John Kratky
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I like crafting stories, plain and simple. Sometimes dark and dramatic, sometimes fun and pulpy, always with a goal towards mingling introspective ideas and entertainment. My writing has always been within genres, especially horror and noir, and I find this as something to embrace. Just because you write within genre doesn’t mean it is a boundary you can’t cross. If the pen tells me we aren’t doing genre anymore, then we all go where we end up. If it is someplace strange and new, all the better.
I self-publish all of my work under the moniker Coffee Time Comix, whether comic book or short story. Everything I have released thus far has been on my own dime and until recently, had solely been digital content. It has been a long ride for me going from webcomics to print. Thanks to empowering tools like Kickstarter, I can keep building and keep working for as long as I have the ending for it.
Sign up to my email list where you will receive updates on what I’m currently working on & when it will be released. You will also receive a free PDF of my graphic novel Upon the Judge’s Order, a horror story about a corrupt judge who jails the women of his village in the caverns below his home for the crime of witchcraft. Is he right? Or does he do this for his own pleasure?
Right now I reside in Reno, NV with my wife Jessica and two cats, Fatty & Kiddo. During quarantine we watched every single Martin Scorcese movie in order.
Home Free
“…sometimes you’ve got to be the monster.”
For Sara, a woman who has been on the run from monsters all her life, these are not easy words to speak. Her escape to the quiet life in a city on the Oregon Coast is rattled after she meets teenage sex worker Emmy at a local dive. Old bruises resurface and a fast friendship is formed when Sara decides to help Emmy escape the path she chose, knowing full well the trouble that lies at the edge of their decision. A stranger once helped Sara find a way out, it’s time to return the favor.
Set against an America that has been on a slow burn towards unrest between two divided factions and a government that has failed the people, Sara finds herself searching for freedom not just from the coming downfall, but a past entwined with the very events that started the revolution.
Home Free is a 5 issue mini-series of dramatic crime fiction. The first issue was funded through Kickstarter in November 2021, with subsequent issues coming out through crowdfunding throughout 2022. This is a sequel to The Black Wall, but it was written in a way that it doesn’t matter which you read first, as reading either will create a unique narrative for whichever you read second.
SHORT CRIME STORIES
During the Kickstarter campaigns for the Home Free series, a short story was written to coincide with issues 2 – 5. Each story takes place within the world of Home Free, sometimes with a character from the comic, or in the aftermath of an event that took place, but each one stands on its own and is meant to be read separately.
4 DAYS WITH MAY
May was in a bad way, tied with her own nylon stocking to the cold pipes of a porcelain sink in the bathroom of a cheap motel. There just didn’t seem to be any good way out of it. After she heard gunshots, there was silence, and she was certain the cops were only minutes away. Once they found her, she’d have a lot of questions to lie her way out of, and if all that wasn’t bad enough, she really had to pee.
Spend four days with May and you’ll never forget the time you had.
INHERITOR OF THE DEAD
Meet Joe, a forensic cleaner with a wife, a kid, a couple of dogs, a mortgage, a car or two, a champion of good bourbon, and a collector of old horror comics. Of course, having a decent paying job doesn’t quite cover simple living anymore. While cleaning crime scenes, here or there, or maybe a lot, he just might take an item of value to make some extra cash.
Eventually, you take the wrong item. When Joe finds an ornate compass that only points West, his life quickly goes South. Inherit from the dead all you need, but they lay no claim on what comes your way.
The Black Wall
Ever since leaving the military, Hank Mitchum has been drifting through America. When he comes home to Reno after his mother’s death, he decides to settle to be closer to a daughter he’s never been close to. He takes a job as a security guard at a half-empty warehouse, passing his time writing letters to his dead friend Joseph, and viewing social upheaval from the safety of his television.
When Mark, an old military buddy comes to town, he introduces Hank to a new all-seeing system his surveillance company is working on. Hank is hired to be a subject for Mark’s cameras, where he’ll be filmed for months to show how a person’s every move can easily be traced.
After Hank gets involved with a young woman named Sara, there is a fight with a security guard that brings him trouble, but he soon finds that as long as Mark’s company has their eye on him, no real trouble can come his way. Unless of course, Mark says.
Getting Back To Normal
When you happen upon the corpse of a stranger, there are few choices to make in the matter. But if you’re name is Raccoon, then the only way about it is to make it a personal matter.
A veteran of the streets, Raccoon lives for the simple purposes of survival, getting food and getting high. Little does he know that after a night on the prowl for the necessities, he’d enter the new day as a vagabond detective.
The dead stranger who just wanted to get back home strikes Raccoon into motion all over the small city of Reno, and out to abandoned mining towns only inhabited by the ghosts of the past. Getting Back To Normal is a travel-guide to a tortured soul who just wants to get things right, but he can’t do that without facing a whole to of wrong.
The Goblet At The Black Oak
A mythic goblet has sat on the shelf at The Black Oak for decades untouched. Fear keeps human hands off the toxic drink for it is connected to the law of goblin-folk, and only the one who has paid for the filling of the goblet can drink from it. Of course, new bartender Luis laughs off the whole idea as a joke and drinks up.
It isn’t long before he has to reckon with the results of breaking a most sacred law. Luis gets a visit from goblin administrator Burcreet, who makes it known to the goblin world that Luis’s life is fair game from here on out. Luis now has to reckon with his decision as he confronts monster after monster who wants his head. Will there be an opportunity for escape, or will Luis be subject to a life living in a prison of his own making?
Upon The Judge’s Order
Is there really a witch problem in the city of Wolventry, or are the citizens being lead to crowd madness by the desires of a misogynistic monster?
Judge Samuel Winterborne claims to have uncovered a witch cult that he plans to end through trial and prosecution, then lock within the cells beneath his home where he also keeps his collection of torture devices. As he forces out confessions that may or may not be true, an ugly truth comes into play and the good judge locks up the woman who may have bee his only protection. Though she may also be his greatest enemy.
John Kratky - Crime & Horror Comic Books 