There's another literary journal in town. It's called Jokes Review and it's ready for full-swole submissions of all kinds. I founded the thing in early 2016 with dudebuddies Matt Kramer and Mark Dwyer, two of Northern California's finest literary kooks.

Who's Jokes? Jokes is a character I've always wanted to write. He first appeared as a comic-relief figure in a post-apocalyptic novel I started in college and never finished. Ever since then, he's been popping up whenever I need a default prankster to move a story along. He never sticks in a final manuscript. Who knows. Maybe one day he'll be the next Darcy Dancer or Sebastian Dangerfield. In the meantime, at least now he's got a literary journal named after him.

Since founding Jokes Review, a few highlights:

1. We've been flooded with submissions! Many of them are absolutely first class, too.

2. I tried to solicit a submission from bizarro author Carlton Mellick III...but he turned us down. Apparently he doesn't write short fiction anymore. Although, he adds that maybe he would "if the pay is worthwhile but to be honest I don’t think it would be a good business decision on your part to pay what I would be asking." HAH! Too bad for him. Doesn't he know we're all billionaires at Jokes Review? Dude missed out on a serious paycheck. His loss.

3. "Do you pay?" -- a question emailed to us by "Travel Writer Roy" with a Yahoo.com email address. My response to him:

Dude, we're like the smallest, dumbest, most half-assed literary journal on the planet. If you really need to ask if we pay, you've probably come to the wrong place.

That said, if you have anything weird you wanna toss at the scabby feet of us literary urchins, we'll be happy to take a look.

4. One last thing. Founding Jokes has given me an excuse to get back into up one of my all-time favorite hobbies: making stupid bookmarks. Check it out!