Jonathan Woods is an award-winning author of absurdist pulp noir. He holds degrees from McGill University, New England School of Law and New York University School of Law and worked for many years for a multinational high-tech company. He studied writing at Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Zoetrope: All-Story and Sirenland writers conferences and at Southern Methodist University. 

He is the author of two previous novels, A Death in Mexico and Kiss the Devil Good Night and two collections of stories, Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem (featured at the Texas Book Festival and awarded a 2011 Spinetingler Award for Best Crime Short Story Collection) and Phone Call from Hell and Other Tales of the Damned. His stories have appeared in 3:AM Magazine, Plots with Guns, ThugLit, Yellow Mama, Horror Sleaze Trash and other online lit-zines and in the anthologies Dallas Noir (Akashic Books) and Murder in Key West I & II. He lives and writes in an 1896 house in Dallas, with his artist spouse Dahlia Woods and their  dogs Miss Pinky, Little Ruffy and Mickey Spillane.  

ABOUT THE BOOK

“Jihadist feral pigs, a nymphomaniac ranch heiress and an ex-military sniper converge on a South Texas cattle ranch. What could possibly go wrong? Hog Wild is a surreal, Tarantino-esque feast.”—Eric Freeze, author of Dominant Traits, Invisible Men and French Dive 

Animal Farm meets Animal House: A wildly clever, gonzo pulp noir, gothic western

Ray Puzo, ex-Special Forces sniper, is hired to rid the vast Cross cattle ranch in South Texas of its feral hog problem. Unbeknownst to Ray when he takes the job, because of radiation and other pollution, the hogs have become super-brainy. Faced with extinction, the hogs organize and fight back. Humans and feral hogs face off in an epic battle between good and evil—but who is good and who is evil is an open question. 

Besides leading the charge against the hog uprising, Ray must navigate the Byzantine politics of the ranch’s eccentric aristocracy and peasantry, including: 

• Mrs. Amanda Cross, reptilian ranch matriarch;  
• Ned Cross, her queer son;  
• Loretta Cross, her crackpot nympho daughter; 
• Old man Cross, paralyzed by a bullet through his spine; 
• And a supporting cast of cowpokes, vaqueros, schemers, ne’er-do-wells and slimeballs.

Part pulp noir, part dystopian gothic western, part satiric magic realism antiwar sex farce, Hog Wild is the illegitimate offspring of a ménage à trois among Orwell’s Animal Farm, George Miller’s The Road Warrior and Verna Bloom of Animal House and High Plains Drifter fame.

TALKING POINTS

• As the world falls apart around us (war, the pandemic, terrorists, pollution, gun violence, global warming), add satiric fiction to your TBR list for laughter. How Woods expects (and hopes) readers will react to Hog Wild
• Find out Woods’ dream cast of characters if Hog Wild were made into a movie 
• Does satire have to offend? Woods explains the art of writing satire and pulp noir fiction.
• Woods includes footnotes in this novel, which is very unusual, even unheard of, in fiction. Find out why he did it in Hog Wild. 
• Why did Woods set Hog Wild in Texas, the “Lone Star State,” the home of the Alamo, a state run by those he considers to be mad dog politicians? 
• Satire has been described as the opposite of realism but at the same time typically portrays a picture of the world that is very real. Hog Wild is intended to entertain you, make you laugh, then to make you think. Woods can explain the underlying messages in this dystopian satire.