New cover! New stories!

Melvin the Dry Cleaning Zombie and Vampire Shoe Warehouse, two Halloween short stories, are currently in edits and should be available on your Kindle next week. I'm selling both together for one low price of .99. What do y'all think of the cover?

These stories all compliment my paranormal parodies, especially The Vampire Handbook and my soon-to-be-released Ralphie, the Special Werewolf. Ralphie is part of a Halloween anthology with an awesome group of writers, The Indie Eclective. To learn more about us, visit here.
http://indie-eclective.com/

In the meantime, here's a scene (unedited, sorry) from Melvin, the Dry Cleaning Zombie!

MELVIN, THE DRY CLEANING ZOMBIE BY P.J. JONES

          Melvin Metnik had broken the cardinal rule.

          Never have unprotected sex with a zombie.

          Actually, the cardinal rule for dating zombies was to not date zombies in the first place. But Melvin had always prided himself on being a rule breaker.

          This time, though, he feared he may have gone too far.

          Once again, he looked down into the toilet water. At the tip of his penis floating aimlessly in the tinted blue liquid.

          Damn. I shouldn’t have had sex with that zombie.

          He wondered what he should do about his severed extremity.

          Flush the toilet and say goodbye to an extra inch of manhood?

          Scoop it into his pocket and ask a surgeon to sew it back on?

          Or maybe just eat it and hope it grows back? After all, Melvin was getting kinda hungry.  

          In the end, though, his brain was overwrought from so much thinking. He reached into the bowl and scooped up the small, crusted nugget and slipped it into his pocket, deciding to worry about it later—after he filled the hollow void in his stomach.

          He stumbled out of the bathroom and into the adjoining bedroom then grimaced at the sight of last night’s fuck sprawled across his bed. Melvin gagged when the stench radiating from her rotting crotch hit him like a ton of bricks.

          Gawd, she smelled. He coughed into his palm while racing for the bedroom door. Once he’d made it to the kitchen, he gulped in the cleaner air. He groaned at the sharp stabbing pain in his head as he vaguely remembered chugging an entire bottle of tequila before taking the brainless bitch back to his apartment.

          What in the hell had he been thinking?

          This could seriously get in the way of his life’s aspirations, living off government welfare checks and selling pot out of his garage. Only werewolves would be foolish enough to buy weed off zombies, and they were usually too broke to pay for much more than a dime-bag.

          Shit!

          They didn’t give out food stamps for brains, so he’d have to get a real job if he wanted to pay the rent and buy more weed. All the zombies he knew worked in dry cleaning.

          Dry cleaning!

          The chemical smell, the little pins they put in clothing, that gigantic rotating wheel of clothes. What was that called, anyway?

          He should have worn a condom, but it was too late now, much too late.

Musings of my Broken Heart aka Crappy Poetry

Ahhhh…. Remember those emotionally charged teen years? When love was true but you were blue and you found yourself waxing poetic over your indifferent and worthless pimply-faced high school crush?

But after a few years, thankfully, you grew up. Your hormones settled. Your ass and thighs expanded. But best of all, you quit writing crappy poetry. Unfortunately, if you were like me, and brave enough to enter the world of trying to teach a new crop of high school kids how to appreciate real literature, you were, once again, subject to the mind-numbing torture of reading crappy poetry.

You’d be sitting at your desk, grading term papers and minding your own business, when a sniffling doe-eyed sophomore would sidle up to you while clutching a tear stained wad of paper in her hand. 

“Ms. Jones,” she’d say, “I’m entering my poem in an online contest and I could win one-thousand dollars. Would you read it and tell me if it’s any good?”

Oh, Dear God, no! 

But you smile and feign interest and take the paper from her outstretched hand.  The poem would read something like this:

I loved you once

Now you’re gone

I don’t know how I

Can carry on

You promised me

We’d never part

Then you left

And broke my heart

At that moment, you realize that if poetry had a scent, this one would smell like vomit.  But you smile again and tell her it’s sweet. You don’t tell her the truth because it would crush her already fragile heart.  She skips back to her desk and grabs another piece of paper. To her, your admission that the poem is sweet is all the validation she needs that she is going to be the next teenaged Shakespeare.

