When it became apparent that mainstream publishers couldn’t swallow my girthy manuscript, as they were worried they’d get sued by politicians for defamation, I decided to self-publish. So, after the breakout success of my debut indie novel/ midlife crisis project, Pandemonia, I wept, for there seemed to be no more worlds to conquer.

Then it was brought to my attention that you aren’t a real author until you get your first bad review. But it couldn’t be any old bad review from a weirdo on Twitter.

No, I needed to talk to my Shadow. Someone possibly even smarter than me, with literary chops, and an axe… to chop. A guy who could articulate all the awful things that I thought about my own book while I wrote it, laboring to finish it whilst being shamefully unemployed. I needed a hitman.

I first became aware of C.J. Heath (pronounced “Siege Heil”) scourge of Substack fiction, through this hilarious article. C.J. is a “New Yorker. Broke. Mad about it. He writes poetry (gay) and literary fiction, as well as offers mostly unhelpful, highly insulting advice.”

In a note I cannot locate, I witnessed some soy writers complaining about him, so I knew that he was the man for the job. This would be my act of catheter to finally put this project in the rearview, and this was worth paying for. In fact, I would recommend this masochistic exercise to any aspiring writer or patron of the arts. If you have a manuscript, you should solicit someone to take the most uncharitable view possible of your work as an exercise in antifragility.

Is your skin thick enough? Can you stand the heat? What will result from a duel between your naive strawman versus a steelman devil’s advocate? Will iron sharpen irony? How many cliches can I stack upon mixed metaphors before this whole house of cards collapses like a whore fart in church?

Q: “Is this a counter-review of your own book?”

A: Yes.

Q: “Isn’t that gauche?”

A: Gauche is a pretentious word. Suck it.

Q: “I’m uncircumcising.”

A: I think you mean “unsubscribing.” Well, there’s the door.

I am doing this in the spirit of fraternity. CJ Heath is talented and he needs to be put to more lucrative work. If this can help me sell some more books, engender some bad press, and help CJ promote his services, then mission accomplished. While we may disagree on what is tasteful, I endorse his understanding of literary mechanics.

Let’s go through his cruel attempted demolition of my totally awesome book:

“The worst book I’ve ever read.”

This is not true. CJ is being hyperbolic. In fact, the worst book he’s ever read is A Separate Peace by John Knowles. In his review for the New Yorker, CJ channeled Richard Nixon and called A Separate Peace, “The most faggoty goddamn thing I’ve ever read. ‘I put on Finny’s pink shirt because I missed him?’ Barf.”

“It borders on The Room in terms of literary merit.”

This made me laugh very hard. Like many of you, I watched The Room with a dual sense of unease and pathos. I enjoyed it for many of the same reasons I still love Freddy Got Fingered and Haggard.

“It makes me wonder if this was an elaborate joke, or if it’s someone else’s work entirely—an enemy perhaps; maybe someone who banged his wife in his own bed.”

My wife has been faithful to me for 13 years. She’s the world’s best partner and also my chief adversary: the most formidable foe I’ve ever faced.

Plot:

“The overall plot of the novel is exactly what you might expect of an SNES Final Fantasy title: basically, a ragtag band of heroes navigate an anachronistic, sort-of-steampunk/sort-of-modern world by airship to stop an evil wizard and his demon underlings from destroying the kingdom with a plague.”

I’m so glad that CJ understood my authorial intent: Final Fantasy VI meets January VI.

​​”There is no careful, literary hand guiding the reader through a scenic route of deep character building and lush environments. Nope, it’s jokes about boobs and poop about the whole way through.”

Perhaps this is due to my soft bigotry of low expectations for the modern male reader. Prose “dripping off the page” is exhausting for my target demo, but like Chinese Emperor and Tiger Dad, So Fung Noing, I intend to shake them out of their stupor.

Framing

“For all my shit-talking, Riggs does a good job of orienting the reader in the scene. There’s no vague minimalism here, and no one above a sixth grade reading level should get lost trying to follow each chapter… Chapters feel episodic. Again, not necessarily a failure of writing, but I don’t think it suits a typical novel format with a linear plot (this is a stylistic judgment, not one of craft)... The hand that holds the pen actually knows how to write—you can see it in deft display during bouts of action and blocks of descriptive prose.”

Thank you. I revisited real-life foreign adventures for reference, smashing together DC and Venice to conjure The District of Quagmerica, Yemen for Asplodia, and of course, Cartagena/ Macchu Pikachu for Bad Hombrea. I also used Google Maps for accurate distances and orientations for airship travel.

Fun trivia fact: I physically blocked the action sequences myself, a la the Star Wars kid, and I’m glad that no video recording of this exists. The footage would be more devastating than CJ’s review. The knowledge that another person saw me sword fighting myself in my office would be Epstein-tier компромат.

Style

“But all that means is that the murder is premeditated. Riggs can do better, but chooses not to.”

Again, this made me laugh. This reminds me of the time I wrote the word “penis” on my public school’s painted cinder block walls. I got in trouble. Wrong message, wrong medium, right instinct.

Character

“Then you have Flutie with the Megaman cannon arm. (Not sure why any of the characters would fight with swords if they could all have cannons but whatever.)”

This is the classic Indiana Jones sword-versus-gun problem. As we learned in school and from repeat viewings of Raiders of the Lost Ark, guns can’t make all of your problems go away. So why bring a really cool sword to a gunfight? Well in this Japanese/ American Role Playing World, guns and bombs and magic and swords co-exist in a state of cartoonish equality.

