY, novel, Prime Books, 2003

PUNKTOWN (German translation, limited hardcover), collection, Festa Verlag, 2003

EVERYBODY SCREAM!, novel, Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2004

PUNKTOWN: THIRD EYE, shared world anthology, Prime Books, 2004

PUNKTOWN (expanded edition), collection, Prime Books, 2005

MONSTROCITY (German translation), novel, Festa Verlag, 2005

PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY (with Scott Thomas), collection, Bedlam Press, 2005

PUNKTOWN (German translation, paperback edition with adjusted contents), collection, Festa Verlag, 2006

MONSTROCITY (Greek translation), novel, Oxy Press, 2006

DEADSTOCK, novel, Solaris, 2007

BLUE WAR, novel, Solaris, 2008

PUNKTOWN (Russian translation), collection, U-Factory Publishers, 2008

HEALTH AGENT, novel, Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2008

This list does not include extravagant and expensive collector’s editions of several of these books, printed in small numbers, or take into account that certain books were released in both hardcover and paperback versions simultaneously from the same publisher.

So I apologize, especially if this is your first visit, if I’m shoving you straight into the streets of my favorite city; I’m sure that can be disorienting, if not outright traumatic, for the unwary tourist. What can I say? This time out it’s sink or swim. But I will offer a few words on each of the stories you’ll find herein, and maybe that will give you some small measure of forewarning.

JOHNNY PHARAOH is original to the collection, written a few years back for a friend’s anthology which I’m sorry to say never panned out. You’ll see an ongoing theme with that situation (just as cloning is an ongoing theme in my Punktown stories, such as this one).

DO YOU KNOW THIS GIRL? was written for a CD-ROM anthology called Tooth and Claw, Volume 1 (and my brother Scott had a story in Volume 2, by the way). Interestingly, author Garrett Peck wrote a follow-up story called “How Well Do You Know Your Friend?” for Punktown: Third Eye, an anthology for which I invited a group of other writers to contribute their own stories set in Punktown. This marks this story’s first appearance in print form.

MONSTERS is reprinted from my collection Thirteen Specimens. I hate to include a story in one collection that can be found in another of my collections, but where it is a Punktown story, I thought it desirable to feature it here amongst its kin. I write every Punktown story so it can stand on its own, without having to read any other in order to “get” it. But while I feel a story like this one can be enjoyed independently, I also feel there’s another, even richer experience to be had reading it in the context of other Punktown stories, for a cumulative or tapestry effect. As Michael Marshall Smith has said of my Punktown stories, “together they create a whole even greater than the sum of their parts.”

MOURNING CLOAK has a funny history. It first appeared in the chapbook Icarus and Angels, and to better sell the story to an editor I knew was gay and looking for gay-themed material, I changed the protagonist of an unsold story from female (Helena) to male (Druce). The editor accepted Mourning Cloak in this transgendered state, and later went on to invite me to submit more stories for a number of mass market anthologies of gay erotica he was to edit. First off was a gay erotic Western anthology. At first I didn’t know what I could do with this invitation (I think it was the Western part that threw me off the most), but when my ex-wife offered to come up with an idea for me, I grew indignant and said, “Hey, wait a minute, I’m the writer here—I’ll come up with my own damn gay erotic Western!” So I wrote a story called “Scarlet” that appeared in a book titled Western Trails. Subsequently, I placed several additional stories with this editor, but what I did was take more preexisting stories of mine like “Fallen” (a horror story about a fallen angel, which can be found in its original state in my collection Aaaiiieee!!!) and “Heart for Heart’s Sake” (later, to appear in its original form in Punktown) and again change their protagonists from female to male, steaming things up more to boot. But as fate would have it, the editor and publisher had a falling out and only Western Trails was released (though my altered “Fallen” did appear in another chapbook from this editor called Green Echo). Mourning Cloak in its original incarnation has only appeared previously as a bonus story in a 26-copy lettered

About the Author

Jeffrey Thomas is the author of the following books from Dark Regions Press: The Fall of Hades, Voices From Punktown, Thought Forms, Nocturnal Emissions and Doomsdays. Other of his books include Punktown, Blue War, Deadstock, Health Agent, Monstrocity, Letters From Hades and A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers. Some of his short stories have appeared in such books as The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Year’s Best Horror Stories, The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction and The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases. He lives in Massachusetts, and his blog can be found at:

www.JeffreyEThomas.com/blog/