Issue 76 Comes Marchin’ In

JDP cover march 16The theme for our seventy-sixth issue is . . . well, when you read thousands of submissions, you inevitably develop some biases over time. There’s a list of things we aren’t interested in publishing in our guidelines that was put together by our founding editors, Eirik and Monica, and I have my own list of things I prefer to avoid. The funny thing is, every single piece in this issue falls into a category I usually find problematic: stories told from multiple points of view, poems more than a page long, imagined encounters between actual historical figures, fictionalized portrayals of mental illness, rhyming couplets, dudes playing pool. When these things are done badly, as they often are, they make me cringe. But as it turns out, when they are done exceptionally well, they are a pleasure to read. So thank you, March contributors—I’ve never been so delighted to have been proven so thoroughly wrong.

Nuzzle it online or tickle the .pdf.

P. S. Get mooned by this month’s cover art.

The February Issue Is Here!

JDP cover feb 16Bust out the wine, chocolate, and red roses! And after you’ve delivered these obligatory offerings to the chubby Pennsylvanian rodent who controls the weather (seriously―do not make him mad), treat yourself to our seventy-fifth issue, which is so classy that it has an actual bidet. It also has butterflies, a kid with a beard, thumb chop-offing, Emily Dickinson, UFOs, and possibly a fairy. Read it now, before Punxsutawney Phil decides to deep-freeze the planet with his Ice Laser Doom Ray!

Hug it online or kiss the .pdf.

The Sherlock Holmes Special Issue

JDP 2016 Jan sherlockSpend a couple months editing an issue of Sherlock Holmes stories and you’ll encounter a strange truth: for a character so famous for his asexuality, lots of people want to fuck him. (Or, at least, know who he’s fucking.) Fortunately, the writers in this month’s issue explore the subject with both grace and skill.

Not surprisingly, Irene Adler figures prominently in many of our tales, appearing as a time traveling researcher scientist in Jill Hand’s “Killing Sherlock” and returning to Victorian London with an unexpected surprise for Messrs. Holmes and Watson in “Bohemian Soul” by Abra Deering Norton. “The Woman’s” presence is also hinted at in Robert Perret’s whirlwind “A year in Sherlocku,” and she could very well be the true author of Catherine Wald’s excellent elucidation of Holmsian desire, “Sexing the Detective.”

A second thing you learn editing a Sherlock Holmes issue is that it’s not really about the mysteries or the deductions, it’s not the deerstalker or the magnifying glass. What made Conan Doyle’s stories so special was just going along for the ride with Holmes and Watson to wherever adventure might take them. Pat Woods understands this perfectly and throws in a dash of the mystic (for JDP-good measure) as he constructs an absolutely beautiful lost tale from the archives of John Watson. “The Adventure of the Etheric Projection” closes out our issue.

We hope you can read it somewhere foggy.