Author
Joshua C.
Patton
Who is Joshua C. Patton?Joshua C. Patton is a speculative-fiction author, chaos merchant, and part-time emissary from whatever strange dimension keeps handing him ideas at inconvenient hours. His work stitches together post-apocalyptic ruin, Martian politics, ancient AIs, bizarre prophecies, and the kind of characters who run toward glowing relics because “how bad could it be?”He is the creator of the Relics of Folly universe, a sprawling multiverse of ruined worlds, broken histories, and cosmic jokes that may or may not be aimed directly at the reader. Patton has published an anthology of sixteen stories, the novella ZĀN, and an expanding constellation of shorts scattered across platforms like breadcrumbs from a gremlin with a keyboard.Powered by ADHD lightning, emotional honesty, dark humor, and the persistent belief that reality should be weirder, Patton writes with the momentum of a man trying to outrun his own imagination. He lives in Ohio, maintaining a backyard ecosystem that has absolutely gotten out of hand, a family that tolerates his nonsense, and a goal to publish 1,000 stories by 2035 because why aim small when you can aim ridiculous?He is not here to behave.
He is here to build worlds.
Notes & Oddities
November 13, 2025 - This month I have come up with a few new distractions that may turn into new stories. One is about surviving an apocolypse in real time. Another about a man who hates baseball who is the lone survivor of a plague. There are many more and I really hope i can find the time to pull those stories out of the ether. But the main goal is to finish The Mad River Prophecy. Its getting closer to being tamed. Stay Tuned Y'all!-JoshSeptember 18, 2025 - This month, the ADHD goblins have been winning more battles than I’d like to admit. My brain has been bouncing around like a loose marble in a tin can, plenty of ideas, half a dozen distractions, and yes… actual writing, too.The result? A handful of new stories are up on Medium, each spun from the chaos in my head. If you haven’t read them yet, go check them out, I promise they’re worth the ride.And of course, The Mad River Prophecy is still coming. I might zigzag to get there, but the work continues. The world keeps expanding, and every detour somehow feeds back into the big story.Thanks for sticking with me through the noise. More words, worlds, and wildness are on the way.– JoshP.S. If you haven’t yet, you can also grab my novella Zān
on Amazon.July 21, 2025 - Kicking Tires, Lighting Fires
We’re closing in on the end of editing for Relics of Folly: Book I – The Mad River Prophecy.
Which means fewer chapters being rewritten from scratch and more obsessing over things like whether the word “rusted” appears too often (it does), and whether a comma can change the fate of a sentence (it can).But here’s the twist:
I'm not sending this book out into the world alone. It'll be launching with a companion piece, The Scrolls of Books the Bibleman, a delightful pile of questionable memories, rewritten history, and emotional monologues from everyone's favorite scripture-hoarding disaster linguist.
Think less encyclopedia, more uncensored confessional with footnotes and occasional hallucinations.Meanwhile, because I thrive on creative overcommitment, I’m also hammering away at a second volume of short stories—tentatively titled We Will Cross That Bridge While It’s Burning: Volume II.
If the first one dipped its toes into chaos, this one dives in headfirst with a lit match between its teeth.So yes, things are happening. Too many things. Probably all at once.
Updates will follow. Or explode. Either way, you’ll hear about it.– Josh