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.

Quoth the raven, "Eat my shorts."

It might be an adorable preschooler wearing an Incredible Hulk mask with her tutu. Or three teenagers with empty pillowcases, no discernible costumes, and makeshift cudgels dangling from their hands. Or maybe it’s the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, back to check if he left his iPhone at your place last night.

In any of these scenarios, you’d want to send your visitor(s) away happy, right?

To that end, in honor of Neil Gaiman’s All Hallow’s Read, we urge you to drop a spooky story into someone’s plastic pumpkin bucket this year, such as the terrifying tales by Caitlin Sinead Jennings or Dan Ress from our October issue. The stories from last season’s shiver-inducing Halloween Special Issue would also score big points with your friends, family members, casual acquaintances, and mortal enemies.

And if you’re worried about what to do with all those Snickers and Reese’s peanut butter cups you were planning to hand out, we’d gladly take them off your hands. (Editorial Staff, c/o The Jersey Devil, Pine Barrens, NJ, USA. Or just leave the basket under a tree; we’ll find it.)

Happy Birthday to us! Jersey Devil Press turns four with this issue and Ryan Werner, Dan Ress, Lawrence Buentello, and Caitlin Sinead Jennings are all here to help us celebrate.

Really, JDP’s always been a four-year old at heart. We occasionally say something profound, but then almost completely by accident. We can dress ourselves, but still prefer to run around without pants on. And we like the parts where Batman fights best.

None of us knows how long this crazy whirligig will keep defying the space-time continuum, so enjoy it while it’s here. Whether it’s four more years, four decades, or just enough time to match the Enterprise’s five-year mission, treasure JDP while it provides a home to the well-written weird, whacky, and enigmatic. (And by “treasure” we of course mean “promote on social media.”)

There’s more weepy stuff to say, but it’s probably quicker just to go watch the end of Serenity and insert “lit mag” whenever Mal talks about his ship to River.

Just try not to get impaled.