Talking With Trans Author/Editor Alex S. Johnson | Interview
The person of a thousand connections throughout the queer/horror/kink scene shares the details of their life and work
Alex S. Johnson is a sometime English professor and author of Bizarro, erotica, horror, and science fiction works. They are the author of two novels, Bad Sunset and Jason X IV: Death Moon, the collections Wicked Candy and Doctor Flesh: Director's Cut, the co-author of Fucked Up Shit! with Berti Walker, as well as numerous Bizarro, horror, science fiction, and experimental literary stories, including works published in Full-Metal Orgasm, Bizarro Central, Gone Lawn, Ugly Babies Volume 2, Master/slave, Noirotica III, Cthulhu Sex, The Surreal Grotesque, Cease, Cows, and many other venues.
They are the creator/editor of the Axes of Evil heavy metal horror anthology series. They have also been a music journalist for such magazines as Metal Hammer, Metal Maniacs and Zero Tolerance.
Join us below for a journey through their extensive career (and extensive connections) throughout the queer/horror/kink scene.
Interview
Where do you fall on the queer spectrum?
I identify as nonbinary transgender.
What do we need to understand about your story as a person?
That I always knew deep in my bones who I was, but it took my beautiful friends to guide me towards an understanding of what being Queer could conceivably look like…as fabulous and strong and revolutionary as one could conceivably imagine.
The first transgender person I knew in real life was Poppy Z. Brite, whom I interviewed for the International Horror Guild Award-winning magazine Deathrealm, run by Stephen Mark Rainey, to which I was a contributing editor. I asked her (at the time she identified as female) what her gender was, and she told me she was transgender. If I’m not mistaken, that was the first time he’d told a journalist his trans identity. That interview became quite well known and was translated into French by Poppy’s French translator, It comes as no surprise to anybody who has read Brite, now known as Billy Martin, that he is a gay man. My first girlfriend was bisexual, and that was the beginning of my journey.
Through her I met future sexpert and Bram Stoker Award nominee Thomas Roche, to whom I later introduced Brite collaborator Christa Faust.
Around the same time, mid 90s, I met Nancy Kilpatrick, aka Amarantha Knight, whom I also interviewed for a leather zine. In 1999 I handled Dani from Cradle of Filth Nancy’s Carmilla sequel…
I knew Weird Fiction legend Caitlin R. Kiernan through the Poppy Z. Brite forum at the old GENIE server, long before social media, fell in love with their work. I met Cait at World Horror Convention in 1995.
To give full credit where credit is due, Splatterpunk founder member Craig Spector as well as Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror editor Paul M. Sammon played crucial roles insofar as they both were working with Christa, Poppy, Cait and Nancy at the time, and Craig introduced me to Christa.
Over the years I’ve been published alongside such amazing Queer authors as Cecilia Tan, Kate Bornstein, Eric LaRocca, there would be a ton more, we all came up around the same time. Oh, and I almost forgot…I’ve been published alongside Allen Ginsberg, who was and remains an important influence.
My dear friend the late Katherine MacGregor, best known to her many fans worldwide as Mrs. Oleson in Little House on the Prairie, was a good friend of author James Baldwin and lived with him in the South of France for a period of time.
I never would have imagined that 30 years after I met them, I would be publishing Poppy/Billy, Caitlin and Nancy in White on White: A Literary Tribute to Bauhaus, alongside people like transgender DJ and Baudelaire translator Doktor Jackie Dilworth, my good friend Kari Lee Krome, pioneering Queer voice and co-founder of The Runaways with Joan Jett, Carmilla Voiez, pansexual, Queer, neurodivergent author of the Starblood series.
I’m also profoundly grateful for my friendship with Lasara Firefox Allen, author of the forthcoming Genderqueer menopause, which I blurbed. They were a guest on my Youtube show, The Smol Bear Show, as was Lyric Rivera, aka Neurodivergent Rebel, whom I’m publishing in We Are Gregor: A Disability Rights Anthology.
Transgender pioneer Patrick Califia I’ve known for ages, published alongside him in anthologies such as Master/Slave from Penguin Random House…I’m very honored to be a friend of his and to be publishing him alongside Poppy/Billy in my goddess tribute.
