Jon Padgett's Blog

Author: Jon Padgett

Cover and Frontispiece by Dave Felton

Cover Design by Jonathan Dennison

Publication Date: August 9, 2023

Trade Hardcover, Laminate (70 lbs paper) – $40 USD
(Shipping and handling included worldwide, regardless of destination)
5.000″ x 8.000″, 248 pgs.

Trade Paperback – $20 USD
(Shipping and handling included worldwide, regardless of destination)
4.250″ x 7.000″, 342 pgs.

Synopsis
Jon Padgett’s acclaimed collection/hybrid novel, The Secret of Ventriloquism, named the Best Fiction Book by Rue Morgue Magazine, now returns in an expanded edition of the original, with three new stories. The book features Dave Felton’s iconic cover art and frontispiece as well as a Foreword by the legendary Thomas Ligotti.

With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Schulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Padgett’s work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both. A bullied child seeks vengeance within a bed’s hollow box spring. A lucid dreamer is haunted by an impossible house. A dummy reveals its own anatomy in 20 simple steps. A paranoid flyer’s worst fears are realized in a way not even he could imagine. A stuttering librarian holds the key to a mill town’s unspeakable secrets. A commuter’s worldview is shattered by two words printed on a cardboard sign. An aspiring ventriloquist spends a little too much time looking at himself in a mirror. A burnt out woman seeks out an invisible, identity-blasting hole of alluvium. A spirit of homelessness plans its escape to a possibly mythical mountain. A fog-soaked city heaves its dying breath. And a presence speaks through them all.

Table of Contents
Foreword by Thomas Ligotti

Introduction by Matt Cardin

The Mindfulness of Horror Practice

Murmurs of a Voice Foreknown

The Indoor Swamp

Origami Dreams

20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism

Flight 389

The Infusorium

Organ Void

The Secret of Ventriloquism

A Little Delta of Filth

Escape to Thin Mountain

The Secret Society of Dummies

About the Author
Jon Padgett is a professional–though lapsed–ventriloquist who lives in New Orleans. He is the Editor-In-Chief of Grimscribe Press, which publishes Vastarien: A Literary Journal, a source of critical study and creative response to the work of Thomas Ligotti. Padgett’s first short story collection, The Secret of Ventriloquism , was named the Best Fiction Book of the Year by Rue Morgue Magazine.

Padgett’s voice has also become synonymous with the works of Thomas Ligotti. Padgett has lent his voice to numerous Thomas Ligotti works, including the recently released Penguin Random House audio version of Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe and various Cadabra Record releases, “The Bungalow House,” “The Red Tower,” “The Small People,” “Gas Station Carnivals,” “The Clown Puppet,” “Pictures of Apocalypse,” and “Mrs. Rinaldi’s Angel.” In addition to his work as a Ligotti narrator, Padgett has also narrated two Cadabra Records releases of his own work, “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism” and “Origami Dreams.” With his ability to channel Ligotti’s prose and poetry via the spoken word, Padgett is a singular figure in the world of weird storytelling.

Praise
“’20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism’ [the pivotal story within The Secret of Ventriloquism] is what might be deemed an ultimate horror vision. What makes such a piece always resides in an ambition to transcend literature itself. As purely a matter of literary taxonomy, I would place this magnificently executed short story in a class with Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulhu, ‘ Blackwood’s ‘The Willows, ‘ and Jorge Luis Borges’s ‘The Lottery in Babylon.’ These are tales that lead one to say, ‘This is a revelation of how things are.’ Like them, ’20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism’ pulls out all the stops to convey a towering perspective that encompasses and reveals the essence of existence. That is its scope. That is how it affects those exposed to the story. When it comes to a close, one’s reaction is, ‘There is nothing more to be said.’ And, of course, what has been spoken by ’20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism’ is by necessity deftly strange and awful, like life itself once its façade has been peeled away little by little. That is how an ultimate horror vision works its wonder.”
-Thomas Ligotti, author of Noctuary & The Spectral Link

“The Secret of Ventriloquism is horror with a capital H. Some of Padgett’s lines raised the hair on my neck. The stories radiate darkness… In a year of exceptional weird fiction, this is a mattock-handle-wrapped-in-barbed-wire heavy hitter.”
- Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase

“Padgett proves with his stunning debut collection to be a worthy successor to Thomas Ligotti. There’s no gristle, no bone, no dilly-dallying here: only pure meat whose terrors seamlessly grow into the metaphysical. This volume is jam-packed with the stuff that nightmares are made of.”
- Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue Magazine

