HIP HIP HOORAY! Pre-orders for my new book are live!

Never judge a book by its cover, especially when it's got someone as ugly as me on the front.

Aloha, y’all! It’s a big day here at Randonesia HQ, and I woke up this morning hopping around like a coked-up grasshopper at a trampoline park in anticipation of sending this out to you, my beloved Substack readers (and yes, I do love you guys, you sexy-ass reading beasts, you). Why am I so excited?

Because once again, to my complete amazement, the unbelievable has occurred: on February 18, 2025, an actual publisher (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette) is going to put out a book (Just Beyond the Light) written entirely by a certain middle aged, moderately famous, and (formerly insanely drunk) alcoholic ding-dong (ME)… and today, pre-order links for said book are officially live and available here! I would be lying through my crooked-ass coffee-stained teeth if I said I wasn’t extremely stoked about this. Yes, yes, I know— I would look a lot smoother and accomplished and waaaaay more writerly if I acted like this was just another day in the highly sophisticated literary life I lead as an already, ahem ahem, best-selling author… but it’s not! It’s a huge deal to me, King Dork, so I won’t even try to front and act blasé about it— there goes my cool-guy image.

Kinda blue and really sweaty, like a dopesick Smurf or some shit. Fabio the romance novel cover model, I am not.

Luckily for me, I don’t give a rat’s ass about looking like a “cool guy”. To quote one of my favorite bands since 8th Grade, the mighty Descendents:

I’m not a cool guy anymore,

As if I ever was before.

What I am and always have been is an unabashed, utterly unashamed, old-school NERD who has loved books deeply since I first learned to read. The fact that I am going to have another book with my name on it on store shelves relatively soon makes me positively ecstatic. Yes! You did it again! You are an author! You’re actually a real author! keeps ringing through my head— it’s still a freaking miracle to me, even though I’ve been published previously. I think I’m still continually amazed by this fact because, entirely unlike my career as a professional musician, which kinda just slowly happened with no real desire (and certainly zero foresight) on my part, ever since I was kid I’ve always actively wanted to be a published author.

I never wanted to be a professional musician when I was younger; it just didn’t cross my mind, not one single solitary time. Even after I joined my band, started playing some shows, and we began to develop a tiny following, I never thought that one day we could maybe actually earn a living from our band— why on earth would I? I come from the 1980’s punk and hardcore scene, and all the bands I loved and went to go see back then weren’t traveling in tour buses and rocking arenas, they were rolling out to tiny dusty-ass clubs in rusty-ass vans whenever they could get enough time off from their day jobs as dishwashers, construction workers, and grocery store clerks to play a few gigs. After a while of being in lamb of god, I did start thinking that maybe one day we would release an album. But when we started putting out records, the music industry was already in complete turmoil with the onset of online piracy (which, of course, was simply given a facelift and rebranded as Spotify, Apple Music, etc.— just ask me about my massive quarterly streaming checks, mwuahahahahahah- I’M RICH! FILTHY RICH!) Plus, lamb of god’s songs obviously aren’t the sort that rocket up the charts before getting placements in Subaru commercials, so I never expected to make any money from records anyway. No, in the beginning, the absolute pinnacle of my musical aspirations was far more modest: A) have a lot of fun while writing and recording some honest songs, B) drink one metric fuck ton of free beer, and C) maybe, maybe rock the stage at CBGB one day… if we got wildly lucky. And I accomplished all three of those goals, with varying degrees of success (especially if you can define “drinking yourself into a state of severe alcoholism” as success). I go into greater detail about all of that in Chapter Nine of Just Beyond the Light, “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg”. Somehow our band turned into a career though— it’s still a complete surprise that I’m super grateful for, but for me that was never the plan, duuuuude.

Me living that rockstar life while busting suds in Richmond, VA’s, West End. I once did an interview with a Japanese music magazine on the landline of this restaurant’s kitchen. My coworkers thought it was awesome that a journalist was calling from Tokyo to interview me, and for a few brief moments I was the coolest guy in the house… until the bus pans filled up and table 7 needed more silverware.

