Biography

Below are brief recaps of some material I have written. To date I have published 11 books and finished many others. I'm currently working on book #12. 

Stop Rewind Fast Forward: 1993 (2026)

This is the 2nd in my planned series of year-by-year music history books. While heavily researched, it still veers much more toward subjective opinions and personal essays – this is not some dry academic tone. My approach is a much more oblique one, shall we say.

Anyway, here’s the official blurb:

Neil Young, also known as The Godfather Of Grunge, acquires this title by releasing…a mellow, mostly acoustic album name-checking his most famous, middle of the road singer-songwriter effort from two decades earlier. Meanwhile, before almost anyone ever heard the term “grunge,” a little revolutionary road festival with a strange name launched the alternative music revolution. Until about six months later, when everyone suddenly agreed that it didn’t, and handed off credit for this to Nirvana instead.

These and many other incongruities of the early 1990s music scene are examined at great length. With additional in depth explorations of Smashing Pumpkins, Primus, and some pioneering Lollapalooza lineups, author Jason McGathey continues his “Stop Rewind Fast Forward” series documenting yet another pivotal year in the history of popular music as we know it – and also as we only think we know it.

If this sounds like your cup of independently brewed java, then I am confident ye shall soon be singing its praises…along with the lyrics to Harvest Moon, Disarm, My Name Is Mud, Heart-Shaped Box, No Rain, Gin and Juice, What’s Up, Sober and, who knows, perhaps even Shock To The System.

Here are the links for acquiring it in both popular formats:

ebook

paperback

And then here’s the accompanying Spotify playlist, to get you in the proper mood:

Well-Behaved Monsters (2025)

Formatting these for the various sites and formats is positively BRUTAL! I swear, 2 1/2 years of writing and editing feels less torturous than a few days messing around with this stuff. Anyway, here’s my little blurb about the novel:

Conventional wisdom in the pickup world is dead. Such is the dread soaked revelation sinking in, for this loose pack of twentysomething singles, after endless outings on the nightlife scene.

But what battleground tactics will lead them to the promised land instead? The answers to this riddle prove as shocking as the strategies employed. For they will soon settle upon a series of outrageous stunts, meant to make them stand out from the anonymous rabble – while it’s true that smacking random strangers on their backsides is perhaps not as common as it used to be, most standard icebreakers have been trod so far into the ground that there’s no hope of standing out otherwise. Much more original approaches are therefore required instead.

For example, what about pretending to be married? Or dressing the part and learning the lingo necessary to invade the country music, hip-hop, and beach bum scenes? Is wearing an eyepatch totally out of the question? These and many other timeless mysteries are among those our intrepid group investigates at length and acts upon.

When some of them eventually discover what truly works, the results are as unexpected as their outlandish ideas. Still others will refuse to believe in their successes, despite the causes and effects parading around in plain sight. For most, however, in particular their hapless targets, once these concepts catch fire, they have considerable reason to wish this mischievous, costumed genie had never been poured from its mid-range liquor bottle. Oh, if only they could return to a quainter day, when everyone was screwing around with silly props instead! Because when it becomes irrefutable what kind of twisted behavior acts like a magnet in attracting mates, these findings are legitimately monstrous, and give everybody involved a dimmer view of human nature.

Let me know what you think! I’m always open to suggestions on tweaking the cover art and/or my little elevator pitch there. And for anyone serious about reviewing it, I’ll gladly forward you a free advance copy. For everybody else, here are the links in case you can’t go on without reading this book:

Well-Behaved Monsters (paperback)

I also cranked this following playlist religiously throughout the project. Which, as I’ve said, took me about 2 1/2 years. Though finishing the first draft clear back in ’03, I didn’t pick it up again until the summer of 2022. And have been hammering away at it ever since. Anyway, these are the songs that inspired and informed the period in question:

Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot (2024)

Life in a locally owned, health-conscious grocery store chain…it might be organic, but it sure isn’t natural!

Any lowly peon who has ever worked retail or for that matter an office job will find much to laugh about and relate to in this highly comical epic, of a company whose chaos hits all too close to home. From blowhard bosses who insist “somebody” needs to do something whenever any problems arise, to the crybaby technophobes running riot all over the enterprise, to the widely held misperception that Good With Computers is an actual department, it’s all right here, in this fresh, modern workplace tale so realistic you might swear that you have lived it. But of course, nothing this preposterous could happen for real, right?

Get your copy today!

paperback

Kindle

Stop Rewind Fast Forward: 1992 (2022)

This is a nifty little slice of music history/criticism that is finally seeing the light of day, after many years of sporadic work. It examines the music scene circa 1992, with a particular focus on Guns N’ Roses and Soundgarden, leading up to a concert with both in Dayton, Ohio. Though an unexpectedly brutal project to research and get straightened out, I think it turned out well.

