There are a few ways to introduce the January Issue. On the one hand, there’s a broad theme of resilience in the face of loss in these stories, of choices made early in life echoing down through the years, of people striving to build and retain connections.

Or, we could go with the old friends-new friends motif. We welcome Christopher Lettera, Dana Chamblee Carpenter, and Randall Martoccia to our pages for the first time, where they join returning favorites, K. Marvin Bruce and the indomitable Ryan Werner.

Ultimately, we decided simple and obvious is best: We fucking survived the Mayan Apocalypse. Let’s read some good shit.

The January Issue of Jersey Devil Press is at your disposal.

Much like the pictured house — located in the town next to editor Mike Sweeney’s — JDP and most of Jersey are still standing, but more than a little worse for wear. Seriously, what you’ve read and seen on the news doesn’t begin to cover the devastation. Areas are decimated; people have lost their homes. Businesses and attractions New Jerseyans grew up with are gone forever.

We posted a link of volunteer and donation opportunities earlier, compiled by NJ.com. You can find it here if you’re in the area. And if you’re not, trust us, good cold cash is always welcome. The Red Cross has set up a specific Sandy relief fund.

While we’re understandably pre-occupied with our homeland, the folks in neighboring Staten Island and Long Island, as well as other communities up and down the mid-Atlantic region, were also hit incredibly hard. That Red Cross fund goes to support all of Sandy’s victims.

Finally, just a quick word about the men and women who work for Jersey’s main power company, JCP&L. The company itself has taken a lot of heat, but, in fairness, they had 1.3 million people without power, about five times the size of any previous power outage on state record. In the past week, they’ve restored power to almost a million homes. That’s still way too many people without power, but we extend our thanks to the linemen and forestry workers, most of whom have been working 16-hour shifts. Yell all you want at corporate JCP&L, but the dudes and dudettes in the bucket trucks are doing incredible work. Thanks are also owed to the thousands of power crews brought in from out of state to help by FEMA. They were put up at Fort Monmouth, a few miles south of JDP’s secret headquarters.

(And next time we build an underground lair, someone remind us to install a back-up generator.)

Since Mike Sweeney was the JDP staffer most directly affected by Sandy (spending over five days without power and pretty sure he was going to wake up in Oz the night of the storm), it’s perhaps appropriate that the new issue is a collection of a few of his favorite things, starting with old JDP friend, Craig Wallwork, returning to write about the Minotaur, and a tale by newcomer Max Vande Vaarst that mythologizes a forgotten moment in Jersey’s history just the way we love at JDP. We’ve also got a well-written tale about people going insane in Antarctica (always a crowd pleaser) and an absolutely beautiful little piece about a small primate showing up in a very odd place.

So if you’re in Jersey or one of the nearby affected areas, we hope you’ll print out a copy of the November Issue and enjoy it by flashlight in the event that tonight’s snowstorm and 60 mph gusts knock out your heat and power (again). As for the rest of you, enjoy the issue normally, please keep a good thought for the people of the Garden State (especially those still without heat and power), and do whatever you can to help the survivors of Sandy.

Oh, and, as always, beware the Giant Vacuum Men.