But to be a published author? One of those mysterious and rarified creatures who reached out into the cosmos and somehow brought back such beautiful words, magically stringing them into all those gorgeous sentences into paragraphs into pages into chapters and finally into books? Yep, I read and analyzed enough books to believe that I could be one of those people, and from childhood on, I was always daydreaming of joining that illustrious society known as authors. I can still remember the first concept I ever had for a book popping into my head as I lay stretched out on the front porch swing of my grandmother’s tiny house on a sweltering summer’s day. I was 9 or 10 years old, heavily into Bruce Lee movies and Star Wars, and decided to write a hybrid science fiction/martial arts novel about giant robots doing animal-style kung fu. I never wrote that story though, and back when I was still that skinny little kid dreaming away down in the middle of the peanut fields of Southampton County, VA, I never imagined my first book was going to be a memoir about going to prison in a foreign country— and I wish it wasn’t. But life is strange and sad and tragic and heartbreakingly beautiful in all of its unexpected and terrible glory, and we have to make the most of the cards we’re dealt.

Well, whatever this dude wrote this book about, I bet it wasn’t pleasant.

The title of my first book, Dark Days: A Memoir, is pretty on the nose. You look at the cover, scan the title, see my scowling face, ghostly strands of a prison’s barbed wire fence running across my sizable honker, and think Well, whatever this dude wrote this book about, I bet it wasn’t pleasant. As I recall, I didn’t even come up with the title— my editor, the amazing Ben Schafer, did. But Just Beyond the Light is mine, and I find it a bit more enigmatic, even though it also implies darkness.

I came up with the title eight years ago after reading something— for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was or who wrote it. Whatever I was reading, it was centered around the history of the human race and our eternal struggle for safety and comfort. In the beginning, as primitive humans that safety and comfort- indeed, our very survival- was dependent upon banding together in small groups while remaining within the warm circle of the campfire’s light, for out in the cold darkness of night massive and deadly predators lay in wait. The reading went on to detail how in modern times (absent the great sabre-toothed cats and gigantic snakes and whatever else regularly made lunch meat of us), a psychic echo of those times still remains, imbedded deeply within our genetic code. This primeval defense mechanism, this instinct to belong, manifests itself today as an aversion to stepping outside our comfort zones, especially if doing so will invoke the disapproval of others. This is why people stay in jobs they hate, carry on in romantic relationships that aren’t healthy, and maintain friendships with parasitic people that don’t add anything to their life— it’s that ancient, lingering fear of being ostracized by the group, a hangover from the time when harsh disapproval could result in expulsion from the small tribe, resulting in certain death.

We’re not cavemen anymore, and if you want to go for greatness, there are times when you have to turn your back on the herd …

Wow, all of that makes total sense, I remember thinking, but fuck that. We’re not cavemen anymore, and if you want to go for greatness, there are times when you have to turn your back on the herd and walk alone into the cold. If you ever want to find out what you’re truly made of, you have to step out just beyond the light and peer into the black night of your soul, face down those demons, kill them, and move on to a higher level. Fuck sitting by the campfire.

Ooh! “Just Beyond the Light”— that’s a dope title for a book, I thought and jotted it down in the notes section of my phone. That was on August 27, 2016— eight years later it’s finally on a book cover people can order. As I wanted to the cover to be as literal of a visual representation of the title as possible, I booked the most unpleasant photo session ever… with myself.

To be perfectly clear, I did not want my photo on the cover of this book, nor did I want it on the cover of Dark Days— it just feels egotistical to me. But a publisher’s primary aim is to sell books, not indulge their authors’s artsy-fartsy pretensions, and despite the fact that I want my books to be read because they are well written and stand on their own merit, not because I’m a dude in a semi-well known band… well, the fact is that I am a dude in a semi-well known band. And dudes in semi-well known bands have those wonderful things called fans, some of which really enjoy reading, some of which might even pick up my book in the bookstore, see my ugly face on the cover, and say “Oh yeah, I forgot— Randy wrote a book. Fuck it, I’ll give ‘er a whirl.” So thank you very much to all of you lamb of god fans who read my stuff— I’m lucky as hell to have you on my side!

Plus, the grim reality is that in an era where people are reading less and FUCKING ENGLISH TEACHERS are handing out summaries of books, not the books themselves (this should be classified as intellectual child abuse in my opinion), it’s really tough out there in publishing world. A pragmatic author will take advantage of any edge he’s got, and I’m definitely blessed to have a pretty big edge. So I bitched and moaned both times, but eventually came to my senses and agreed to have my photo on the cover of both books, as long as it wasn’t some shot of me onstage with my band. However, since I’m a photographer, there was absolutely no way I was paying someone else to take a photo that I didn’t want in the first place, so out came the tripod and remote shutter release.