Cardboard Cutouts vs. Simulated Human Minds

I knowingly made this tradeoff. I prioritized character exteriority over introspection. This dovetails with the genre question. This is a comedy book first, and an action book second. In service of these goals, I may have given my action figures short shrift in terms of inner monologue. But virtue literally means “what a man does” - not “what a man thinks” - and pensive auto-fiction bores me. However, in subsequent efforts, I would consider an exercise in spartan, haiku-like character development that doesn’t get in the way of our l 1usty hero’s journey.

The critique that I have the most questions about regards the allegation of conflation of genre. I don’t think satire and farce undermine one another. Taken too far in either direction, satire gets too preachy, and farce becomes The Benny Hill Show. Even if the union of these genres yields parody or spoof, the question remains: “why are those modes treated as unserious?” Bored of the Rings holds up. Scary Movie 2 rules. Dismissing parody isn’t a critical argument, it’s a taste judgment dressed up as one. But CJ runs a tight ship. He’s sort of like JK Simmons in Whiplash (which is not a spoof movie, but it’s still a good movie anyway).

That being said, I think my new bestie may have missed some of the subtleties of the tome. I may have to create a footnoted edition to explain Easter Eggs such as this:

1. Doug Flutie was awarded the USFL’s biggest contract in 1985, drafted to the New Jersey Generals by none other than Donald Trump.

2. I named the protagonist “Pickle” not just because it sounds funny, but because “Pickle” also means “conundrum.” Plus Pickles are phallic and represent Euro-normative monarchial time preference.

3. Woodrow Wilson, his friends, and their legacies, are a prime mover for the reasons why you are broke.

This is all worth writing about.

Moral

As CJ noted regarding the Plague, the well has indeed been poisoned. This is true both in my book, and in real life. But when the well is poisoned, qui bono? Originally identified as an informal logical fallacy, “poisoning the well” was adopted in modernity as an intelligence agency tactic used to discredit “conspiracy theorists” - another term coined by intel agencies.

I was originally going to write a story about the largest propaganda campaign, medical experiment, and upward transfer of wealth in human history, but that strains suspension of disbelief and would have likely driven me crazy.

Finally and sincerely, if you’re an indie bro, especially in the fantasy realm, attend one of CJ’s literary buhurt workshops. The durability of your story is directly proportional to the amount of abuse it can endure.

To set the scene:

Our exiled hero Sir Pickle, Captain of the Knights of the DAWG Bowl, has just executed a daring raid on the Impenetrable Fortress of Allatabad, capturing Quagmerica’s sworn enemy: The Warlord Pajamahadi Kabumi. Aided by his stout pilot DanHam and his annoying advisor The Wiz (an alcohol-chemist) Pickle must interrogate the Terrorist using asymmetric methods, for the fate of the Kingdom of Quagmerica hangs in the balance…

Pickle lay on the couch, ice on both knees, and The Wiz lay blacked out on the deck of the Sky Skank. Face down, ass up, his internal chemistry set was busy. His magic microbiome utilized the copious amount of alcohol in his blood as fuel to repair his toasted gastrointestinal tract. The scraped-up and bruised terrorist, Pajamahadi Kabumi, was in the next best condition, albeit bound to a chair and gagged with a Doctor Sickle Brand Rubber Ball Gag.

DanHam had been a magnificent emergency medical technician, seeing to it that The Wiz was drowned in restorative booze before he lost consciousness, dragging Pickle up the ramp, and dosing a stirring Kabumi with an ether and opium tonic. All this had been ably accomplished before fortress catapults of AllataBad started launching flaming projectiles toward the ship, ahead of a vanguard of incensed flaming camel cavalry.

DanHam had set the course for the nearby southern gulf, as the naval power of Al-Kaboom was conveniently nonexistent. And it was on those calm green seas they would drift until they could figure out their next vector.

It wasn’t until the next day that Pickle and The Wiz had convalesced sufficiently enough to discuss the plan for the captive. They briefly considered whether they could bring Kabumi back to Quagmerica to finally face justice. Surely King Rex would forgive Pickle of any perceived dereliction of duty for such a prize. The Wiz drew them back to reality. “We have to assume that everyone is under the thrall of the demon Corona and therefore controlled by Sickle. The table stakes are to collect the relics.”

“Well then,” said Pickle, rolling up his sleeves, “looks like our friend here will have to tell us where he sold our prize.”

He removed the gag from Kabumi, who looked up and spat, “I’m ready to die, and I will tell you nothing!”

“Now see here, Kabumi,” said Pickle sternly, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

“I’ve lived my whole life the hard way, under the thumb of Quagmerican imperialism and the tyrants they sponsor in my sacred homeland. Not to mention Jizrael…”

Pickle quickly covered his enemy’s mouth and looked him squarely in the eyes, “You’re damn right not to mention Jizrael. Not even for satire purposes. Who do you think is gonna publish this thing?”

All four airship occupants looked at one another, then shrugged and nodded in agreement.

Pickle continued, “Are you familiar with the time-honored practice of waterboarding?” Kabumi’s eyes widened, but he said nothing.

DanHam spoke next. “Pickle, this seems a little dark. They banned that years ago.”

“I’ve done worse things to better men,” the Knight snapped back. “Get the tools ready.”

Moments later, Kabumi found himself strapped to a boogie board, floating in the sea, and connected to the back of the Sky Skank via a short line.

“Take her up to ten knots,” commanded Pickle to DanHam, who reluctantly complied.

“This is an abomination!” yelled Kabumi, sweeping from side to side on his small water craft. “A curse on your family!”

“Fifteen knots!” Pickle barked crisply to DanHam, who inched the throttle forward, sweating. The knight turned back to the terrorist, hollering, “Hope you like shredding gnar, bro!”

“To hell with you, infidel!” retorted Kabumi, bouncing in the wake.

