The Story Behind The Kinfolk: Cult of Sex and Cheese by Josh Hickman

It all started as I was making one of my early morning, soul-searching walks up and down the hills of my Hollywood neighborhood, threatening myself with bodily harm if I didn’t come up with a good idea for my next comic novel. My third such book Five Slices Of Fear: A Connoisseur’s Hoagie Of Horror, which had sent up the horror fiction genre was about to be published, and I was wracking my brain to come up with a worthy (and funny) follow-up. Just as I was about to give up for the moment, it suddenly hit me: a comedy about cults. Just that morning I had done my usual internet checking on the activities of Scientology and further downfall of the dark NXIVM cult, as I did almost every day. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I had been fascinated with the subject and had been studying various cults off and on since college—the Manson Family, the Peoples Temple, Scientology, the Process Church of the Final Judgement, and others. But I had to somehow find humor amongst the terror and tragedy, distill it, and bring to the surface. I went back to my original fascination: what is it in us that makes us all susceptible to this religious or cult impulse? What is it in our wiring that gives us that weakness that allows the possibility that we might give so much away—even everything—for a sense of belonging, for quick enlightenment, to be accepted, for some sort of “salvation”? And therein lay the central pathos. Freud, in The Future of An Illusion, theorized, more or less, that the religious impulse would never go away, that it could merely be tamed and reined in. To laugh at a person involved in a cult—which is at times all too easy to do—is ultimately merely laughing at ourselves. After all, self-deception, tragic as it can be, is very human, and can be very revealing and very funny. And so, I researched cults with renewed vigor—the Source Family, Synanon, the Center for Feeling Therapy, est, and many others. I also read at least portions of Without Conscience by Dr. Robert D. Hare, Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change by Flo Conway, among several other excellent books. I also found lectures on youtube easy, helpful, and concentrated, such as those on cult thinking and mind control by Robert Jay Lifton and Margaret Singer. Though the book is total fiction and borne from my humble imagination, I weaved in countless details and anecdotes which reference—directly or obliquely—actual events, as I find this deeply adds resonance and even added entertainment for those more informed on the subject as well as those who wish to be. But, in the end, it doesn’t matter if one is familiar with or even interested in cults. We all lie to ourselves and each other. We are all familiar with the power of personality, be it accumulating it or giving it away. We all hold out false hope from time to time, and, surely, we all get fooled. This publisher for The Kinfolk: Cult of Sex & Cheese is the same as for my three previous comic novels, Through Tick & Tinn: The True Story Of The Greatest Unknown Comedy Team Ever Known, Ambergris, and Five Slices Of Fear: A Connoisseur’s Hoagie Of Horror, the small Los Angeles imprint Polyester Press. We work very closely and very well together on the editing, the design, and the covers. I’m very happy with them, and we have rarely if ever butted heads on anything. I am given great creative control, and I benefit from their judgement and experience.

About the Author

Equally fascinated with horror movies, comedians, and true crime since early childhood, Josh Hickman spent equal time wading in the heady waters of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, the Three Stooges comedy shorts, and Helter Skelter while growing up in various parts of Texas. When he became a writer, Hickman incorporated his comedic sensibility and lifelong love of the horror and true crime genres into his satiric writings. His past comic novels also include the fictional comedy bio THROUGH TICK & TINN: THE TRUE STORY OF THE GREATEST UNKNOWN COMEDY TEAM EVER KNOWN and the illustrated surreal, cautionary high-seas treasure-hunt saga AMBERGRIS. Hickman lives and works in Hollywood.

His latest book is the satirical fantasy, The Kinfolk: Cult of Sex and Cheese.

Visit his website at http://www.joshhickmanbooks.com.

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About the Book:

Title: THE KINFOLK: CULT OF SEX AND CHEESE
Author: Josh Hickman
Publisher: Polyester Press
Pages: 299
Genre: Satirical Fantasy

BOOK BLURB:

Hollywood Author Josh Hickman will release his latest brand of satirical, humorous books in mid-November. In the author’s new book, THE KINFOLK: CULT OF SEX AND CHEESE  he explores the maddening world of cults.  Mr. Hickman’s new novel follows his last satirical fantasy book, FIVE SLICES OF FEAR, that has received much critical praise from book reviewers.

Hollywood writer Mr. Hickman releases his new book as the fourth in a fantasy book series he has created and published.  In THE KINFOLK: CULT OF SEX AND CHEESE he chronicles the rise and fall of a “seductive, fanatical cult” led by the enigmatic Dillman “Papa Dilly” Bradford.

With THE KINFOLK: CULT OF SEX AND CHEESE once again fact meets fiction in the funny fantasy worlds author Josh Hickman creates. This time his fascination with cults has produced a fresh, yet familiar cast of charlatans, rubes, losers, and lucky fools, finding laughs in the cult impulse, religious fervor, and the common pathos of the average person who will do anything to find solace and belonging. Once more, author Hickman focuses his gaze on tragic comedy that is human existence--with all its fears, pitfalls, trials, and triumphs--and again he speaks hilarious truth to power in his latest entry THE KINFOLK: CULT OF SEX AND CHEESE.

“For as long as I’ve read books I’ve always been a huge fan of comedic novels,” Hickman asserted. “It was time I decided to start expressing my own comedic side of creative writing.”

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