My dear friend Alea Celeste Williams merits a strong mention, as she’s been with me through thick and thin as a friend and collaborator for the past three years…she’s an amazing person. I would love to go on, but I have a brain injury as well as chronic pain, which is exhausting.
And of course there’s our mutual friend the legendary Ossiana Tepfenhart, I’m very excited to be collaborating with them on multiple projects.
P.S. Can’t believe I failed to mention my late friend Jordan Gallader, the poet, educator and muse…
Take us back to the day you first found out you could succeed in your career. Where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with? Why was that time so important?
2005 was a watershed year for me. I had been working as a senior secretary for E.D.A., a boutique secretarial service in Torrance, California, where our clients were the legendary team of Tom Sullivan and Betty White-yes, darling, I worked with THE Betty White. Tom was very kind to me and made me the editor of his book Seeing Lessons: 14 Life Secrets I’ve Learned Along the Way, which was blurbed by titans of industry such as Peter Coors and, of course, the Divine Ms. White. She was very salty and smart as a whip. That book came out in 2003 to a lot of fanfare, and Tom was a guest on Oprah.
Then in 2004 I was commissioned by New Line Cinema to write a canonical entry in the Friday the 13th novel series, Jason X: Death Moon, which over the years has become a sort of cult classic and has won me fans like John Shirley, the creator of Cyberpunk with William Gibson and Pat Cadigan…Shirley has blurbed two of my books over a period of more than a decade…of my latest dark poetry collection, The Flowers of Doom, Shirley wrote: “Alex S. Johnson is the Baudelaire of our time, the poet of the underground.” That’s just amazing and beyond an honor, coming from him.
Now I’m publishing him in three anthologies, including an original story he has in Hand of Doom: A Literary Tribute To Black Sabbath, inspired by the song “Lonely is the Word” from the 1980 Heaven and Hell album. Shirley has played an important role in furthering my career, as has my amazing friend Ellyn Maybe, the poet and actress…there are so many people who helped me along my path, for sure.
Maybe we could have you and Ossiana as guests on my Youtube show, there’s so much to discuss!!!
What would you tell yourself at the beginning of your career vs where you are now?
Hustle, darling, own your rainbow identity. There’s a reason 99.9% of my stories are written from a female gender perspective. Horror Sleaze Trash publications in Australia is publishing my brand new dark satire collection, The Kandy Fontaine Kronikles. Detective Kandy Fontaine is among my favorite characters, kinky af that’s for sure. Persevere. Tell your criticism internal and external, to fuck right off. Don’t have heroes, be the hero of the day. Be brave, be strong, you’ll make it and be friends with literal rock stars whom you’re also the publisher of.
What do you empower others to do that they can’t do alone?
I will sit with you any time day or night, I will hold your hand, I am in solidarity with the human race like Walt Whitman.
What do your colleagues empower you to do that you couldn’t do alone?
I couldn’t do it without the support and colleagueship of my distinguished peers and friends, whether that’s David J. from Bauhaus, Kiernan, Brite, Rivera, Maybe, Williams, Allen, Califia, Kilpatrick, Jeremy Reed in England, Paul M. Sammon, the list goes on.
How have you learned to see your differences as worthiness?
I am neurodivergent, queer, kinky. My writing is unapologetically extreme. I love myself and the only people who actively dislike me are jealous wankers.
What is a word you love?
Weird.
What is a word you hate?
Content.
What is a sound you love?
A lover whispering dirty things in my ear.
What is a sound you hate?
Chewing.
What book, movie, or music would you take with you to a deserted island? Besides my own stuff?
The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire, Lost in Translation by Sophia Coppola, any really decent version of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
How would you like to be remembered?
As a lover of beings.
What’s next for you?
The award-winning New York filmmaker Vanessa H. Smith is making a movie about me and my circle, it’s called Burning Hearts, with an associated anthology series. Beginning March 21st, we’ll be filming live on location in LA. starting with a reading at Beyond Baroque.
How can we stay up to date with everything else you’re doing?
Follow me and Ossiana on Last News on The Left, watch my Youtube show, The Smol Bear Show, follow me on Blueskye and my Substack The Smol Bear Review, and on Facebook, LinkedIn, Goodreads, TikTok, and IG.
The end
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