“Twenty knots!” roared Pickle as the blades picked up speed. “Looks like you’re having a totally tubular time there, brosef!” Kabumi crested the waves, catching righteous air. He glared at Pickle, shaken, but defiant.

“Twenty-five knots!” Pickle banged his fist on the table.

The Wiz grabbed his arm. “Get a hold of yourself, Pickle, that’s too extreme, even for a radical guy like Kabumi!”

“Go gargle your own piss, geezer!” He stabbed his two fingers towards his own eyes, then pointed them back at the magician. “Look at me: I’m the captain now!” exclaimed Pickle madly. His visage frothed with the spirit of vengeance and schadenfreude.

DanHam gingerly pushed the throttle forward. Kabumi swept left, then back over the wake from left to right, corkscrewing through the air and totally sticking the landing.

“Stop!” screamed the terrorist. “Stop! My god forbids such frivolous, bodacious activities. I’ll talk!”

The airship abruptly decelerated and was suddenly filled with the tense silence of an epinephrine comedown.

“Cowabunga,” said Pickle grimly.

As they dragged a weeping Kabumi up the back hatch, the prevailing soundtrack was the lap of the waves, the ringing of tinnitus, and heartbeats in eardrums.

Wow, what a scene. After reading that, is there any reason why you would not buy the book?

1. Solid debut!

2. A bump from the Based Books Sale!

3. Rejection from Ark Press!

4. No Hard Feelings! Where we’re going, we won’t need luck.

5. A Weird Copycat!

6. My Favorite Review! Can you top it?

7. My first Piece of hate mail! Can you top it?

8. A really cool ad! Sponsored by some really cool dudes!

9. A less cool ad! But still Cool!

10. Banned in Australia!

11. Alternate Cover Draft!

12. More Cool Reviews - Why haven’t you reviewed it?

But maybe you’ll hate it. Perhaps you can add the first negative review! Win-win: you’ll get to be a contrarian, and I’ll get my sweet royalties.

Without further ado, here are some additional acknowledgments.

First, huge thanks to for co-founding the premise of the book and encouraging its development.

Daniel Bensen writes some very fun books. I’ve reviewed Petrolea and Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen. He’s also got a banger en-route in Wealthgiver. Nine months ago, Daniel took the time to alpha-read my quarter-baked pile of schizo shavings. He offered some pointers and recently blessed me with an honest review, which I cherish.

provided me with some guidance on the pain in the ass that is typesetting, binding, and cover art. He also provided some posh accoutrements and marketing photos for this literary luxury item.

crushed it with the cover art design and marketing plan.

The incomparable blurbed my book. This meant a lot. As I was in the throes of madness, his content library made me laugh more than anything I’ve consumed in recent memory.

The guys - "

& - I highly recommend Matthew’s noir thriller: Roots Down to Hell.

And for having me on The Team Futurism podcast!

I am sure that I am leaving some folks out. If you are a superfan like , , , and I left you out of the party, comment or DM, and I will make sure you get your flowers.

Once again, thanks, fellow writers!

Also, since this is a book about family values, children also enjoy holding my book. If you’re not much of a reader, don’t worry, you can buy it anyway and enjoy the cover art, as well as the sound of the crisp pages.

Kudos to the great Quamgericans who have already purchased the book, and a special thanks to the folks who made the launch party a success.

I goaded an LLM into transmogrifying my people into proper avatars. DM me with pictures of you holding the book and I’ll take care of you too.

Don’t have a copy? What are you waiting for? The Kindle edition is now a meager $6.66, or 84 cents per hour of entertainment. In other words, it’s only like 2.6 cents per page.

Behold!

The Airship Sky Skank written by Centaur Write Satyr

As many of you know, being an author and selling one of the Last Patriotic books ever written is like being this guy:

or this guy:

But right now, I’m this guy:

Yes, Pandemonia debuted at #1 in New Political Humor, but it won’t last. I need the stalwart support of you, the noblest of my bannermen, to finally put an end to the foul miasma bedeviling the once great nation of Quagmerica. I cannot break the curse alone.

Right now, you may be thinking you’re this guy:

But nay brave soul! You’re actually this guy:

You’re these guys:

And these guys:

and who can forget this guy?

Or perhaps you’re this guy.

Whatever guy you are, you have a role to play. You are the last line between civilization and the algorithm. I have learned that the Amazon Algorithm is Hungry and Fickle. We must feed it properly. The only way out… is down.

The Algo Demands:

1. Reviews: Just a sentence or two. Bonus points for weirdness.

2. Kindle Purchases: Even if you bought the paperback, this helps massively.

3. Diverse Buyer Data: Kindle tells Amazon, “This book is reaching every shadowy corner of the realm.”

WHAT THE AUTHOR HUMBLY ASKS:

1. Buy the Kindle version - just a few bucks

2. Leave a short 5-star review - a sentnce like “Hilarious, unhinged, surprisingly literate. More please.”

3. If you’ve already done #1 and #2, send this to one friend who loves satire, hates chaos, craves liberty, and enjoys a good fart.

Help feed the beast.
With our powers combined, we can break the curse.
Let’s make Pandemonia impossible to ignore.

Stand with me. Sound the horn. Ride for Quagmerica!

Subscribe now

People around Substack can’t stop talking about Pandemonia: A Novel Plague Plague Novel. They also can’t stop pre-ordering it here.

“But why should I listen to you, the author? Aren’t you just selling me something?”

No, I’m providing you with life changing-value. I’m helping you unlock untold efficiencies in your clouded mind through the power of fantasy. I’m doing it because you need airships and swordfights and farts.

You also need to know the truth. .

Johnson Riggs is an author and satirist who recently released the new novel Pandemonia.