Pick up the ebook on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3SX8szU

Or even better, since I’m semi-disgruntled with Amazon, it’s also available on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=pJqyEAAAQBAJ

Suggested playlist – here is a bunch of the music I was listening to and writing about during this project. So you might get a kick out of cranking these tunes while reading it:

The Doom Statues (2021)

Though dormant for many years, when an artists’ retreat in the country reopens, a group of creatively inclined strangers cannot resist its charms. None of them find it odd that the locals steer clear of the place – at least not initially. Long before the property’s dark past reveals itself to them, however, they begin to realize this retreat offers more than they signed up for. That creatives are perhaps ill-equipped for dealing with the quote unquote real world, and that they may not escape this place any more than they can themselves.

paperback

The Doom Statues – Smashwords e-book

Days Without End (2020)

A sleep deprivation bet careens out of control when a group of friends get together over spring break. One seasoned reporter, caught by chance in this maelstrom, attempts making sense of the carnage, though entirely out of his realm. While beginning as a lighthearted lark, what he encounters eventually finds him ruminating on our current worldwide climate, and its parallels to this insane odyssey.

paperback

Days Without End – Barnes & Noble/Nook ebook

Days Without End – Kindle edition

Days Without End – Apple ebook

Riots Of Passage (2019)

The follow-up to One Hundred Virgins, about two decades in the making. I’m really proud of this one but at the same time have never been quite so nervous about anything I’ve written. Not even close, really. As this play on words in the title might allude to, this book documents a riotous year living on the Ohio State University campus, with the familiar cast (and then some) those of you remember from the first book. Keep in mind I was just a loafer crashing the scene and in no way ever actually enrolled at this or any other college. Anyway, here’s my official blurb for the project:

In this highly anticipated follow-up to his memoir “One Hundred Virgins,” the author continues to document in riotous fashion life on a major college campus, in a major U.S. city. Though specifically Ohio State University and Columbus, Ohio, in a sense the particulars don’t matter because such experiences are universal.

Joined by his familiar cast of fellow reprobates, along with a healthy crop of fresh recruits, this crew closes out their final year exploring campus. If the first six months were centered around discovery, then this epoch finds them operating under the banner of refinement and expansion. As always, the journey is nothing if not wildly unpredictable, and a continual reminder that it’s often best to just start running, with no end goal in sight.

“If I had to describe how any of us, and certainly yours truly, ever manages to accomplish anything,” McGathey observes in these passages, “I would say it runs something like this: we start down a hallway toward the object of our desire at the other end, but a rug is pulled out from under us, just about on a daily basis, before we get anywhere near it. Yet every so often, after landing on the floor, you happen to spot this secret passage in the wall that you never would have noticed otherwise. Certainly not by remaining back on the starting block. And this passage commonly leads to something as good as or even better than what you originally mapped.”

If this sounds like your cup of tea, it would mean a great deal to me if you would snap up this book. Here are the links for doing so:

Riots Of Passage – paperback

Riots Of Passage Kindle edition

Accelerated Times (2013)

Imagine you wake up one day to find 99% of the world’s population has disappeared – and then 99% again the morning after that. Phones and internet down, highways destroyed, a government that isn’t exactly forthcoming with answers…how would you go about figuring out what became of friends and family? The protagonists confront these questions and more in Jason McGathey’s chilling new novel, set in an all too believable near future. 

Fun little trivia fact: I had been working on this and sitting on the title Accelerated Times for years upon years. Something like six months before I was set to publish it, Tim Ferriss came out with a book that had “Accelerated Times” in the title. At first I was tremendously irritated by this coincidence…but then thought, eh, it probably couldn’t hurt my sales any. Let’s just say the results are debatable, however.

paperback

Also available in a Kindle edition

One Hundred Virgins (2006)

Three small town friends descend upon and confront life at a large university. Yet as their warped minds push against the city beyond, the barrier gives in ways neither they nor the fantastic cast of characters they encounter could foretell in a thousand years. A thousand years, or a thousand madcap experiments, but when three bachelors meet one hundred virgins the results combust in a witty, introspective look at the modern twentysomething experience.

One Hundred Virgins – pick up your paperback copy now!

Kindle

Google Play

Night Driving (2001)

This one I personally took out of print at some point. I think the plot’s decent but the writing is kind of weak, plus there are a ton of typos. From a publishing standpoint, the early 2000s were this weird hybrid era where print-on-demand had just started, but Amazon and other major players hadn’t gotten into the game yet. So basically you no longer had to pay to print up a bunch of your own copies anymore, or hope to catch on with a publisher, which seemed mind-blowing…but at the same time, had to shell out I think something like $300 for the artwork and design. It was worth it, for the experience, and the relief at being able to say I’d published something instead of just talking about it. But no, I didn’t quite break even on this one. The last time I sold a copy I think they paid me something like 28 cents.

Incidentally, you may occasionally hear rumors that One Hundred Virgins is “out of print.” But it has been in print continuously since 2006. Folks who are a little bit confused on the topic might tell you that my first book is no longer available. That’s true. But Night Driving is actually the book in question.

Other Published Work:

Unfortunately, a great deal of my freelance  material appeared when I lived in C-bus from 1997-2006,  usually for magazines that are no longer in print. I might scan and post someday when I get inspired. Here’s one recent piece I did have published, however, about a section of the Mountains-To-Sea Trail:

Elkin, An Urban DelightAlong the Mountains-To-Sea Trail