Don't mind me; I'm just here to watch you sleep.

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve recently picked up where Mike left off as the online editor after he took over for Eirik in 2011. I feel very lucky to be here, and, through collaboration with Sam, who is staying on as production editor (thanks, Sam!), I will strive to maintain the unparalleled balance of strangeness, beauty, and poop jokes that have defined the JDP aesthetic for the last four years.

At the moment, we’re looking for funny, adventurous, creepy, heartworming (not a typo; we’re actively seeking tales that burrow into our vital organs like emotional parasites), and crazy-banana-pants stories to close out the December issue and start filling the 2014 calendar, so submit ’em if you got ’em. And if you don’t got ’em, write ’em. Then submit ’em.

The November issue will be out in a few weeks, and—spoiler alert—it’s fucking awesome. In the meantime, we invite you to enjoy kick-ass stories from the four talented writers featured in (sniffle-snort-honk) Mike’s last issue: Lawrence Buentello, Caitlin Sinead Jennings, Dan Ress, and Ryan Werner. And you gotta love that cover art.