The Junk Merchants 2: A Literary Tribute to William S. Burroughs

Nocturnicorn Books
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SACRAMENTO, California–Nocturnicorn Books, a boutique imprint operated by retired English professor, author, journalist and artist Alex S. Johnson, announces the October 31st release of The Junk Merchants 2: A Literary Tribute to William S. Burroughs.

The anthology is edited by Johnson, with an Introduction by transgressive fiction icon Billy Martin, aka Poppy Z. Brite, the author of such works as Exquisite Corpse, Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, Guilty But Insane, Plastic Jesus and Swamp Foetus. Johnson was first in contact with Billy when he identified as female, and was the first journalist he told he was transgender, in a 1995 interview published in Deathrealm Magazine. The interview was subsequently translated into French by his French translator.

Johnson and Billy/Poppy had numerous phone conversations during the mid to late 90s, which fueled Johnson’s already strong interest in the life and work of William S. Burroughs. During this period, he also got in contact with Caitlin R. Kiernan, Billy’s close friend and sometime collaborator, as well as Christa Faust, also a collaborator with him. Billy published an extract from Johnson’s interview with Faust in the July 1996 issue of his Purple Proze newsletter, which also contained his highly controversial necrophiliac fantasy about sex with Burroughs’ corpse.

Over the following two decades, Kiernan rose to become one of the world’s pre-eminent authors of dark fiction, hailed by luminaries such as Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker and Peter Straub.

In early 2024, Johnson determined to edit and publish a sequel to his 2017 anthology The Junk Merchants, which had featured a foreword by Burroughs collaborator and author of The Manitou Graham Masterton. He contacted many of the original authors as well as new authors such as John Shirley, co-author of the screenplay to the 1994 cult classic film The Crow, co-creator of the Cyberpunk genre with William Gibson, Bram Stoker Award winning author and lyricist for Blue Oyster Cult. Shirley had previously blurbed Johnson’s 2012 dark poetry collection The Death Jazz, and recently wrote of Johnson’s new book The Flowers of Doom that Johnson is “the Baudelaire of our time, the poet of the underground.”

Encouraged by Shirley’s praise, Johnson contacted Jeremy Reed, considered one of Great Britain’s greatest living poets, who is also an admirer of and translator of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Lautreamont, as well as a biographer of Lou Reed, Richard Hell and many other counterculture icons. Reed was so impressed with Johnson’s credentials that he agreed to collaborate with him on upcoming prose and poetry projects, together with David J. Haskins, a founding member of the band Bauhaus and Burroughs obsessive. Haskin’s original poem “El Hombre Invisible” is featured in the anthology.

Along the way, Johnson acquired an original autofiction story by former Grove Press editor Maxim Jakubowski, titled “Olympia Express,” which details how he smuggled the original banned Olympia Press edition of Naked Lunch out of Paris to give to Michael Moorcock, who gave it to J.G. Ballard. The rest is literary history.

The remainder of contributors include the award wining author and editor Mary Genevieve Fortier, who has been dubbed the modern Edgar Alan Poe and has been praised by Graham Masterton, Beat Poets Merritt Waldon, who is a collaborator with Ron Whitehead and an old friend of Johnson’s, Romania’s Beat Poet Laureate Daniela Voicu, former Michigan state Beat Poet Laureate Joe Kidd, and an essay by William Taylor, Jr. about painting Burroughs’ portrait, as well as a who’s who of dark fiction, including original stories by Bram Stoker award winning authors John Palisano and LL Soares, Bangalore, India wunderkind Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, “Naked Punch Redux,” originally published in Evergreen Review, by award winning editor, author and anthologist Chris Kelso, Garrett Cook, Kelso’s friend with whom he co-founded Imperial Youth Review, and many, many more. The book also features Ron Whitehead’s poem “Calling the Toads” and his 1996 interview with William S. Burroughs.

Johnson’s greatest claim to fame is his official New Line Cinema Friday the 13th tie-in novel Jason X: Death Moon, which is famous (or notorious, depending on who you talk to) for its extensive incorporation of Burroughsian cut up techniques. The film Jason X also starred Naked Lunch director David Cronenberg.

Johnson is available for interviews to discuss Nocturnicorn Books, his career as an author, how he came to create The Junk Merchants series, as well as the other works he is publishing. He can make Junk Merchants 2 available for blurbs or review purposes.

CONTACT:

Alex S. Johson, CEO Nocturnicorn Books, 916-692-8551