Jank - Revisited
A Magical Trading Card Game Memoir
Following last week’s post about my most popular published story, Shitlord In the Anus of Madness, I now revisit my least popular, Jank.
Jank is heavily rooted in Magic:The Gathering(MTG) gaming culture and jargon. Despite it being the world's most popular collectible card game, comparitively few people truly understand MTG, but everyone has a butthole and can understand poop puns. Jank’s potential audience is much more narrow than Shitlord, so I'm not surprised that it isn't as popular.
Shitlord is speculative and allegorical, whereas Jank is rooted in reality and based on a true story: Names were changed to protect the innocent, and I added characters, flavor, and themes for entertainment purposes, but the event at the climax of Jank actually happened to me exactly as described.
Jank's framing narrative device was inspired by Stephen Tobolowsky's podcast, The Tobolowsky Files.
I appreciate the level of craft involved in Tobolowsky’s writing and performance, particularly the almost hypnotic way he flows from his podcast intro into delivering his autobiographical monologues. My aim with Jank was to emulate his flowing style, and combine it with a subtle level of derangement.
Though Jank has not found its audience(yet), it did receive some critical acclaim. As part of the Glimmer Train Press '2019 Final Fiction Open', Susan & Linda remarked, "...we enjoyed reading your work."
Jank holds an important place as prequel to my forthcoming novel, Sudo Bang Bang. Included below are the text, the original 2019 audiobook, and a new AI enchanted podcast version.
Enough palaver, please enjoy JANK:
[Jank Episodes]
[1of5]
[2of5]
[3of5]
[4of5]
[5of5]
[Going Narrative Podcast]
