I was named for Joseph Conrad, my dad's favorite writer. Major influences include Thelonious Monk, one of the founding fathers of bebop in the 40's — he persevered as his music was often ridiculed, and now enjoys his greatest success posthumously. Gene Wolfe is another major influence — a writer in the sci-fi genre, Mr. Wolfe writes with grace, style and great intellect. Mom and Dad, too: Dad, who hated that I read comic books in my youth; he feared I'd never outgrow the trashy literature of my pre-teens. He now knows differently.

Author of January's Paradigm, available through Backstop is nominated as a 2010 Michigan Notable Book. Current Entertainment Monthly (Ann Arbor, MI) wrote of January's Paradigm: "Personal identity—the slipperiness and malleability of it—make up the major theme of the story ... (readers) will not be able to put it down."

Born October 21, 1956. I have no desire to write the All American Best Seller — the first table I bypass in any bookstore I may visit is the Best Seller table. Being a best seller doesn't mean it's the best literature. I want to write what pleases me and hope that my audience will find me. One of my favorite quotes: "Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled ... whether madness is not but the purest form of intelligence. We will say, then, that I am mad." — Edgar Allen Poe. I live in Northville, Michigan. (Photo courtesy of Daina Bowman, Chicago, Illinois)

J. Conrad Guest
My Web site and blog.

Backstop: A Baseball Love Story in Nine Innings
You know Backstop. He plays the catcher’s position for any team in any city in America with a major league ball club. You cheer him when he delivers, and boo him when he doesn’t. Told in his own words during the deciding game of the World Series, Backstop chronicles his rookie season, takes the reader to Chicago, where he finds romance, and reveals the heartbreak he endured in the aftermath of an adulterous affair. You’ll cheer for Backstop, both on and off the field, as he plays the most important game of his career, haunted by the ghost of his father, and fights to win back the heart of the woman he loves more than the game.

Amazon.com
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Chaotic Theory
What power, to hold in one's own hands the ability to affect the present by altering the past ... In the 22nd century the world population has dwindled to fewer than a billion, with total extinction expected within a decade. Chaotic Theory centers around three profiles of a solitary individual, Antanas Rupkus, a young Lithuanian. In one he is a musician endeavoring to keep alive the work of American jazz musicians of the 20th century. Stoic and aimless, Antanas is incapable of intimacy the result of having witnessed, as a boy, his parents killed by Estonian immigrants in search of fresh water. In another profile, Antanas is a sculptor, filled with hope and the belief that love can overcome all obstacles, until he loses the object of both his inspiration and desire. In the third, he is a writer whose essays accurately define the mid to late 20th century as the point in history that set man on the path to extinction. But alas, his wisdom comes too late ... if only Antanas had lived two hundred years earlier ... but perhaps he can, if what Kazys Galdikas tells him is true ...