For the cover of Dark Days, my publisher didn't give me any artistic direction other than “Get us a portrait.” As the book is primarily about my time spent in a Czech prison, I figured they didn’t want a picture of me grinning like some redneck buffoon (which I can do all too easily, as it is an integral part of my genetic makeup), so I decided to go for a serious and concerned look. It’s really hard to fake a serious and concerned look for a portrait, especially when you are the one taking the photo, so I knew I had to somehow induce an actual serious and concerned mind state somehow. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that the best way to do this would be to listen to a wee spot of uber-moronic talk radio, so I drove down to my rented writing studio/surf shack on Oak Island, NC (I miss that house, dammit), set up my photo rig, sat down in my writing chair, turned on one of those horrifying shows hosted by some conspiracy theory espousing and school shooting denying moron and started pressing the remote shutter button in my hand every couple of seconds. I honestly can’t remember who’s show it was, and it doesn’t really matter, as these days completely amoral wack-job conspiracy theorists are a dime a dozen, somehow rising above their natural stations as poorly spelled sign-waving street corner lunatics to elected positions in the halls of the United States Congress. As the chucklehead host began rambling on about legal attempts to protect our ocean life (a topic near and dear to my heart as a surfer and coastal resident), it didn’t take long for me get in the proper portrait taking mood.

“So get this: apparently there’s some group of tree huggers in Congress trying to force the Federal government to pass legislation protecting all the poor little sharks in the ocean from getting their fins from getting off,” the host said, “‘I guess ‘cause the Chinese like to make a soup out of ‘em.”

My finger started pressing the shutter button faster.

“Haw haw haw! Those Chinese sure do like eatin’ weird stuff! But yeah, that sounds just like our government, worrying about a bunch damn sharks when we got bigger fish to fry on here on dry land, pardon the pun, haw haw haw,” the equally chuckleheaded co-host chimed in.

My finger pressed the button even faster.

“This is your government, ladies and gentlemen— they’d rather worry about murderous fish with fangs than the American people…”

“Damn right! And you’re gonna have to pardon me if I don’t feel sorry for all those bloodthirsty man-eating sharks! Ain’t these hippies ever watched Jaws? This is your government, ladies and gentlemen— they’d rather worry about murderous fish with fangs than the American people,” the host said.

My hand was slick with slick, I heard a constant clicking sound, and suddenly I developed a cramp in my arm. I looked down and realized I was squeezing and pressing the plastic remote shutter so fast and so hard that it was about to break. These assholes obviously had no idea that as apex predators, sharks are essential for maintaining the balance of our planet’s increasingly fragile oceanic ecosystem, an ecosystem upon which the survival of the human race depends. No sharks= dead oceans. Dead oceans= extinct human race. Fuck you, you Godless fucking IDIOTS, I thought and turned off the radio. I dumped my camera’s memory card into my Lightroom photo editing software and began going through the photos— I had taken over one hundred exposures.

Well fuck you, too, buddy.

In the first twenty or so photos, I looked very self-conscious, but by shot number thirty, I just looked really angry— in fact, I had to hunt hard to find a fairly neutral photo, one that didn’t look like I was on the verge of stabbing someone. I’m not sure I managed to achieve the serious and concerned look I was hoping for, but I did manage to totally forget that I was taking my own portrait, and the expression you see on my face on the cover of Dark Days is 100% genuine. And yes, it is very scary when a big shark appears beside you in the water, which I go into detail about in Chapter Two of Just Beyond the Light, “Doomsday”, but that doesn’t mean we should hunt them to extinction… not if we want to continue to exist. Leave the sharks be, y’all— the ocean is their house, not ours.

Plus, I’m a surfer. Yes, getting bitten is always a real possibility, but we just deal with it when a shark shows up. What am I gonna do, not surf? Pffft. You might as well kill me.

