Curt Johnson
Just When I Thought the Jig Was Up
Just when I thought the jig was up they jacked up the price of a mocha.
Just when I thought the jig was up I begin hearing voices in the pit of my stomach in the middle of the night and the sheet floats off the bed like a wraith and gets tangled up in the smoke detector.
Just when I thought the jig was up the IRS wants me to pay tax on books I’ve written but never sold.
Just when I thought the jig was up the reeds in my harmonicas curl and split, women point and laugh when they pass me on the street, and I go color blind.
Just when I thought the jig was up I get a five-page hand-written letter from someone in Minnesota who’s tracked me down to say my writing over the years has given him reason to go on living thru facial reconstruction after a bad accident, twin girls born joined at the hip, and a wife who packed up and split after withdrawing their life-long savings in order to “find herself”.
Thank you, he wrote.
Thank you, I wrote back. Now I can unload the pistol, wrap it in oil cloth, and put it back in the bottom drawer.
On the same day a letter with the December logo on the envelope arrived, the magazine that published my first story back in 1966, a magazine that like its creator, the great Curt Johnson, has been dead for years.
Someone is resurrecting December, and they want me on board.
Just when I thought the jig was up.
HCOLOM PRESS is the heir to Vagabond Press, which began as a main player in the Mimeo Revolution of the Sixties and continued publishing right into the jaws of the new millennium. HCOLOM PRESS embodies the spirit of Vagabond Press, retooled for the times we live in.
Hcolom is Moloch spelled backwards. Moloch is an Old Testament deity to which children were sacrificed, a practice society still engages in with increased enthusiasm. Consumerism is the new Moloch, manifesting itself like cancer in war, politics, the arts and religion, in every nook and cranny of human endeavor, draining the intrinsic beauty out of life and mutilating the innocence and magic of childhood with its commercial meat hook. HCOLOM PRESS intends to publish books that by their nature repudiate this pernicious force–novels, poetry, children’s books and books that transcend genre.
Our launch book, in June of 2006, was John Bennett’s novel, Tire Grabbers, a fable of sorts, a reality book rooted in the fantasy of our times, the story of the coming of Moloch and the children who rise up in rebellion against it.
Books of kindred spirit will follow close on its heels. Go for it by clicking here… or hit the Hcolom logo above…