In this interview, Peter Clarke and Johnson discuss comedy and censorship, the influence of Joe Rogan and comedians in his orbit, how we should think about conspiracy theories, the value of extreme characters like Curtis Yarvin, how AI will impact literature and art, and other topics.

• Watch on YouTube

• Listen to the podcast on Spotify or Apple

Before I am doxxed by the NSA, I’m getting ahead of all this.

This is important.

My real name is Doctor Anthony Fauci.

All that stuff about COVID? Here’s the truth. I was possessed by a demon and I pray that God forgives me. Sure, I had a lifelong lust for power and status. Who doesn’t? Even this guy was playing status games:

But I didn’t do all that bad stuff on my own. The forces of Hell pried open my weak soul and made me do unspeakable things to the fats of America. Luckily, our Catholic Vice President, JD Vance (Peace be Upon Him) was able to slip some holy water into my personal stash of vaccines. The vaccines enhanced my occult powers and strengthened my hold over the minds of the gullible. But now that I’m off the juice, I’m just an old Georgetown professor, withered by the eye of Sauron, stinging my sinful flesh.

Before this book burns and my legacy is consumed by the demonic forces tearing our world apart, I have to try and get my message out. In Pandemonia: A Novel Plague Plague Novel, I cleverly disguised myself as Doctor Ant Sickle, the Royal Physician. Like me, Doctor Sickle stumbled upon a forbidden and arcane magic, a pestilence from an ancient kingdom across the Sea.

Here is how it all went down back in 2020 - complete with audio companion!

It was a moonless night in early-Spring. The firmament had slipped on its inky black undergarment and was begging for some mischief, perhaps a spanking. It was an ideal night for spooky skullduggery.

“Nyheh-heh-heh-heh!” thought Dr. Sickle as he tiptoed through the District of Quagmerica’s silent walkways. He wore his black scrubs so as not to be seen, and if accosted or spotted, he could always claim he was on route to perform one of his discreet “reality reassignment surgeries” that assisted in separating a pregnant mother from her unwanted fetus. A soundtrack of suspenseful string music fit for espionage echoed in his auditory cortex.

Confident no one was watching, he pulled the Crystal from his robes. He drew on its ether. Or did it draw on him? No time for metaphysics. He breathed a quick magic spell to remotely extinguish the gas lamps illuminating the streets. Now he could operate as he generally preferred: without transparency.

He picked the lock of the service hatch under the towering phallus of Gorge Cockington’s monument, and descended the lichen-laden ladder into the pump station. The musty smell of sand and charcoal filtration waging aquatic germ warfare against insidious microbes struck him on his bell-ended snout. The pump room was a large circular room ringed with a six-foot-wide moat for unclean water, known as a settling basin. It enclosed three more rings, equal in width, each containing gravel, charcoal, and sand. The filtered water flowed into a basin in the middle, its radius equal to that of the three rings surrounding it. On a metal grated platform in the middle of the clean water basin, there pumped a massive pump that fed a pressurized chamber. This chamber stored, and eventually released, the needed energy for the penis-shaped monument’s daily majestic spurt. An ancillary pump distributed water throughout the city via a more modest horizontal aqueduct and, during moisture emergencies, would divert water to levy-protected reservoir on the south side of the Portomire River.

“Let’s get this party started,” dinged the Crystal. Sickle opened his duffel bag and procured a brass beaker. He placed the Crystal on its mouth, but it was slightly too large to fit in the base chamber. The Doctor sliced his palm with a razor-sharp pocket scythe.

“You’re a doctor, and you decided to just cut your palm, huh?”

“What?” said Sickle, suddenly defensive and self-conscious. “I saw it in a play and thought it looked cool."

“Hey, whatever you say, Thespian Theo. I mean, you’ll need some manual dexterity to finish the task at hand. Oh well, it’s too late to consider cutting your forearm now.”

“I’ll be fine,” snapped Sickle, and he drizzled his blood onto the Crystal.

“Mmm,” moaned the Crystal ecstatically, “that’s the stuff." It began to spin, steaming with purple mist as the dim light around it lurched inward. It squoze itself into the beaker and bubbled. “Oooh, that’s a nice stretch. OK, quick, tip me over and pour me out!” the voice chimed from inside the beaker.

Sickle wrapped his hand with a bandage and upended the beaker into the dark waters below. The water roiled, the surrounding ripples flashed purple-not-purple, as something resembling a giant black sea urchin bobbed to the surface. It split apart down the middle, hatching two identical creatures, and the husk evaporated in a purple mist. The two smaller urchins repeated the process, creating four urchins, and the exponential process continued until the urchins became microscopic. The entire surface of the pool became covered in a sickly purple glean, not unlike an oil spill. The mass swirled around the water and surged toward the pump’s inlet valve, which put the machine into overdrive. Corrupted water swelled and sought an exit path.

High above, at the tip of the monument, no one bore witness to Gorge Cockington’s ghastly nocturnal emission.

Sickle gazed down at the water in consternation: what had happened to his precious Crystal? The surface stirred once more, and a winged purple demon leapt high out of the pool and floated gently beside Sickle on the platform. “That’s brisk, baby!” it shouted. It was the shape of a slender man, long-apendaged and angular. Glowing purple varicose veins streaked its skin. The nose and smirk hooked in that classically demonic fashion. The crown of its head was ringed by bony black spikes. The eyes were close together, inset and alert, with irises the color of dark matter.

“Not bad for Phase One,” it said in a voice like smoke bubbling in a marijuana bong. “Thanks for the donation." The pair simultaneously sucked fluid from the sides of their mouths, nervous spittle for Sickle, and satisfying blood for the mysterious figure. “Don’t just stand there with your mouth hanging open, partner. Did you think I was just some kind of talking magic crystal?"

