Goodbye, J.F. Gonzalez

I get to work at least thirty minutes early and I always sit in my car, drink my mug of Irish Breakfast Tea, and read a few chapters before going in. Crazy, I know, but I have a bit of a drive. I work on a Navy base and can't be late.

This morning I read the last chapters of Rick Hautala's The Big Tree. It's a good story, but a sad one. The core of The Big Tree is the death of childhood. Of course, I reflected about the death of Rick Hautala, too, when I was done.

The Big Tree stuck with me all morning, and I went back to my car at lunch to eat and to listen to some audiofiction. I checked my phone and saw the news. J.F. Gonzalez had died.

I'm not going to claim that he and I were close buddies, but I knew Jesus Gonzalez. I've known him for over a decade. I was and am a big fan of his writing, and I let him know that. I am not normally the biggest fan of over the top horror, but I really liked his hard-hitting novel, Survivor.

I had known of J.F. Gonzalez for a long time before I met him. I bought and cherished all three issues of his magazine, Iniquities. I was always sad that it didn't last longer than it did.

Fast forward several years, and Clickers came along. I was involved in the Gorezone Book Forum at the time, and it seemed like everyone there was reading it. And enjoying it.

I honestly can't remember the first time I met Jesus, but I'm guessing it was at one of the Horrorfind Weekends. I always enjoyed talking with him.

One of my best memories of Horrorfind was a weekend morning when I was up obscenely early. I was seeking food and I went into the hotel restaurant. J.F. was sitting alone, eating. He invited me to join him.

Jesus's passion and knowledge of horror was impressive, but we did not talk about the genre that morning. We spoke of family, of work. Frustration with the insurance industry, and of growing older.

In the grand scheme of things, that conversation might not have been a huge deal, but it stuck with me.

J.F. Gonzalez was a prolific writer who took chances and did not always play it safe with his fiction. He wrote hard suspense (Survivor, Fetish, Bully), Supernatural (Shapeshifter, The Beloved), Apocalyptic (Primitive). Then there is the Clickers series, most of which were written in collaboration with Brian Keene.

If you give a damn, I suggest that you buy a book or two. His family will get the royalties, and publishers always need support. And you will have some good reading ahead of you.

In the meantime we mourn the loss of a good man, a trusted friend to many in the community, and one of the most important writers the genre has seen in the last fifteen years.

Goodbye, J.F. Gonzalez.