Welcome to the threshold.
These are the projects that live under J. Richard Steele’s name—fiction, fragments, collections, and experiments.
Here you’ll find dark literary tales, surrealist absurdities, and pulp-noir fever dreams.
Some are finished. Some are howling drafts. All are windows into strange worlds.
This site is still taking shape.
J. Richard Steele adds new project pages as he goes—one portal at a time. Some already open wide. Others are still under lock and key.
Check back soon. The doors don’t stay closed forever.
Flight of a Lifetime
A 110-page graphic novel script in need of an editor and an artist.
A looping narrative about death, delay, memory, and madness—told on a long-haul flight that never quite lands.
Think Möbius Strip meets Terminal B: a surreal narrative with recursive structure and graphic elements.
Currently seeking publication and creative collaborators.
May We Keep Feeding the Mice
A collection of dark and strange short stories, some fully written, others clawing their way out.
From a homicidal clown on a doomed mission—thwarted by his own irrational fear—to a person crystallizing like honey in the cold, from grief so strong it reanimates the dead to a drawer full of silicone hands with minds of their own—these are stories that don’t behave. Includes Suffer the Children, Möbius Trip, The Cellularity Is Near, and more.
Comedy Sketches
A sprawling archive of 150+ absurdist, unhinged sketches actively seeking a home.
This collaborative project with co-writer Anders Karner includes: a biker gang on forklifts stealing a waitress’s heart in a parody of outlaw road movies; a geriatric rock band that dies on stage—until the guitarist rises for one last solo; two strangers falling in love at a pharmacy over shared medical shame; and three hijackers armed with pirogues who try to seize a Stockholm subway to Helsinki—despite the fact it can’t possibly get there.
Originally created for Swedish television, the project is now being adapted for international audiences.
Mental Wedgies
Satirical fragments, absurd essays, and little explosions of language.
Not quite stories. Not quite stable. Sideways takes on modern life, philosophical misfires, and small detonations of thought.
Always Read the Fine Print
A one-page comic series featuring etiquette, absurdism, and inevitable blood splatter.
Meet Brother Jerk, Hurk, and Dirk—a family of self-appointed public educators, each enforcing their own twisted lessons. With Auntie Etiquette from Connecticut and her vampire poodle Dracy keeping order, these one-page comics beat us into shape. Drawn by Mattias Olsson.
How to Get Away with Anything in School
A satirical handbook for the academically mischievous and nostalgically scarred.
Equal parts parody and personal exorcism, this “survival guide” riffs on school absurdities with mock essays, behavioral loopholes, and a sprawling glossary of gleefully warped definitions.
Originally written for adults looking back, now resurfacing in all its anarchic glory.
Spoken Word Texts
Words once shouted, still echoing today.
A selection of slam pieces from back in the day—raw, rhythmic, and revived for the page.
Guardian Angels
A fictional travel reminiscence—part celebration, part elegy.
A story of music, friendship, and near-tragedy at a summer festival—where everything unfolds in a blur of sound, sensation, and shifting connection.
Blending humor, sensuality, and sudden grace, this piece captures the flickering impermanence of connection and the quiet shock of being saved.
Take Me to America
A raw fictional travel reminiscence set during a spring festival in a Serbian village.
Part personal narrative, part cultural clash, part seduction—culminating in a moment of unexpected intensity, where language, longing, and desire collide.
Change of a Season
Rock 'n' roll erotica.
A tale of myth and metamorphosis.
A brief encounter in a tent beneath the trees becomes a threshold—where a thousand years of longing converge in one trembling night.
Set in the liminal hush between seasons, this is a story of magical realism and sensual awakening, where desire opens the door to something ancient, green, and alive.