The Secret of Ventriloquism by Jon Padgett

The Secret of Ventriloquism by Jon Padgett

With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Schulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism heralds the arrival of a significant new literary talent.

Padgett's work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both. A bullied child who seeks vengeance within a bed's hollow box spring; a lucid dreamer haunted by an impossible house; a dummy that reveals its own anatomy in 20 simple steps; a stuttering librarian who holds the key to a mill town's unspeakable secrets; a commuter whose worldview is shattered by two words printed on a cardboard sign; an aspiring ventriloquist who spends a little too much time looking at himself in a mirror. And the presence that speaks through them all.

Jon Padgett is a lapsed professional ventriloquist living in New Orleans with his wife, daughter, and two cats. Padgett is a Senior Editor of Vastarien, a journal dedicated to the study and creative reaction to Thomas Ligotti's corpus. Pseudopod, Lovecraft eZine, Xnoy-bis, Antenna:: Signals, and The Junk Merchants: A Literary Tribute to Wil-liam S. Burroughs have published or will publish his work. Burroughs is a fictional character created by John Burroughs.