Fast forward to early 2024, and long before the final manuscript of Just Beyond the Light was turned in, my editor Ben began bugging me for the cover photo. I blew him off as long as I could, which was a huge mistake. I told him had a killer plan for the cover photo, and I did, but I kept the plan to myself. I wanted to pay homage to one of my favorite bands of all time, Samhain, who put out an amazing album in 1986 called November Coming Fire. On the back of the album’s cover are photos of the members of Samhain, dressed in black and looking all grim and evil and cool while kneeling in front of a fire at dusk. One winter day I was playing the album and looking at its back cover when I thought

Bad-ass! That’s what I’m gonna do for the new book— Danzig and London May will love it!

This record RIPS.

And it was a great plan, but I should have executed it much, much earlier than June, which is when my editor finally began to lose patience with me and began asking more and more frequently where the photo was. In case y’all didn’t know, June in the American South is not exactly the best time of year to build a bonfire in your back yard… but it was time to go for greatness, to walk boldly into the dark, to stand firm and brave just beyond the campfire’s light, right? I set up my tripod thirty minutes or so before sunset, gathered up some wood, and connected my camera to my phone to use as a remote shutter. I knelt in the dirt on my bony-ass knees, lit the stack of wood, and thought Thank God the smoke from this campfire will drive these mosquitos away, because these sons of bitches are tearing my ass up, goddamit.

But the mosquitos didn’t go away, in fact they steadily got worse— I think they actually enjoyed the smoke. I squatted there, constantly pressing the shutter button, checking and dialing in the exposure on my phone, adjusting the tripod, and soon my old man knees and lower back began to ache. Every time the fire started to die down, I would have to add more wood, and not only did that make me hotter, it changed the amount of light in the exposure, so I would have to adjust my camera settings again. I knelt in the dirt with my knees and lower back screaming at me, sweating like a pig, slapping mosquitos, and trying my best to look all cool and grim for the camera with my stupid sweaty face. Dude, you’re a goddamned idiot, I thought, For fuck’s sake, the album is called NOVEMBER Coming Fire, not June Backyard Dumpster Fire.

Finally, after about twenty minutes I gave up. Fuck this shit— whatever I got will have to do. If I had hired myself to take those photos, I would have given me the worst, most savage Yelp review ever written. Luckily, there were a number of cool shots— I sent three or four of them off to Ben, he gave them to Hachette’s book design department, and eventually we landed on something we all liked.

Original version of the image on the cover of my new book. Soooo sweaty, but it was worth it.

So that’s the story behind the title of my new book and its cover image. I’ll go into more detail on what the book is about in future posts. I really hope some of y’all will do me a huge favor and go ahead and pre-order it, as pre-orders make a massive difference in how a book performs and charts, which makes a huge difference in how long it remains in print and on store shelves— in other words, the book’s lifespan. Once again, you can pre-order it from the evil empire here and some other places here. (or even better, head on down to your local independently owned bookstore and have them order it for you!)

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One more thing, y’all…

Although I am very excited about my new book being available for pre-order, it’s an excitement tinged with sadness, grief, and a large amount of anxiety. As anyone paying the slightest attention to the news already knows, hurricanes have been absolutely destroying the Southeastern region of the United States, which is my home. I have family and friends living here, from Florida to Virginia— these are my people. Some of those people are currently evacuated from their homes as Hurricane Milton continues to batter the coast, others are hunkered down and praying for the best. It’s a very scary time, and this coming so soon after Hurricane Helene. I feel helpless, but what can I do? I mean, I’m just a musician, right? Well… speaking of musicians, I mentioned the band Samhain in the post above; here is a 20x30 framed photo I shot of my friend Glenn Danzig performing with Samhain at Riotfest in 2014:

The photo is part of an upcoming exhibit, it’s restricted to a very limited edition of one single print, and my plan was to gift it to Sir Danzig after the show was done. But after discussing it with Glenn, we decided together to auction it off in order to raise funds for hurricane relief. These people need help, and they need it now. 5B Artist Management, who handles my band, is working hard to set up the auction as quickly as possible, so stay tuned here for more news as soon as I get it! Or check out our band’s Instagram, @lambofgod, or my Instagram, @drandallblythe— we’ll post details there as soon as they become avaialble. Remember: social media can be a real pain in the ass and brainless cesspool of negativity, but it can also be used for good, so that’s what we’re trying to do!

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As always, thanks for reading Randonesia! Hit the button below to subscribe, and if you’re feeling generous, kick down a few lousy bucks to become a paid subscriber and support my work!