Jonathan Janz Is Now a Fan of Jonathan Janz

Posted on by Jonathan Janz

Here’s an embarrassing recurring accident:

I pull out my iPhone, choose the Goodreads ap, and wait to see what pops up. I belong to several groups there, my favorite of which is called Horror Aficionados, and I sometimes like to check out what’s happening with my fellow twisted horror fans. But then, somehow, inexplicably, I click the button on my profile that says “You are now a fan of Jonathan Janz.”

My Favorite Author. For Twelve Minutes.
My Favorite Author. For Twelve Minutes.

After staring at my phone for a split second in utter horror, I scramble to find a way to stop being a fan of myself, but really, the damage is already done. The way it works is that my Goodreads friends receive updates about me (my reviews, my hopes and dreams), and they’ve already seen that I’ve become a fan of myself. Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with authors being fans of their own work, but I go with my gut on stuff like this, and my gut tells me I look like a self-aggrandizing, socially unaware, attention-seeking dipwad at whom people are laughing incredulously and rolling their eyes: “My, my, my. Someone is full of himself today, isn’t he?” *pompous sniff*

Now, folks might not be thinking any of the above, but I’m thinking they’re thinking it, and that’s enough for me. Oh, sure, eventually I’m able to get on my laptop and de-fan myself, but what message am I sending then? That I don’t like my own work? That for twelve minutes I thought that Janz guy was cool but then decided he’s a no-talent hack?

And this, my friends, has happened three times now. The insane part of it is when I go back to my Goodreads iPhone ap, I can’t even find what button to click to become a fan of myself. Which leads me to believe it’s invisible and has actually been placed there by the NSA to strike back at a horror author whose July release (CASTLE OF SORROWS)  includes the deaths of several fictional FBI employees. And that means the NSA has somehow gotten hold of my manuscript, which means they’ve hacked either my computer, the PC of Don D’Auria (my editor at Samhain), or the home of my agent Louise Fury. And if they can get to Louise, who on earth is safe?! I WANT MY RIGHTS!!!

How People Imagine Me after I "Fan" Myself
How People Imagine Me after I “Fan” Myself

Okay. Rant over. If you need me, I’ll be huddling in the corner of my underground bunker with my survivalist friends. And if you decide to drop in, we’ll be the ones in the tinfoil hats.

The password is dipwad.

5 thoughts on “Jonathan Janz Is Now a Fan of Jonathan Janz”

  1. Next time, try sending yourself a FB friend request…but seriously, man, funny stuff…always enjoy reading your website posts!

    Like

    Reply

  3. I think I noticed that 😀 (I’m in the same group, but I just lurk, so far.)

    FYI, I almost always “fan” / subscribe to myself so that I can see what my stuff looks like in the stream of whatever social media I’m using. My own blog posts pop up among everyone else’s, for example. I suppose I assumed, if I thought anything of it at all, that you were doing something like that.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Jonathan Janz Cancel reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

Jonathan Janz grew up between a dark forest and a graveyard, and in a way, that explains everything. Brian Keene named his debut novel The Sorrows “the best horror novel of 2012”. The Library Journal deemed his follow-up, House of Skin, “reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story.” Samhain Horror will also publish his third novel, The Darkest Lullaby, in April. Savage Species will be his fourth full-length work. Look for his fifth novel, a vampire western called Dust Devils, in early 2014. He has also written three novellas (The Clearing of Travis Coble, Old Order, and Witching Hour Theatre) and several short stories. His primary interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children, and though he realizes that every author’s wife and children are wonderful and amazing, in this case the cliché happens to be true. You can learn more about Jonathan at www.jonathanjanz.com. You can also find him on Facebook, via @jonathanjanz on Twitter, or on his Goodreads and Amazon author pages.