Dime Novels From Oblivion

I would like to thank The Sirens Call Publications for including my piece in their newest anthology of short stories and flash fiction! You can download the ezine here: http://www.sirenscallpublications.com/…/SirensCallEZine_Apr… It's a really cool collection. The stories are rapid-fire darkness!

The softly lit room was filled with scattered clusters of black-clothed mourners conversing about a range of things from mortgages, lawns, and gutters to the exorbitant cost of education and where to get the best deal on a new set of tires. The old man laying silently in the coffin on the other side of the room with his hands crossed over his chest in the shadow of a gleaming silver crucifix mounted on the wall was at this point in the morning just a centerpiece. These were the last moments' air or light would ever touch his flesh. This was seven-year-old Grace’s first such function.  She stood at the opposite end of the room glancing at the gold trimmed pine box. In the child’s mind death was associated with instant putridity. Her imagination conjured up images of lumbering zombies with blood stained teeth protruding from the decaying flesh of their lipless mouths. That this could be the new form of her dearly departed grandfather chilled the girl’s blood. She did not think her

Sometimes when I'm pursuing publisher calls for short stories I look at my body of work and several pieces stick out to me as being genreless. Since I'm currently going through a period of writer's block, I figured now is as good time as ever to start categorizing some of these misfit stories. Check out the list below and if you should feel so inclined give them a read and drop me a line letting me know how you think I should categorize these shorts. 1. Beneficiaries 2. The Hotel Ascendancy  3. Adolf Hitler: Dating Meister  4. Leave Your Aspirations at the Dump  5. Causes

This month’s issue of the Moon magazine is out today, and it features a piece from yours truly! http://moonmagazine.org/nicholas-johnson-big-day-2019-03-30/ The issue is called "Death. The future we seldom speak of." So you can probably guess the subject matter. The Moon is an excellent publication that features a wide array of great writers and thinkers on a month to month basis. Check this one out and peruse the archives you might find something that rocks your world or changes your life!

Earth had been a quiet place the last two hundred and seventy-one years. It had come to pass that the humans once paramount on the planet had been supplanted and eventually exterminated by the electronic intelligence humanity itself had spawned. The face of the planet was pockmarked by nuclear detonations that left irradiated plains of ruins where only the sturdiest of microbes and insects could find a use for heaps of charred human remains. There was no one to hear the bellow of the wind as it passed through the hollow caverns of a billion human skulls. This extinction was foretold by a million Cassandras, but just like the prophet from antiquity, their warnings went unheeded. The difference this time being there was no one left to gain any insight from the resulting apocalypse. That is no one besides the sentient electric lifeform that flowed through the countless rusting hulks of murder machines sitting idle on every planet. The whole affair of human annihilation had been patheti