“Of course not!” sputtered Sickle, reclaiming his cold, clinical air. “But a scientist never makes assumptions unless backed by empirical data.”

“Yeah, sure. Hey, ever hear that any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic?”

“Science is better than magic.”

“Well, we’re going to use the little magic of influence to implement our plan, remember? Empirical data won't be enough to mask your reliance on post-hoc justification. We need to be men of action. Don't worry, we'll do it in a scientific way." He paused. “Eons in that cramped structure must have bereaved me of my manners. Call me Corona." He extended his hand, his wrist and knuckle joints bending uncannily. Sickle took the hand reluctantly in an effete “how do you do?” embrace.

“Well Corona, I guess you’re free now. You have my thanks for your sage guidance.”

The demon’s gurgling laughter filled the chamber. “You’ve got the playbook, but you’re going to need me riding shotgun with you. Also, it might not look like it, but this body isn’t going to hold up too long. I will need to borrow your strength for a while. When the potion takes hold and Quagmerica is healthy again, I can become corporeal. We need each other, and this is a partnership, after all.”

Sickle squinted through his spectacles, “What did you have in mind?”

The demon grinned ominously. His smile, a delayed reflex, widened a second too late. “Open up that cockpit, captain. I’m climbing aboard.”

Before Sickle could protest further, Corona folded his wings behind him, pried Sickle’s mouth wide open with his clawed fingers, and disappeared inside.

But where does one buy this masterpiece?

Pre-Order Here! I’ll also be releasing print editions on the same date, July 1.

Back Cover

Knight Captain Pickle, once the brine of the King’s Court, has been jettisoned from Service for asking the wrong questions. Now he’s on a mythic quest to purify the swampy capital of Quagmerica, where a demonic plague has infected both body and state. Behind the scenes, a sinister court physician is peddling cursed medicine to a fast-food-loving warlord-king who thinks governing is just another arena for conquest.

Sir Pickle isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he does have a really cool sword, and he knows how to use it. Unfortunately, that’s about it. Fortunately, he rallies a misfit fellowship that includes a disgraced alchemist, his opticks-wielding wife, and a rogue airship pilot. Their quest for three divine relics leads them through bombed-out deserts, sky races over la selva, and psychedelic hellscapes.

Pandemonia is a satirical fantasy adventure. Part epic quest, part political farce, part redemption story. It’s written in the tradition of Bored of the Rings, Discworld, Mad Magazine, and The Adventure Zone. Do you have the Courage to rediscover the Quagmerican Mythos?

1. Werner Herzog

Existential documentarian of the human soul

“Pandemonia is not a book. It is a hallucination brought forth by a society that has confused satire for prophecy. It is as if Carl Jung, while overdosing on mescaline, attempted to reanimate the corpse of American exceptionalism using only fragments of forgotten cartoon scripts and wartime propaganda. The Knight Pickle—whose name alone induces despair—wanders a world collapsing under the weight of its own mythologies. I did not enjoy this book. I endured it.”

2. Camille Paglia

Cultural critic, chaos agent, scourge of safe spaces

“This book is a glorious, obscene orgy of Western archetypes reasserting their power in the ruins of postmodern piety. Sir Pickle is a fecund figure of grotesque vitality. The Wizard Goldwater is what happens when Merlin and Howard Stern have a lovechild. And the villain? A pharmaco-priest straight out of Foucault’s wet dreams. Pandemonia is what happens when you give the Book of Revelation to a drunken classics professor who also plays Metal Gear Solid. I adored it.”

3. Ben Shapiro

“So here’s the thing. Pandemonia is unhinged. It’s also hilarious. But it’s not wrong. The satirical portrayal of government overreach, media hysteria, and the cult of credentialism? On point. Pickle may be a buffoon, but he understands one basic truth: when institutions lie, mockery is a moral duty. I don’t endorse the pee jokes. I’m just saying... The Wiz has a point.”

4. The Atlantic

“Behind its scatological excess and RPG-inspired carnage, Pandemonia is actually a sophisticated allegory for the collapse of the American civic myth. The kingdom of Quagmerica, at once hilarious and horrifying, mirrors a body politic riddled with cognitive dissonance. Pickle, despite his absurdity, becomes a tragic hero of our disinformation age. This book is utterly unserious.”

5. Alex Jones

“THIS ISN’T FICTION, FOLKS. THIS IS A GODDAMNED OPERATIONS MANUAL. You think this Pickle guy is fake? He’s not. The Black Knight? That’s DARPA. That pee-drinking wizard? Symbolic stand-in for the Water Sommelier Cabal. I read this book, and I started vibrating at a frequency only bats and lizard people can hear. This thing is dangerous.”

6. Noam Chomsky

“In Pandemonia, the linguistic signifiers of state power: ‘Plague,’ ‘Potion,’ ‘Public Health’ are revealed as arbitrary mechanisms of coercion. Through absurdist fantasy, the author dismantles hegemonic structures while advancing a critique of neoliberal technocracy. Also, the scene where the wizard pees in the beer stein is technically flawless slapstick.”

Review by Chauncey Tremblebottom III, New York Times

“Pandemonia” is a book of uncommon audacity, and common sense’s battered enemy.

To open Pandemonia is to be hurled headlong into a slurry of satire, semen jokes, geopolitical allusion, and relentless wordplay, all rendered in a baroque idiom that reads like Terry Pratchett after a head injury. The author has constructed a world so brazenly ludicrous it defies genre and basic decorum.