“Jon Padgett’s The Secret of Ventriloquism is a horror revelation. The interconnected short stories are ghastly, clever, dryly witty, but also genuinely and bone-rattlingly creepy and disturbing. Sure, going in, I was already afraid of ventriloquist dummies, but now I’m deathly afraid of Jon Padgett.”
- Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World

“There’s quite enough variety of tone, setting, and focus here to surprise and disconcert any reader, and leave preconceived expectations flopping and gasping in the cold black mud of Padgett’s imagination…Padgett is a chilling master in his own right.”
-Paul StJohn Mackintosh, Teleread

“Jon Padgett… satisfied ALL of my wants and needs as a reader of dark and weird fiction. These stories… are as utterly satisfying as short fiction can be.”
-Charlene Cocrane, Horror After Dark

A great and unprolific author of supernatural horror fiction, T. E. D. Klein, once enumerated how many stories one must produce to secure a place among the masters of the genre, one who will be read in anthologies and whose books will be around for the foreseeable future. According to Klein, the number of needed to attain such a status: one. To test this assertion, we need only ask the ghosts of such memorable figures as W. W. Jacobs (“The Monkey’s Paw”) and Jerome Bixby (“It’s a Good Life”). In the history of the literature in question, to make this single mark may be the beginning and end of one’s contribution, as with Jacobs and Bixby. However, it could also serve as a milestone or point of orientation to a writer’s other works. Reasonable examples of this kind of story may include Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” and H. P. Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu.” To this list could be added Jon Padgett’s “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism.”

In the view of Jorge Luis Borges, the number of a story writer’s notable achievements, however large the final count, can be reduced to about a half dozen. On the whole, this seems a fair and accurate estimate. Unprolific as Klein was as a short fiction writer, he made an admirable approach to Borges’s measure, which is more a matter of quality than quantity. In my view, the same can be said of Padgett, whose THE SECRET OF VENTRILOQUISM impresses one as a selection of best works more than a volume of collected works to date. A glance at the table of contents alone stimulates the imagination of those familiar with “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism,” the focus but not by necessity the summation of his repute, justly arousing the expectation of pleasures from reading or reading again such stories as “Murmurs of a Voice Foreknown,” “The Indoor Swamp,” and “The Infusorium.”
--Thomas Ligotti

Still 30% Off in pre-order: http://www.nightscapepress.pub/p/test...

For a limited time, you can get the Kindle version of my book... for 99 cents. For a bit more, you can add the audio version (read by me) too via Whispersync.



Please share far and wide!

Buy it here.

“This dread-soaked volume -- stocked with tales of decay, death and dummies -- is the debut collection from Padgett. As a professional ventriloquist himself, the author is well-acquainted with dummies’ uncanny creepiness.” --The Wall Street Journal. The Secret of Ventriloquism, named the Best Fiction Book of the Year by Rue Morgue Magazine, heralds the arrival of a significant new literary talent. With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Schulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Padgett’s short stories explore the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both. A bullied child seeks vengeance within a bed’s hollow box spring. A lucid dreamer is haunted by an impossible house. A dummy reveals its own anatomy in 20 simple steps. A stuttering librarian holds the key to a mill town’s unspeakable secrets. A commuter’s worldview is shattered by two words printed on a cardboard sign. An aspiring ventriloquist spends a little too much time looking at himself in a mirror. And a presence speaks through them all.

Named the Best Fiction Book of the Year by Rue Morgue Magazine.

“Jon Padgett’s The Secret of Ventriloquism is a horror revelation. The interconnected short stories are ghastly, clever, dryly witty, but also genuinely and bone-rattlingly creepy and disturbing. Sure, going in, I was already afraid of ventriloquist dummies, but now I’m deathly afraid of Jon Padgett.”
– Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil’s Rock.

“The Secret of Ventriloquism is horror with a capital H. Some of Padgett’s lines raised the hair on my neck. The stories radiate darkness… In a year of exceptional weird fiction, this is a mattock-handle-wrapped-in-barbed-wire heavy hitter.”
– Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase

“Padgett proves with his stunning debut collection to be a worthy successor to Thomas Ligotti. There’s no gristle, no bone, no dilly-dallying here: only pure meat whose terrors seamlessly grow into the metaphysical. This volume is jam-packed with the stuff that nightmares are made of.”
–Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue Magazine

“…Greater Ventriloquism is the fictional philosophy cutting through all of the stories in this collection, giving them a much appreciated spine of intent and eerie energy. When we understand that we are no better than dummies–when we see the strings that move us and hear the voice that animates us–we become the uncanny object, as opposed to the dummy. Our own embodiment thus becomes a vessel for great horrors.”
—Adam Mills, Weird Fiction Review

Powerhouse-author and thinker, David Peak, interviewed me for FANZINE. This took months to complete, and I'm delighted with the results. Many thanks to David for his incredible questions and patience.

