This has been, as the Grateful Dead sang in “Truckin’,” a long, strange trip: Thirty-plus years as a Colorado/New Mexico-based writer, editor, publisher, long-distance backpacker, traveler and overall bullshitter and barroom pontificator. In that time, my work and my life have taken me from newsrooms at small-town mountain papers to the national publications stage. My work has covered everything from school board meetings that lasted for 10 hours and during which absolutely nothing was decided (except for me deciding I’d like to off several otherwise very well-meaning school board members) to hair-raising journeys into Third World cesspools that seemed to boast far more guns than they did people who ought to be allowed to possess any sort of weapon more dangerous than a harsh retort.

I have penned literally thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, as well as eight books and a wide array of brochures, video scripts, blurbs and scribbles upon tainted cocktail napkins. Basically, my life of letters (and words) has covered some mighty wide territory, yet this is my first foray into personal website-dom. I have, of course, participated in a roundabout way in other websites, mostly as a result of a combination of bribery, cajoling and overt threats to whatever employment situation I may have accidentally found myself involuntarily (and usually very temporarily) incarcerated in.

With the launch of my self-published book, “Bottoms Up: M. John Fayhee’s Greatest Hits from the Mountain Gazette,” in June 2010, I decided it was high time to join the world of webs. After all, when push comes to shove, this medium amounts to free publicity, if nothing else. Thus, here we have the very poetically named mjohnfayhee.com, which was actually spearheaded by my wife, Gay, who has been encouraging me for several years now to take this leap. “It’ll be fun,” she has told me many times, as I once again flip a coin to decide whether to stroll downtown for a couple of pints or to sit at my computer working on a website centered around myownself. Heads or tails, I generally opt for the couple of pints.

But, finally, here we are. And this part of my long, strange vocational trip has turned out to be the strangest of all, insofar as my wife was actually right (as always)!!! This personal website thing IS fun, at least partially because, unlike newspapers, books and magazines, there is no adult supervision whatsoever!!! When you have your own website, you can basically do whatever you want, and, if anyone gets pissed off, you can just mutter something borderline incoherent about the First Amendment and how websites are totally immune from libel laws (not true, but surely worth a try when process servers start hunting you down at your favorite imbibery).

The goal of this website is threefold (which, yes, I know, would mean that this site technically has goals — plural — but that does not fit very well into this sentence from a grammatical perspective, and I am a stickler when it comes to things like proper subject/verb/condiment agreement): First, to give readers unified access to as much of my previously published work as my wife and I can hunt down and aggregate; second, to give me an opportunity to share with you new work that would have trouble finding a home in a more traditional publications setting (read: no one is his or her right mind would even consider printing it); and, third, as a marketing and promotion tool for my various books, all of which are wonderful and well worth buying.

We intend to update the site on a regular basis with stories and photos old and new from my life in New Mexico’s Gila Country, Colorado’s High Country and whatever other places I visit as I continue down this long, strange trip that is my life.

Thanks for visiting this site, and I hope you enjoy what it contains. Just don’t believe a word of it!
— MJF