LOS ANGELES—Performer Chad Alva, who came into the business in 2008 using the name Vin Vericose and has remained a steadily working cocksman ever since, branched out last year into the world of publishing with the creation of his own imprint, Ephemerol Night Terrors.
Originally from Minneapolis, the 32-year-old artist of multiple stripes created the label, which uses Amazon's CreateSpace printing service, in order to publish his first novel, Popping Cherries, a semi-autobiographical "coming-of-age psychological horror story," as he describes it, about a 13-year-old boy who "is such a little pervert it's delibitating, and ... he is taking a new ADHD medication that looks just like cherry Pez, which actually hurts him more than it helps him."
Now, Ephemerol Night Terrors has released a second book—an anthology titled Split Lips: Stories About Love & Sex that debuted August 9—and a third, Warship Satan (Alva's second novel), is due to release by the end of this year.
Recounting the genesis of the imprint's name, Alva explained, "Ephemerol is a fictional drug from the 1981 David Cronenberg film Scanners (a personal favorite of mine). Throughout my 20s, I was very inspired by the concept of drug experiences and their severe effects on people. I've named several of my projects after this drug, including my progressive synth band, More Ephemerol. Another thing I've always been fascinated by is dreams and more specifically nightmares. Night terrors are the most severe form of nighmare, in my opinion. So the name represents drug-induced nightmares come to life—a pretty scary concept if you ask me."
It also seems to go hand-in-hand with the theme of Popping Cherries, which Alva said he began writing in 2006, before he ever entered porn, while he was on tour with his former band Dead to Fall. "I was sick of getting stoned and sitting around every day, so I took the initiative to start doing something else with my downtime," he recalled. "I had just read Chuck Palahniuk's Choke which all my friends were hyping up at the time, which was also the first popular book I had read since high school, and thought to myself, 'Wow, this book was really entertaining, but I could write something just as entertaining,' and so I began writing."
He continued, "In the beginning, all I had to work with conceptually was a rumor I had started about myself in junior high and a couple of dreams. Soon, I ended up weaving in a lot more details from my own pre-pubescent experiences, and eventually had a whole story. But as you could imagine, since I didn't know exactly what I wanted at first, the book took a very long time to finish. I would stop writing, sometimes for nine months at a time, then return to it. Each time I returned to it, more pieces of the puzzle came together, until eventually I was able to see the cohesive whole. I actually learned far more about my own developmental years through writing this book than I ever could have imagined."
All in all, he said, "It took me about five to six years to finish writing the book, and about two to three more years of working with editors and teaching myself how to self-publish. So, total, it took eight years to finish the book."
Having learned how to get a book into print, Alva turned to a number of adult industry cohorts to piece together ENT's second offering. Split Lips contains short stories mostly about sex and/or fetishes from authors including Oriana Small (aka Ashley Blue), Christopher Zeischegg (aka Danny Wylde), fetish performer Ingrid Mouth and former porn screenwriter Dan Reilly, as well as musician Ariel Rosenberg (aka Ariel Pink), fashion model Kris Kidd and more. The book also features cover art by erotic illustrator Apollonia Saintclair.
Meanwhile, Alva is putting the finishing touches on Warship Satan, which he says "is inspired by my real life transition going from touring in a metal band to getting into the porn industry, and all the juicy stuff that happened surrounding it."
With the experience under his belt of having penned Popping Cherries, he said this novel came to fruition much quicker. "I had the whole story laid out before I even started," he noted. "It was a lot easier this time around since the story is about 80 percent reality-based, whereas the first novel was more like 20 to 30 percent. It was as smooth as vanilla bean ice cream."
The story of Warship Satan revolves around 21-year-old Caleb Skaar, the bassist for a death metal band named—you guessed it—Warship Satan. As the synopsis details, "Following years of whiskey guzzling, promiscuous sex, and impractical blasphemy, a relation with an underage groupie dismantles his bubble of inconsequential hedonism. As his world crumbles, he migrates to a cultish island to pursue a career in pornography, in hopes of reinvigorating a wilfully neglectful existence. Outshined by the sadism of his successors, and drained by his lovers, Caleb finds himself scrounging for moral grounding in an ultimately immoral place; a dimension of true darkness."
"I'm really stoked to drop this one on the world," enthused Alva, who uses his real name, Chad Fjerstad, for his writing efforts. "It's the darkest piece of work I have ever put out there in the world."
In addition to ENT's books, however, the label has dabbled in releasing music ... on cassette. "I started releasing music through the label to release my own music," Alva imparted. "I figured, why just be a publishing house when I could be a multimedia production house instead, and put out any form of media that I feel inspired to? So I did.
"There has been a small niche audience for the cassette tape resurgence in the last five to six years," he went on. "It's kind of a novelty but it's a fun thing to put out because it's relatively cheap to manufacture. CDs are mostly considered worthless at this point, and vinyl is mega-expensive to make, so cassettes are the only physical form of music that makes sense for me to put out at the moment."
Aside from music of his own making, Alva has released the LP "Technophelia" by artist Geneva Jacuzzi, whom he called "one of the most inspiring musicians and artists in Los Angeles, in my opinion. An absolute genius. I am honored to have a release from her on my label."
As for his goals with Ephemerol Night Terrors, Alva said, "I didn't get into this for sales. I do this for myself—for my own sanity. If people dig it, great—that's a bonus."
Learn more about Warship Satan on the IndieGogo page Alva set up to help raise the finishing costs for its publication (he raised more than his goal and the campaign is now closed). For all things Ephemerol Night Terrors visit its website, ephemerolnightterrors.com. Both Popping Cherries and Split Lips can purchased there or on Amazon.com.