Black Fog: An Interview with Jon Padgett

Here's the intro:

Jon Padgett’s debut collection, The Secret of Ventriloquism, was released by Dunhams Manor in late 2016, and enjoyed instant success among readers of the horrific and the weird. Padgett’s work is relentlessly creepy, exploring themes of altered realities, human simulacra, and occult conspiracy, among others. Perhaps most impressive, though, is Padgett’s ability to elevate these concerns above the usual fray of the genre, subsequently tapping into the utter strangeness of the things that lie in wait beneath the world. As the founder and longtime operator of Thomas Ligotti Online, perhaps the web’s most significant hub for the weird minded, the publication of TSoV was something of an event, selling out its initial run in hardcover, and finding additional and well-deserved success as a destined-to-be-classic audiobook.

Like Schulz’s Street of Crocodiles, Ligotti’s first collection, Songs of a Dread Dreamer, or Laird Barron’s recent Swift to Chase, the whole of Padgett’s book is greater than the sum of its parts. The stories often overlap or recall one another in unexpected ways. Reading a collection from cover to cover is perhaps the litmus test for whether or not it “works,” whether or not it coheres into something with vision and voice, and where so many other collections fail, Padgett’s succeeds. This success is even more impressive once you take into consideration how fully developed and unique each individual story is. Take “Organ Void,” for instance, which seamlessly blends a Ballardian fixation on concrete overpasses and urban sprawl with “junk-sick” body horror; or “Murmurs of a Voice Foreknown,” a coming-of-age story about cruelty and the bonds of brotherhood that settles on delicate and unnerving truths; or the collection’s centerpiece, “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism,” a sublime meditation on being with a capital “B” and the illusion of human agency.

Finally, it’s worth noting that this interview was conducted via email over the course of several months. Devising the questions and waiting for answers sometimes took weeks. I believe that this is indicative of the care and attention to detail that Jon puts into his work.

For a limited time, you can get the Kindle version of my book... for FREE. For a couple bucks more, you can add the audio version (read by me) too via Whispersync.



Please share far and wide!

Get it here.

Selected as the Best Fiction Book of 2016 by Rue Morgue Magazine.

“Jon Padgett’s The Secret of Ventriloquism is a horror revelation. The interconnected short stories are ghastly, clever, dryly witty, but also genuinely and bone-rattlingly creepy and disturbing. Sure, going in, I was already afraid of ventriloquist dummies, but now I’m deathly afraid of Jon Padgett.”
– Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil’s Rock.

“The Secret of Ventriloquism is horror with a capital H. Some of Padgett’s lines raised the hair on my neck. The stories radiate darkness… In a year of exceptional weird fiction, this is a mattock-handle-wrapped-in-barbed-wire heavy hitter.”
– Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase

“Padgett proves with his stunning debut collection to be a worthy successor to Thomas Ligotti. There’s no gristle, no bone, no dilly-dallying here: only pure meat whose terrors seamlessly grow into the metaphysical. This volume is jam-packed with the stuff that nightmares are made of.”
–Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue Magazine

“…Greater Ventriloquism is the fictional philosophy cutting through all of the stories in this collection, giving them a much appreciated spine of intent and eerie energy. When we understand that we are no better than dummies–when we see the strings that move us and hear the voice that animates us–we become the uncanny object, as opposed to the dummy. Our own embodiment thus becomes a vessel for great horrors.”
—Adam Mills, Weird Fiction Review

Some terrific news today!

Bram Stoker Award winning author, Paul Tremblay, had the following to say about my collection:

"Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism is a horror revelation. The interconnected short stories are ghastly, clever, dryly witty, but also genuinely and bone-rattlingly creepy and disturbing. Sure, going in, I was already afraid of ventriloquist dummies, but now I'm deathly afraid of Jon Padgett."

Thank you, Paul!

Also, thanks to Charlene Cocrane of Horror After Dark , who just today gave Secret a five star review!

"Jon Padgett... satisfied ALL of my wants and needs as a reader of dark and weird fiction. These stories... are as utterly satisfying as short fiction can be."

The audiobook version of The Secret of Ventriloquism is finally available (via Amazon, Audible, iTunes).

It was recorded/produced by me, with a creepy singing assist by author/Pseudopod Associate Editor, Dagny Paul. Even if you've read the book already, I believe that hearing the stories aloud lends a dimension to the collection that the text alone cannot offer.

Please check it out and share liberally!

Click here to purchase.

My debut short story collection, The Secret of Ventriloquism, was just selected as the Best Fiction Book of 2016 by Rue Morgue Magazine!

It also recently picked up a Golden Ghoul Award for Best Fiction (Foreign) of 2016.

