Edgar Allan Poe Reviews “Beneath the Jack-O-Lantern Sky” (BOOK TRAILER)

My brother and I put together this silly little 2 1/2 minute film, wherein I perform as Edgar Allan Poe—who, apparently, has gone rather mad over my new book!

You can view the trailer, if you so choose, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_35r1PhfX8

Now, as for the book itself, allow me to expound . . .

You’ve just entered Sweet Hollow, where everyone has a horror tale to tell…

Strange are the secrets harbored in Sweet Hollow… A Midwest town luminous with legends, morbid with monsters, and crazed with killers. Its hills and houses are haunted, its graveyard gales are billowed by bats, its citizens creeped upon by cemetery skeletons. Encompassing all—a hallowed, Jack O’ Lantern sky serves as the backdrop for the terrifying tales within this harrowing horror-collection.

In the town of Sweet Hollow, one must prepare themselves to encounter:

• A Cult of Immortals Eager for Human Sacrifice.
• A Haunted “Manor” That Is Not What It Appears.
• A Fisherman Reincarnated into His Prized Catch.
• Giant Mosquitos!
• The Formative Years of a Serial Killer.
• An Old Dance Hall Waltzing with Corpses.
• A Haunted House Mystery Bank (Coin-Operated).

And that’s only a few of the curiosities one may discover in the shops, streets, houses, and cemeteries of Sweet Hollow. If you long for a scare, then open your mind, and prepare yourself for a dark descent into madness and horror.

Interested? You may purchase it through WEIRD HOUSE PRESS in trade paperback here: https://www.weirdhousepress.com/product/beneath-the-jack-o-lantern-sky/

OR, in ebook/paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Jack-Lantern-Sky-Hollow/dp/1957121246

Wishing everyone an auspicious autumn, and a Happy Halloween!

Best,

Tylor James

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The Art War (and a formal declaration thereof)

When will people awake from the hellish and mindless mire of their infinite consumption and realize that art is just as important, just as necessary (if not moreso) than the Department of Defense, or any standing army? When will it be known that the artist is just as good, just as noble as the soldier, or the priest? Perhaps a communication of the natural necessity and vitality of art shall require a grand, diabolic show of art itself. Imagine a country bombarded, as if attacked from the skies above by the creative expressions of our fellow man – music, sculpture, writing, painting, theater, etc.! Perhaps what this country needs to wake up is for it to be bombed with the explosive power of creativity. Indeed, I am hereby calling for a high 21^st century Renaissance – a revolution for the American heart and intellect!

Forget the contemporary art museums. I want to bring the paintings, the sculptures, the beautiful poems and novels (old and new) straight into the public’s backyard. I don’t want anything displayed high upon distant pedestals where no man can touch and prefer to cower….I want a Picasso displayed at the local café. I want to see volumes of Twain, Poe and Rimbaud side-by-side in every bar and restaurant, I want Marcus Aurelius to displace the drowsy Gideon’s bible in every hotel room in America. I want our great commercial billboards to scream – “You are a conscious creature gifted a brain consisting of billions of neurons, use them to create something! It is the noble thing for a human being to do!” I want Macbeth performed in the streets. I want giant zeppelins of art, downing missiles of art, released hydrogen bombs of art…I want America leveled.

What is needed to accomplish this vision is a war of course, primarily because wars (especially in this country) are always well funded, and supported. What is needed is an equivalent of passion – from fear, hatred and xenophobia transmuted into the passion to create – to dance, sing, paint, write, sculpt, make love, and finally, to murder the body of convention. Convention will always be a dead thing, in any case. Convention is a corpse which society constantly drags around by a loose twine wrapped around their ankles, believing it only the necessary etiquette and that there is still life within it. But there isn’t. Convention is a cold cadaver of unimaginative paradigms succored by clenched, anal-tight fists of mindless, wantless, stultified men, struck stupid and lost within the void of total consumer-constriction. A formal declaration is required:

I, Tylor J. Mintz hereby declare a war on the United States of America,

To be launched by the constructive power of creative expression.

Peace shall be achieved only by an open minded surrender!

Mahalo.

The Writing of Self-Discovery & The Knowing of Nothing!

 A Brash and Naïve Young Man

As time passes, these books of mine tend to take on more concrete forms in my perception of them. As I take three steps back, my books appear as what they are: mere expressive templates for my self-discovery.

Upon reading the essays and stories I wrote just two months ago, I think to myself — what a brash and naïve young man! He knows truly nothing! Upon reading my most current works, the words that I am writing down at this very moment, — in two months I will think, what a brash and naïve young man! He knows truly nothing! What is it that wise old Socrates said?

I am wise because I know that I know nothing.

Even wiser, perhaps, is to know that you know you are nothing. To comprehend that you are empty of your Self — what the Buddhists call, sunyata. But, we shall explore more of this a little while on down the road…

***

The Writing of Self-Discovery

          It is said that a writer writes to discover himself. I find this to be true, time and time again. The more I write, the more I discover what is truly hiding behind the wet corners, dusty attics and musty basements of my deranged mind. The more concentrated I am as I compose these sentences, the deeper I am able to penetrate into the mystery of my identity and the eternity of my being.

All schools of Buddhism teach a concept known as Sunyata (emptiness). This is the idea that all things are essentially empty of Self, that the Self is an illusion of ego, or a conceptual identity which is created to satisfy our desire for concrete, distinguished, compartmentalized forms of thought based upon our ego’s reference of comprehension.

It occurs to me that this is what “I” am. I am one whom fervently writes down his own daydreams, attempting to grasp the slithering tails of his own illusions.

Edgar Allan Poe once wrote, “All of life is but a dream within a dream.” As a writer, this is what I am primarily concerned with. I write in order to capture a dream which is within the dream of my Self.

This identifying Self is perhaps but a dream of pure consciousness, that fabled ground of reality which lies beyond positive and negative, beyond living and dying, yin and yang, good and evil.

The harmony of the physical world is found within the interconnected unity of energy which composes all the atoms which in turn compose ourselves and all the whole wide universe. Our individual experiences of always feeling separate from nature and the eternity of the universe are the illusions of Self, the dreams in which our ego-identities dwell.

Whether one dreams through Life or not, I believe that everyone is destined to come around full-circle eventually. They will leave home and after many years of travel will find themselves once more upon their own door step, just as one will fall asleep in bed and awake in that very same bed. Taking it the next logical step further, one will die and then wake up to sleep and become what they were before they were born…

How do you like that? Sunyata greets you in dreams and embodies you in reality!