by Jon Padgett
“The Infusorium” owes a debt to Devra Davis’ When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception And The Battle Against Pollution and Berton Roueché’s New Yorker article, “The Fog,” both of which educated me on the horrors of pollutants and their immediate and ongoing effects on biological life forms. Kroth’s mottled-green, steel oxygen tanks and the term “non-killed” had their origin in anecdotes related to the terrible Donora Smog of 1948, in which “a heavy fog blanketed [the] valley, and as the days passed, the fog became a thick, acrid smog that left about 20 people dead and thousands ill. Not until October 31 did the Donora Zinc Works shut down its furnaces-just hours before rain finally dispersed the smog.”
“Organ Void” - All guru quote excerpts are from a variety of Eckhart Tolle sources. Tolle’s philosophy had a tremendous influence on the collection as a whole.
“Escape to Thin Mountain” - Written after “Ten Steps to Thin Mountain,” by Thomas Ligotti—a piece that inspired the first story I didn’t throw away, “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Various incarnations of these stories first appeared in the following publications:
Antenna::Signals: “The Mindfulness of Horror Practice”
The Grimscribe’s Puppets (Miskatonic River Press, 2013): “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism”
Lovecraft eZine: “The Secret of Ventriloquism”
Pseudopod: “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism,” “Murmurs of a Voice Foreknown,” and “The Mindfulness of Horror Practice”
Xnoybis: “The Indoor Swamp”
“The Infusorium” was published in chapbook form (Dunhams Manor Press, 2015)
My gratitude to Jordan Krall for publishing and championing my work, Dave Felton for his artistic wizardry, Anna Trueman for her excellent, elegant design, and Matt Cardin for decades of support, inspiration and friendship.
Thanks to my friends and readers: Patrick Boyton, Brendon Mroz, and Christopher Slatsky.
Special thanks to Shawn Mann and James DeWitt for years of tremendous encouragement, to my parents, Don and Ann Padgett, for their unending support, to my sister, Deborah Padgett, for turning me into a reader, to my spouse, Carolyn Hembree, for her brilliant (and sometimes harrowing) notes, to my daughter, Mamie, for existing and forever lighting the way, and to my friend and mentor, Thomas Ligotti, without whom this book would not exist.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jon Padgett is a professional—though lapsed—ventriloquist who lives in New Orleans with his spouse, their daughter and two cats.
Padgett is a Senior Editor of Vastarien, a source of critical study and creative response to the corpus of Thomas Ligotti.
He has work out or forthcoming in Pseudopod, Lovecraft eZine, Xnoybis, Antenna::Signals and The Junk Merchants: A Literary Salute to William S. Burroughs.
