🜃 Zines
I started out with comics, drawn on notebook paper and meticulously photocopied at the library for distribution to a handful of kids I knew, mostly people whose thinly-disguised superhero characters made it into the stories. Within a few years I was making zines in high school, enjoying the opportunity they offered to be cool by proxy in the late 90s, because I was never going to be cool in the actual town I lived in. I was typing up terrible poetry on my lunch hour in the library or meticulously handwriting it so it was readable, writing little articles and essays. I made a couple of perzines inspired by the zines I was learn about online and send away for, mostly because I wanted to have something to trade with the immensely talented people I was mailing my well-hidden dollars to. My best friend and I published two issues of an underground newspaper until we got in hauled in front of the principal for (in retrospect, very mild) reporting. Eventually I discovered blogging and then livejournal, and I started posting my writing online instead, but every few years I get the itch to produce something that I could print and staple, if I wanted to.
Lately I've been thinking about zines again and there's a desire to make them that I haven't fully unpacked, but I think it's about wanting to have something to show, to point to that I've finished. I'd been looking for a good place to share some of my older projects and I think I've finally found one via discovering Zine Jams on itch.io, so both old and new projects are going there now.
Brainflowers is a zine I made in 2011, following a long year of physical and mental health issues. It was a series of essays that marked the first time I really sat down and gave thought to my gender and my relationship with my body, and marked an important step in my transition even though, at the time, I had no belief I would be able to physically transition in the future.
the Merciful Earth is a bit more of a booklet than a zine, clocking in at 66 half-size pages. It's a compilation of poems and prayers and storylets I wrote for a goddess, and it was both intensely personal and the first thing I actively, intentionally published in a long time. I've never gotten it physically published but eventually I'd like to print and bind a copy for myself.
Anamnesis is a short poetry zine about memory and repetition. It's not long but it's the first thing I've put together in a few years and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.
🜔 Poetry
I started writing poetry in high school, shortly after I started collecting zines. Don't worry, none of my high school work is included here, though I've thrown around the idea of going back and pulling out a few things to rewrite as a poetry version of a draw-it-again challenge.
I'm especially fond of the punchiness of haiku as a form, and my favorite era is the San Francisco Renaissance: Rexroth, Gleason, Spicer, Blaser, Duncan, and Beat-adjacents like Snyder and Whalen.
Don't Go There is a collection of poems written between 2010-2020 that don't belong to a larger project.
Messages Sent and Received is a selection of devotional poetry as well as poems about magic.
Poems from an Empty Sky is a collection of poems that are all set in the setting I refer to as the Empty Sky, by or about the characters there.
🜂 Fiction
Antimony and Lead: The world ended weeks ago and Lacey’s been cast out of the safe bunker she called home with her husband and sister-wives. Now she’s got to figure out where she should go and who she can trust to stay alive in post-apocalyptic Utah.
Through the Screen Doors: I started to think that city life was something I'd been saved from somehow, by fate and by Frank. That lasted until Jude and her husband moved in.
Like Graffiti On The Walls Of The Heartland: Gloria's running, but she's just running in circles.
My Own Vineyard: But my own vineyard is mine to give;/ the thousand shekels are for you, O Solomon,/ and two hundred are for those who tend its fruit.
The Ranch: The ranch was nearly untouched, perched on a mesa outside Sedona, acres of reclaimed wild desert surrounding it.
Aftertaste: When she came Below, Cassandra came with her head held high and her eyes unclouded.
Baggage: Garcia’s been quietly building her practice as a freelance supernatural troubleshooter in Phoenix for years, and is almost ready to break into full-time if she can just deal with a thief, a library ghost, man-eating mermaids and her own relationship issues.
🜁 Non-Fiction
Nerdy Parenting: Thoughts on parenting as a nerd and on the idea of raising a nerd.
Personal Library Collections Policy: An exercise in how I think about the books I buy, keep, and remove, with the goal of being more intentional about what I bring into my home.
Linkrot: On website existentialism and digital decay
Writing As a Relationship: Thoughts on how most of my relationships are defined by writing, and especially how co-writing is an exercise in intimacy.
Using Picrews for Character Design Inspiration: A short guide to how I use a Picrew to help shape a character that I'm still developing.