Let us begin where I nearly ended: Chapter One. Here, our hero Pickle infiltrates Pangolin to retrieve a “magic reagent.” Pangolin is a culture painted with all the nuance of a Saturday morning cartoon drawn by a libertarian uncle. The action is swift, the humor bawdy, the tone whiplashes between military jargon and fart jokes. One cannot help but admire the commitment, even as one begins to suffer minor brain sprains from the density of allusion and the sheer number of words ending in -anus.

The prose is what one might call over-lubricated. Paragraphs stretch, undulate, and explode with parentheticals, digressions, and metaphors so strained they ought to be resting with an ice pack. Yet beneath this vaudevillian excess lies a deeply unwell political satire. King Rex Machinor, an obvious parody of… YOU KNOW WHO and both hilariously grotesque and alarmingly familiar. His court physician, Dr. Ant Sickle, is what happens when Anthony Fauci is crossed with a sewer rat and given tenure.

By Chapter Four, readers are treated to “The Moving Tapestry,” a magical propaganda film staged with the subtlety of a monster truck rally and the historical accuracy of a bathroom stall conspiracy screed. The satire sharpens here; this is no longer just fart jokes and dick metaphors—though fear not, they persist—but a full-throated howl against the theatre of modern governance, the sexual psychosis of power, and the media-industrial complex’s obsession with spectacle.

And what of Pickle, our mullet-headed knight? Despite being, by his own admission, a bit dim and far too enthusiastic about hydration, he becomes a compelling avatar for masculine befuddlement in the face of creeping authoritarian absurdity. His relationship with Melody—the novel’s lone character with a functioning brain—is surprisingly tender. In a just world, this woman would leave him for someone who can read books without moving their lips.

The novel’s pastiche is total: Pratchett, Tolkien, Bukowski, Saturday morning cartoons, COVID-era neurosis, and MAGA melodrama. There are moments of genius buried beneath the scatology and mayhem, such as the demon Corona’s step-by-step plan to create a Magic Big Pharma state. “Science is a human endeavor,” the crystal tells us. “You are tribal monkeys first, creatures of reason second.” This, dear reader, is as lucid a thesis as any I’ve seen in modern political literature.

But—and let me be the stuffy scold you invited—Pandemonia could benefit from editing. Nay, it could benefit from an exorcism. Whole sections gallop toward glory, only to faceplant in a pool of their own cleverness. I imagine the author writing not with fingers but with a flamethrower duct-taped to a thesaurus.

Still, in an age of corporatized fiction and algorithmic pap, this mad, bloated, gloriously tasteless epic stands apart. It is, like its hero, both deeply stupid and oddly noble.

Nice to be a part of this forum. Substack is a sort of modern patronage network. Like Renaissance Florence - it’s like the OnlyFans for Medicis. Thanks to for her support, as well as her gumption and sticktoitiveness. Today the topic is the genesis of Pandemonia:…

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Chapter 12: Wizard’s Brew

DanHam grabbed the rusty door knocker at the entrance of the dilapidated brewery. It promptly fell off its hinge. Undeterred, he attempted to pound the door with it, but it crumbled into a poof of dust. However, the heavy door was unlocked and swung slightly open. “Well, so much for knocking.” The pair entered the ruins of the brewery. The air smelled of old yeast and rot. The beer vats were long gone, leaving behind rusted platforms, a splintered bar, and a lone hammock sagging in the corner. As their eyes adjusted to the low light, a figure seemed to materialize in the dust at the bar, humming nonsensically to himself. He smoked a cigar, whistling and blowing raspberries in between drags.

“Great,” said Pickle to DanHam, “you’ve dragged me to a hobo hideout.”

The man at the bar appeared not to notice his guests, continuing his one-man symphony with all the gusto of a musician playing to an adoring crowd.

DanHam cleared his throat. “Excuse me. We are looking for the Great Barrington Goldwater.”

The man at the bar took a long drag of his cigar, which exploded with a loud bang, and swiveled toward them. His wild grey eyebrows, blackened with soot, shot up like spooked pigeons. “Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a pickler’s fortnight.” He was wearing a steel-blue, silk smock emblazoned with silver Trikselions and Caduceuses. It would have made a grand garment at one time, but bore the telltale signs of neglect - it was now stained, dingy, and frayed. He wore wool socks with Birkenstocks, no pants, and no undergarment.

“Aw, gross,” shuddered Pickle, “socks with Birkenstocks?”

“What are you, the fashion police?” growled the man at the bar. His voice was gravely yet somehow musical. His eyes were a ferocious penetrating cosmic blue, all at once stern, mirthful, and probing. He was a fellow of maybe 60 years, with a steel grey beard and a long crooked nose. Nothing wrong with that, lots of wizards look like that. But socks with sandals? Why? thought Pickle. The Wizard picked up his massive glass beer stein from the counter, lowered it below his waist and began relieving himself into the vessel, each eye locked unwaveringly on Pickle and DanHam, respectively. The pair gaped in silence as the man and mug sounded off: splash, gurgle, burble. Drip, drip, drip. He raised the glass to his lips and chugged. DanHam gagged, then fainted, crashing to the floor. Pickle could only muster a weak, “Aw, c’mon dude… Please stop.”

The urophagic smacked his lips and belched. “Anyway, where was I a paragraph ago? Aye, I was once the Great Alcohol-chemist Lord Barrington Goldwater, Advisor to Kings, but you may call me The Wiz.”

Pickle recovered himself, “The Wiz, huh? Isn’t that a little on the nose?”

“No, it’s out the urethra!” The magician guffawed at his own witticism. He procured another cigar from his breast pocket, ignited the tip of his index finger, and puffed. He shook the flame from his finger, took a long drag, and the cigar exploded in a blinding flash.