Thrilled!

“The Secret of Ventriloquism is horror with a capital H. Some of Padgett's lines raised the hair on my neck. In a year of exceptional weird fiction, this [book] is a mattock handle wrapped in barbed wire heavy hitter.”
—Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase

“Padgett proves with his stunning debut collection to be a worthy successor to Thomas Ligotti. There's no gristle, no bone, no dilly-dallying here: only pure meat whose terrors seamlessly grow into the metaphysical. This volume is jam-packed with the stuff that nightmares are made of.”
—Dejan Ognjanović, Rue Morgue Magazine

"...Greater Ventriloquism is the fictional philosophy cutting through all of the stories in this collection, giving them a much appreciated spine of intent and eerie energy. When we understand that we are no better than dummies--when we see the strings that move us and hear the voice that animates us--we become the uncanny object, as opposed to the dummy. Our own embodiment thus becomes a vessel for great horrors."
--Adam Mills, Weird Fiction Review

“[A] dread-soaked volume — stocked with tales of decay, death and dummies...”
—Michael Calia, The Wall Street Journal, "6 New Literary Horror Collections for the Spooky Season"

"...Jon Padgett [is] one of the best writers you might not have heard of yet..."
—Kayleigh Marie Edwards, Ginger Nuts of Horror

“The sense of dread the reader is set with from the opening guided meditation lingers throughout and while the details issued throughout the stories help to unravel the mysteries within each in some way, they offer nought in the way of comfort... for those who enjoy fiction of a weird nature with a capital ‘w’ The Secret of Ventriloquism should not be missed.”
—Kev Harrison, This Is Horror

With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Shulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism heralds the arrival of a significant new literary talent. Padgett’s work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both. A bullied child who seeks vengeance within a bed’s hollow box spring; a lucid dreamer haunted by an impossible house; a dummy that reveals its own anatomy in 20 simple steps; a stuttering librarian who holds the key to a mill town's unspeakable secrets; a commuter whose worldview is shattered by two words printed on a cardboard sign; an aspiring ventriloquist who spends a little too much time looking at himself in a mirror. And the presence that speaks through them all.

Ordering info:

Kindle Edition

Trade Paperback, 2nd Edition


Audiobook should be available via Amazon, Audible and iTunes later this week. Stay tuned!

My debut short story collection, The Secret of Ventriloquism, is just about to be released, and it's gotten some fine praise so far.

“The Secret of Ventriloquism is horror with a capital H. Some of Padgett's lines raised the hair on my neck. In a year of exceptional weird fiction, this [book] is a mattock handle wrapped in barbed wire heavy hitter.”
—Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase

“Padgett proves with his stunning debut collection to be a worthy successor to Thomas Ligotti. There's no gristle, no bone, no dilly-dallying here: only pure meat whose terrors seamlessly grow into the metaphysical. This volume is jam-packed with the stuff that nightmares are made of.”
—Dejan Ognjanović, Rue Morgue Magazine

“[A] dread-soaked volume — stocked with tales of decay, death and dummies...”
—Michael Calia, The Wall Street Journal, "6 New Literary Horror Collections for the Spooky Season"

“The sense of dread the reader is set with from the opening guided meditation lingers throughout and while the details issued throughout the stories help to unravel the mysteries within each in some way, they offer nought in the way of comfort... for those who enjoy fiction of a weird nature with a capital ‘w’ The Secret of Ventriloquism should not be missed.”
—Kev Harrison, This Is Horror

With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Shulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism heralds the arrival of a significant new literary talent. Padgett’s work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both. A bullied child who seeks vengeance within a bed’s hollow box spring; a lucid dreamer haunted by an impossible house; a dummy that reveals its own anatomy in 20 simple steps; a stuttering librarian who holds the key to a mill town's unspeakable secrets; a commuter whose worldview is shattered by two words printed on a cardboard sign; an aspiring ventriloquist who spends a little too much time looking at himself in a mirror. And the presence that speaks through them all.

Pre-orders:

Click here for the PB edition (sans interior art) -- Ships in December

Click here for the limited HC edition (with interior art by the great Dave Felton) -- Ships in late October

Click here for the limited HC/PB/ebook bundle -- HC ships in late October / PB/ebook in December

Yes! Horror writer/critic Dejan Ognjanović reviewed my new chapbook, The Infusorium, and it's a positive one!

"Oppressive fog envelops a town where a series of disappearances results in the victims found buried, their skeletons weirdly elongated. Death is in the air, but the pollution is of an occult nature, as the two investigating detectives soon discover. This chapbook novella's True Detective-type tale channels the bleak spirit of Thomas Ligotti (who contributed a blurb). Profoundly disturbing and seriously frightening."