Tell me, Ms. Jones, by refusing to tell this child the truth, what have you done? The next thing you know, she’s penned a whole book-full of crap, titled, “Musings of my Broken Heart.” Thanks to Amazon self-publishing, she can upload her spewing vomit and charge .99 cents to any hapless soul who accidentally downloads it.

Unfortunately, she will further spiral into self-loathing depression when only two people buy it. Who are those two people, you ask? Her mother, of course, and you. Yes, Ms. Jones, you created this monster, now you must carry on the charade and purchase her poetry.

This all could have been avoided had you told her the truth, or at least suggested an improvement, such as editing the last two lines.

You promised me

We’d never part

Excuse me ‘cause

I need to fart

Isn’t that revised poem much better?

Will she change it? Probably not. But at least you are not to be held responsible for her delusions of poetic genius. 

Now I ask you fellow bards and sages to come up with a crappy poem of your own and leave it in the comments along with your email. At the end of one week (or two or three, depending on how may crappy poems I can collect), I will pick the crappiest of the vomit heap as the winner and you will win a free download of either Romance Novel or The Vampire Handbook plus an e-certificate deeming you the King or Queen of Poetic Mediocrity.  How’s that for reaping the rewards of your literary genius?

** I suppose I should say the poem can't be too offensive. Although, if you've read some of my writing, you'd know it's pretty hard to be offensive around me. Still, if y'all turn in some totally sick f**ked up poems, I may just have to call the cops or, at the very least, disqualify your psycho poetry. For example, no doing nasty stuff with babies. We can't all be Hugh Hefner.   

REVIEWS FOR CHOCOLATE!!!

Oh, lookie! BlueInk reviews will review your book for just a nominal fee of up to $495. Yes, you too, can hire the 'professionals' to write a review of your book. Here's the kicker. If they don't like your writing, they won't publish the review.

Oh, how nice of them! For that much $$$ they'd better clean the windows, pick up the dogshi**, and do my laundry.

No wait.

They'd better send a tall, dark and twenty-something stud with bulging biceps to do it for them.

Otherwise, I'd say that $495 for a book review is, oh I don't know, FREAKIN' INSANE!

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0812/Bad-review-of-your-book-Voila!-It-s-gone

In light of this new trend for scammers...er reviewers to make $$$ off of indies to read and then review books, I've decided to start my own review business. However, you will find my services to be far more affordable as I charge in CHOCOLATE. The number of stars in your review depends on the candy quality.

Cheap American convenience store candy bars - One star
Boxed American chocolate (variety box with mostly crappy creme filled centers) - Two stars
Higher quality American chocolate (nuts and chews) - Three stars
European chocolate will garner four or five stars depending on the quality and quantity of the chocolate.

All you have to do is send me the chocolate as well as a free download of your book (or not, as I really don't intend on reading it, anyway) and then tell me what you'd like for me to say in your review. Sound ethical? Great! Reviews for Chocolate is now open for business!

HELP ME!!!!

I have a confession to make. A reason why I don’t blog as often as I should, and not just because my brain farts of cleverly written prose only seem to come in random intervals. No, I’m a sloth, a slacker, a wastrel, a dreamer.

Why?

Because I’m too busy wasting time on other crap. Like, checking my Amazon sales reports. And my Nook sales reports. And my Smashwords sales reports.
Then there’s going to everyone else’s blogs. Of course, my waste of a day would not be complete without popping in on the KindleBoards, checking my email, Twitter and FaceBook accounts. Oh, and did I mention checking my Amazon sales reports? And then checking them again?

Let’s not forget Googling myself to see if readers have written any new reviews. Then there’s liking, tagging and reviewing all my writer friends. Of course, I’ve got to read. And choosing my next book takes time, since I’ve got this unstoppable habit of downloading new books whenever I check my Amazon reviews. All those pretty blurbs. All those pretty covers. I just can’t help myself.

And then, of course, I’ve got to check my Amazon sales reports. Haven’t I already checked them three times today, you ask? Why, I don’t remember. Have I? Perhaps I should just go check again.

Oh, yes, and there’s that other thing I do. Writing books. I’ve got to fit at least an hour of writing into my busy day as a time waster….er writer.
So there you have it, my confession. Please forgive me. I’m going to make it a point to blog more .I promise. After I check my Amazon sales reports.