IN THE NEWS ...

• Gargoyle: More Cool News — Gargoyle Magazine will publish my experimental/literary short story "Dashiell" in its forthcoming issue.
Reasons this is cool:

• Gargoyle has featured work from T.C. Boyle, Rick Moody, Allen Ginsberg, Kathy Acker, Kate Braverman, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lance Olsen, and truckloads of other people whose work shapes today's literary landscape.
• Gargoyle was named Best Literary Journal for its 2006 issue by The Montserrat Review
• Its associated publishing house, Paycock Press, loved the novel I'm shopping around right now.
• And, for perfectly selfish reasons: It's a well-respected, big-name lit review that helps get my name and my writing out there.

The speed of this industry is glacial, and Gargoyle publishes only one issue annually; I'm told by editor Richard Peabody that we can expect to see it as a summer 2008 release in Gargoyle Issue #83. To say nothing of the other stories and essays I have out. And I would appear to have a couple of nibbles on the novel, but nothing that's anywhere near certain.

• The Loudest Guffaw: Cool news — as I continue my campaign to find a publisher for my third novel, Signal to Noise, I've just gotten word that a new lit zine with an emphasis on poetry and music criticism will publish an excerpt from said novel in their inaugural issue. The Loudest Guffaw is the magazine — coming soon.
This is great, because I've been getting a lot of non-rejections from publishers, including one imprint of Random House, who love it but can't make it fit their list. They actually rave about it while at the same time telling me why it doesn't fit there. But this is a good sign: Someone reputable will go for it. And my students thought the writing I've shared with them was out-there. Wait 'til they get a load of this!
The campaign continues ...

• While I've never claimed to be a poet, I did just have a poem published — a sci-fi poem. Ultraverse picked up my tanka, "Chimaera." This piece was inspired by the two "Wire Movement" poems penned by Misha and included in the incredible anthology Storming the reality Studio, A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Fiction, edited by Larry McCaffrey. A tanka is a form related to haiku, but following the following syllable scheme: 5-7-5-7-7.

• Daniel Jolley and the good people at Rambles.net have published a glowing review of Machina. With this novel, I've long suspected that either it is for you, or it is not. If you're into asking the really big questions about the nature of reality, I think this will work for you. If not, who knows? While reaction seems to be polarized, Daniel Jolley gets it.

• SF Site's Nathan Brazil has reviewed Machina quite positively; and the traffic to that page has been brisk.

• I am currently shopping around my third novel, Signal to Noise. This is my best work to date, an unfliching account of the industrial/experimental music scene that emerged (fictitiously) along the seedy and mostly hidden underbelly of Iowa City in the late '80s. Don't want to give too much away ... this is a new novel I finished my MFA project at California College of the Arts. This summer, as I hone the manuscript, I am also in search of an agent, then a publisher. This is the strongest piece of writing I've ever produced, so I'm hoping to land a good-sized publisher.

• Machina was Double Dragon Publishing's #3 bestselling paperback for the second half of 2004! My thanks to everyone who's purchased a copy. Fiction isn't easy to sell these days, particularly work published in the small presses.

• The Revised, Second Edition of my first novel, BURN, is just out from Double Dragon Publishing!

• Get Machina gear and Burn gear here!

• Here's a list of most of my publications.

• Machina has been nominated for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. Double Dragon publishing Publisher Deron Douglas also nominated my little reality-bender for the Philip K. Dick Award — though, unfortunately, it didn't make the short list.

• MACHINA continues to do well in sales rankings of the electronic editions; a print edition is scheduled for October. The e-book started at #18 at eReader.com (formerly Palm Digital media), and climbed to #13 #12(!!!); climbed as high at #298 at Amazon, and made #93 on their Early Adopter E-Books & E-Docs bestsellers list; and is #158 in Fictionwise's SF listings, and Double Dragon's #11 bestseller there, as well! UPDATE:The electronic edition is #51 among science fiction e-books at eBookAd.com!
Machina is a speculative, metaphysical, philosophical, and bizarrely unique novel that pulls in notions about reality from quantum mechanics, string theory, various religious texts, Descartes, Eastern notions of reality and the universe, the Schroedinger probability wave, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, etc. ... to deal with the question of what happens when "God," whatever that is, dies. Who finds out, and how? And what would they do to set things right? Grand conspiracy and the old Remote Viewing psychic spy programs come into play. We're looking for reviews to blurb in the print edition, out later this fall. Contact me if you'd like to review the novel!

A FEW REVIEWS ...

"Compelling, challenging, and satisfying... I couldn't put it down. Possibly the best book that I've read all year. Jonathan Lyons has written a truly excellent novel. Machina is even better than Burn, and Burn was great."

   Dan L. Hollifield
   Reviewer, Aphelion Webzine
   www.aphelion-webzine.com

"Machina is a great book! You've done it again! What a headtrip/ psychelicized/ mindfuck/ Gordian knot of Moebius-strip like beauty! Out-burns Burn! Anyway, really enjoyed it and wanted to let you know. Will pass along to the ST 37 Reading Group."
   S.R. Telles,
   of Austin space-rock legends
   ST37

As he proved in his first novel BURN, Jonathan Lyons is masterful at high tech pulp fiction -- its atmosphere palpable, its plotting intricate, his writing sparking as dangerously as downed power lines. He deftly runs the slicing blade edge of taut and gritty SF.

   Jeffrey Thomas,
   author of MONSTROCITY and
   EVERYBODY SCREAM!

"Overall, Machina is an excellent piece of speculative fiction. Despite the little things I found distracting, the ideas are incredibly well thought out and thought provoking. The way Jonathan Lyons was able to reconcile both physical and paranormal phenomenon with the Great Ocean of Thought and a universal awareness is enthralling. Without giving away too much, I was also amused by the state of the universe at the end of the Machina. This novel is definitely worth a look."

   Laura Lehman,
   SF/Fantasy Books Editor,    BellaOnline, The Voice of Women.