The man tittered to himself, then he straightened his posture and boomed in his best wise old wizard voice: “I am known by many names: Goldwater, Zurn, The Quagmerican Standard, The Kohler Kid, and Flowmaster. Anyway, if you can give better nicknames than our liege, knock yourself out.”

Pickle bowed his head in deferent assent. “Yes, he is a true Master of Monikers.”

“The Sultan of Sobriquets.”

“The Noble of Nicknames.”

“Yes, he is the Caesar of Pseudonyms. A toast to our King, long may he reign.”

“I’m afraid he’ll need more than a toast. He needs you, and Quagmerica needs you.”

“Well, if it’s piss he needs, I’ve got buckets of it. Otherwise, they can all go hang. Quagmerica and King Rex Machinor cast me out.”

The Wiz took a laborious gulp from out of his mug.

Pickle grimaced and ventured, “Does the name Melody ring a bell?”

“More than one bell. It conjures up a series of notes. Bright girl, tough-minded, raven hair. Great tits. I’d like to make sweet music with her, if you know what I mean.”

Pickle’s eyes narrowed. “You’re talking about my wife, you old creep.”

The Wiz’s eyes darted back and forth. “Maybe I’m thinking of some other Melody.”

“No, you’re not. Leave it to me to remark upon the majestic mountains that are my wife’s awesome tits.”

The Wiz raised his glass and eyebrows in a gesture of begged pardon.

Pickle composed himself and tried again, “What’s your relationship with Dr. Ant Sickle?”

The Wiz’s eyes widened, taking on the aspect of a horned owl in a nocturnal bloodlust, and he hurled his glass stein at Pickle, who leaned sideways and watched it smash on the brick wall behind him. “I take it you’re acquainted.” A new mug materialized from the ether into The Wiz’s hand. He took another manic guzzle.

“That backstabbing invertebrate is the reason I’m here.”

“You’ll never guess what he’s up to now.”

For the second time today, Pickle recapped his adventure. He stumbled through the scant secondhand details from Melody’s trip to the library, the missing pages, and the mystery of the Dark Crystal’s origin.

“Impossible,” The Wiz said, his countenance darkening, “That book was just the deranged blather of a pseudo-archeologist, the unhinged ravings of a historical conspiracy theorist. But… if the Crystal is real, and the Plague is real, then… the demon Corona is real.”

“Lord Goldwater,” said Pickle, “you’ve done your own research, we need your guidance on how to exorcise this demon.”

The Wiz slouched. “I tried to stop him, you know… Dr. Sickle. I said the Crystal research was distracting him from his real work. I even snatched the clue to the relics off his desk, but by then it was too late. The next day, I was deposed with a vote of no confidence from the Privy Council. My experiments in Bio-Alchemy were a side project, but they worked, dammit!”

“Bio-Alchemy?” Pickle piqued.

The Wiz smacked his lips and began, “Few believed that I could transmute waste materials into something useful and delicious. Oh sure, urine is good enough to tan leather, treat jellyfish stings, and for use as a teeth whitener, but when you mention making delicious beer with it, the cognoscenti drop their monocles right into their martinis!”

Pickle noticed that the magician’s teeth were a blinding titanium white.

“Those like Sickle who bore witness to my craft were threatened by it, or at least used it as an example of my lunacy. So they cast me aside and I’ve been swimming in warm piss ever since.” He sighed forlornly. “I don’t want for much, but I will admit that it’s nice to be needed again. You’ve seen with your own eyes the least of my power, the rare wonder of the magic of recycling. Gold and steamy to cold and dreamy. But after Sir Bud of Wiser, in his Pride, transed his own beer and flopped, the market for piss beer dried up.”

Pickle’s patience was at an end. “Lord Barrington, look at yourself. Pantless, drunk, wearing wool socks with Birkenstocks, addicted to exploding cigars, and also, pantless. A literal em-barr-ass-ment. The realm is in peril, and here you sit, bare-assed in self-pity.”

The Wiz looked at Pickle with a manic gleam in his eye. “A challenge to rise to the occasion with Sir Pickle, eh? Let’s make it fun, then. I’ll lend you my magic, on one condition. You, good Knight, have the wonderful opportunity to sample some of my homebrew… My ‘Eye Pee Ehh,’ as it were. So you need my help… then erase all doubts from your mind, it is time you believed in magic again! Think ye be a hero, a true leader of virtue true? Then slurp up my hot piss, big shot!” The Wiz procured a cold mug from nowhere, balanced it upright on his palm in front of him, and pushed it toward Pickle. Born upon a cloud, it glided over, and hung sparkling in the air in front of our hero. “Piss or beer? Trust is the foundation of magic, and a noble heart is the source of trust. Do you have what it takes?”

A standoff ensued:

Now, choose your own adventure! Will Pickle brave the uncanny test of The Wiz? Free subscribers can redeem their single-use Unlock on this paywalled content. Otherwise DM me or comment, and I’ll pull some strings with the Quagmerican government to allow you access to the punchline.

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The satirical fantasy is a mythic quest through a painstakingly crafted and historically accurate swamp kingdom. The controversial tale follows Knight Captain Pickle, a briny oaf fated to save the citystate of Quagmerica after a demonic plague is unleashed by a corrupt royal sorcerer. The source material has drawn comparisons to Monty Python, Conan the Barbarian, and Behold, a Pale Horse.

But here’s the twist: every character in the film will be portrayed using cutting-edge Character Hyper-Interpolation (CHI) technology. The cast will be made up entirely of digitally resurrected 1980s and 1990s icons in their physical and cinematic prime, back when movies had real stakes, real muscles, and real synthesizer scores.

💥 CASTING RUMORS:

• Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead 2) is set to don the battered helm of Knight Pickle, glory-battered warrior with a briny sense of justice.

• Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing) will portray Melody, Pickle’s whip-smart wife and the true brains of the resistance. Sources say her nose of gold will be digitally restored.

• Jackie Chan (Legend of Drunken Master) is tapped to play DanHam, the fugitive pilot with kung fu reflexes and a heart of gold.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger (Commando) will voice and mo-cap Brick, the monosyllabic strongman sidekick and a heart of gold.

• Jack Nicholson (The Shining) will star as The Wiz, a wiz-cracking alcohol-chemist with a heart of gold.

• Robert De Niro (Cape Fear) is in talks for Dr. Ant Sickle, the plague’s chief evangelist and a heart that lusts for gold.

• Shane Gillis will portray Rex Machinor, the MAGMA-handed monarch. Gilded.

• Michael Wincott (The Crow) will embody The Demon Corona, the raspy-voiced apex predator summoned from the depths of Saturday afternoons on TNT.

• And Val Kilmer (Willow era) makes a glorious return as Elron Tusk, the techno-archangel with a fetish for air transit and favorable government spending.

🗡️ THE PLOT, IN A CRACKED NUTSHELL

The official synopsis reads:

“When the throne becomes a golden loo, and the kingdom of Quagmerica is gripped by plague, a disgraced knight must form a ragtag fellowship to confront an evil sorcerer, a cursed bureaucracy, and his own gastrointestinal demons.”

Industry insiders are calling Pandemonia “the first film in years brave enough to blend fantasy, satire, pandemic trauma, and farts into one cohesive narrative experience.”

Studio executives have also promised an unrated 16-bit video game tie-in. For a 50% Discount, consider becoming a paid subscriber to UnderGround Designs, the Super Famicon of Substack Blogs:

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We caught up with Anita Wacko-Schvantz, a professional cat manicurist in Portland, as she was looting condoms from CVS on behalf of her boyfriend’s boyfriend.

“It’s offensive, crass, and there’s hardly any womyn in it,” she huffed fatly through her mask, despite it being 2025.

“The protagonist Sir Pickle, is just so heteronormative,” added real estate novelist Jaque Enhof- Guise as he spray-painted swastikas on a Tesla. “I mean the Pickle imagery is straight up phallic fascism.”

The current damage inflicted by rioters in these woke enclaves is estimated to be somewhere in between Gomorrah and Dresden.

Pandemonia’s imminent publication has shaken the literary world to its core. Simon, Schuster, and the Penguin called an emergency meeting in Gotham to discuss how to best monetize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity while distancing themselves from controversy.

“Ok, maybe the politics are unfashionable, but it’s got a coherent plot and lots of farts, this thing will sell like hotcakes,” said the Penguin puffing his cigar. “And the puns, by gum, the puns! Maybe we should rebrand to Punguin Press?”

The enigmatic author, a reclusive dwarf living deep in the silver mines of Virginia City Nevada, emerged from his subterranean lair to read this statement, “I’m very proud of Pandemonia, but what I really want to talk about is my next novel: Mecha-Bibi versus Harambe. I pit a cybernetic Netanyahu against a resurrected gorilla king in a post-apocalyptic cage match and the subplot is about self-aware Bitcoin mining robots. It’s my love letter to a simpler time: kung fu versus robots.”

As the author backed slowly into the mineshaft, he added ominously:

“I have more than enough money, but my real life’s purpose is getting people to subscribe, hit the goddamn like button, and share with your lunatic friends!”

In honor of the 5th Anniversary of Flatten the Curve, I thought this would be a fitting time to make an announcement that will change your life: I just finished editing my novel. I’ll be releasing a handful of excerpts in the coming weeks - stay tuned.

Here’s a preliminary review of Pandemonia from my editor:

“This is an extremely unique and compelling blend of fantasy, ribald humor, and political satire—a sort of Lord of the Beltway Rings. It’s clear you had a blast writing it and the energy is contagious. There were many lines that got a genuine guffaw out of me—I couldn’t resist marking some of them with a “ha,” but rest assured there were many more than were marked.

“As you’re clearly aware from your list of advance readers, this novel has a very specific readership: young, male, politically disaffected, plugged into the standup/podcast “manosphere.” Fortuitously, this demographic has a great deal of cultural cachet these days, as evidenced by the endless trend pieces about the broligarchy. Some of the humor plays on conspiracy theories that are widely considered toxic (Hillary as child trafficker, etc.), which makes this a tough sell for mainstream publishers. Still, I have no doubt you could find success with this with some more open-minded houses. From what you’ve told me, you seem to be aware that some of this material might be alienating and are okay with that.”

Elevator Pitch:

Knight Captain Pickle, once the brine of the King’s Court, has been jettisoned from Service. He’s on a mythic quest to detoxify the swampy citystate of Quagmerica and heal the nation. A nefarious wizard has unleashed a demonic plague and has convinced the King that his new potion is the cure. Pickle isn’t exactly a Rhodes scholar, but he smells something funny going on. He’ll need some goshdarn help from his whip-smart wife, a disgraced alchemist, a fugitive pilot, annoying libertarian Eagles, and some bad hombres. Pizza will be served.

Back Story:

Using his hand of MAGMA, King Rex Machinor erupts to the throne. He has defeated the blonde-bob-cutted Ice Witch, Karen Hilhead, grabbing her by her subartic nethers. He soon finds out that his ruling is not as fun as conquering when his golden throne turns into a hot seat.

What if/ so what?

What if our world was the mythic saga we've been yearning for? Picture this: Trump as a warlord king, Fauci as his dark sorcerer, and amidst this chaos, an unlikely hero rises from the pickles. Can this tenacious knight with his band of merry misfits stitch back the fabric of a realm torn apart by the mad titans of power?