The Last Stand of the Great Texas Packrat

Steve Vernon brings us the tale of Texas Jack Page in The Last Stand of the Great Texas Packrat. This chapbook is available from White Noise Press and features the artwork of Keith Minnion. Each chapbook in this limited run is signed by both Steve and Keith. Again, the quality level of the small press never fails to impress me. This chapbook is going to stand up to the passage of time not just because of the story quality but because of the production quality as well. Each page features artwork that really helps set the tone of the story. By the time you reach the end you will feel as if you were there with Texas Jack page.

Texas Jack Page is a man who loves his books so don't be surprised to find a part of yourself in the character. This is a story of a man who loves what he reads and collects what he loves. Before the end of the story you will find yourself thinking "Do I have that many books to? Am I on the same path this guy is?" This story serves as a salute to authors and readers everywhere. Keep in mind that for every positive there is a negative. Yin and Yang. Black and white. That book collection of yours is pretty impressive and positive, or is it? I haven't decided which scares me more about The Last Stand of the Great Texas Packrat, the story itself or how much of the story I see in myself.

How much did I enjoy this chapbook? Enough that I bought a second copy just to give away to one lucky reader. The contest will be up within the next seven days.

Big "Thank you!" to Steve Vernon for permission to quote the following:

Texas Jack Page became a hermit. He lived alone in a trailer in the center of a flat Texas plain. The grocery boy brought him case after case of pork and beans. He learned to bake bread and make his own beer. The trailer's breathable space grew cloistered and thick with a miasma of ass-propelled methane and the aroma of brewing yeast.

And yet outside his trailer, outside his tiny world, his legend slowly metamorphosized. He was Texas Jack Page. Groveling sycophants e-mailed his screen name, begging for a glimpse of his dark secret world. The legend began and was added to, in entry after entry, a walking shroud sewn from a cybernetic sky full of countless message board threads.

Teas Jack Page said this. Texas Jack Page found that.

Online, Texas Jack Page was ten feet tall. His high-heeled boot prints stomped across the message boards of a hundred websites, touching lives and tantalizing the imagination of hungry young fiction cannibals.

One more thing: Call me Ishmael