365 INFANTRY: Autumn 2025 Starts SEPTEMBER 15TH! Here's Why.
A Reflection on Growing Up & Renewed Inspiration...
Welcome back once again, friends! Now, those who’ve been with us for the past few years know I’m not afraid of the one-week delay if things are going south and the magazine’s quality is on the line. However, I don’t normally break out the gap week this early, but there are two good reasons for doing so:
NEW SCHEDULE — Going forward, 365 Infantry will drop during the third week of the month rather than the second. I’ve been doing it so damn often that I figured it’d probably be better to simply make it the new time than to keep desperately clinging to some frail idea of a perfect schedule. The work’s done when it’s done, and seeing as I’m now 0 for 2 on crowdfund campaigns, I think it’s clear I get to be about as precious as I wish with the series. It’s my passion project from here on out, and that’s the way it’ll stay until the end.
NEW ME — This is where I’m gonna have to ditch the list format and explain myself a bit…
This little gem of a piece I wrote during the first of two short film scoring assignments, the backup track for a house party sequence. I’ve never penned anything quite like it, and it came after two months of things I never quite thought would happen, happening.
Firstly, I’ve been published again! In fact, this seems to be the year of me being published all over the place.
Mistcreek Tales #1 (Aug. 2025)
Space Opera Stories Vol. 2 (Aug. 2025)
‘til Death Do Us Part (May 2025)
Rock and Roll Mercenaries (May 2025)
Go West: Frontier Adventures #2 (Apr. 2025)
I’ve penned tales of clashing swords, spaceship battles, Old West retribution and more, on top of some incredibly rewarding stories ripped from the world of Haven and the Wastelands.
Secondly, my tastes have been changing. No, this isn’t the classic tale of “hair metal” being made passé by grunge, only for that to OD in the corner and give birth to modern radio rock. I would be as much a hipster ass-hat for abandoning my love of classic metal as I was for snubbing the fruits of grunge, shoegaze, and the New Rock Revolution because I decided to get my teenaged opinions from others instead of growing a pair and owning my tastes.
No, this change of pace is the end result of me trying new things, enjoying them, and welcoming them into my increasingly eclectic fold. I’ve found myself falling in love with films I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy like Blade Runner 2049. I finally broke my long-standing fast from Mad Max: Fury Road and loved it (though that wasn’t really a leap of faith on my part judging by my work here, was it?). I’ve been delighting in books I hadn’t gotten around to, and finding genuine merit in art that—while not written off—I hadn’t thought much of even in my defense of it. Yes, I am that Great Gatsby-reading, Nirvana-blasting, 12 Angry Men-watching, Rothko-studying sonofabitch all your favorite right-wing tut-tutters warned you about and I’m loving every second.
But I’m also deepening my love of Walter Hill and his brilliant brand of American masculinity in genre cinema. Even my tepid response to 1984’s Streets of Fire last year has improved substantially after pairing it with the 1979 classic The Warriors. Also didn’t hurt that I washed it down a month later with the killer crime flick The Driver, itself now in my Top 100 of All-Time. I’ve also been digging up heaps of killer deep cuts from the world of 80s metal and electronica. If y’all ain’t heard ZAR yet, drop everything you’re doing and crank this shit up:
And if Lucifer’s Friend John Lawton and ZAR aren’t your cup of tea, try the AOR of a supergroup-free John Wetton on for size:
Didn’t mean for the crossfire theme to double up there, that’s just luck of the draw.
But speaking of music! While I’m starting to make softer rock in my DAW, I’ve also been learning a few other neat tricks:
Chiptunes, baby! And legit ones too thanks to the Genny VST giving me the 16-bit superpowers I’ve been wanting since high school. You have no idea the funk that’s been unleashed upon this world thanks to these tools. Funk that’s gonna be put to very good use in the not-too-distant future...
The big picture point is this: I’m expanding in all directions. I’ve got my old loves I cherish and my new loves I’m fostering. I’ve got film projects back on the table alongside Wild Eye Archive (still coming soon), new music I’m writing, and a comical amount of shit behind-the-scenes on everything from the sword-and-sorcery world of Battleborn to good-old Go West and beyond.
Now, what the hell does all this have to do with 365 Infantry?
Simple: its purpose in my life.
I’m no longer in a place where 365 is my only purebred creative outlet. It never was, but it always bore the brunt of being my “vision statement.” I approached this series as an Artist with a capital A.
Was I an indie author? Yes.
Was I a multitasking freak of nature? Certainly.
But above all else, I treated this series as my creative playground and a place where some of my most personal thoughts came out. They made their veiled appearances in storylines such as The Hunt or the pointed desert politics of “Madhound Theory” from last year. They’re baked into this denim-and-leather world I cooked up all those years ago. I can call it pulp all I like, but it was never purebred, Street-&-Smith-worthy stuff. Nor was it bona fide New Wave cut from the Ellison-sanctioned cloth of Dangerous Visions. It was as all my favorite works are: amalgamations of everything I had in me at the time.
The problem is that so many of my current muses, ideas, and fascinations do not fit what 365 is. They cannot be crowbarred into the world the way I tried with surfing in “Beats A Wave Pool” or model railroading in “Tin Plate Alley.” Because of its retrofuture conceit, I can’t really address the state of today that—for the first time in my actual, honest-to-God life—I finally feel ready and willing to address in some literary-minded humorist prose (if not in my cinema just yet). It’s not that I lack the ability to do any of these things with the necessary finesse, but that I don’t think they should be footnotes to what we’ve built here, nor should I be muddying up the crystal-clear aesthetic and thematic vision I’ve had for this series since the get-go.
I know where the series’ overarching story ends. I know which stepping stones to put in place, stepping stones that’ll be falling into place sooner than I expected. I also know what blank spots to take advantage of for when I return to the series down the road. The gaps in time I can call on when, for old time’s sake, Annual Collections can become just plain-old Annuals. Anthologies packed with previously untold tales of Gibson, Knox, Lita and all the rest, as well as the offbeat speculative fiction and comics that’ve made stories like “The Sabbath of J.F. Kwan” personal favorites of anything I’ve ever written.
Point is: without the piss-and-vinegar of my long-since spoiled undergrad experience coursing through my veins and without the weight of my entire artistic process resting on this project’s shoulders, I’m taking another week on 365 Infantry because I need to know what the hell this series means to me now. I need to know why it is I’m still writing it, and I don’t have any slick advertiser truisms left to hoodwink me into faking that faith. I know it’s not for nothing; frighteningly specific fortune cookies do not lie. But I need to know now, more than ever, what it stands for in my body of work.
If you’re feeling up to it, let me know what 365 Infantry means to you in the comments below. But as always:
May God Bless You & This Force.
Wow, you have been busy, Jacob! If you are on a Walter Hill kick, you should check out an early '70s hardboiled crime film he did called 'Hickey & Boggs.'
What 365 Infantry means to me? Something.... nostalgic.