Letter

I wrote about the bookstore again. I’d pitched a compilation of my zines but that was deemed “too artistic”. Don’t know what that meant. I waited a couple months and pitched this new thing having seen they like to profile bookstores.

I think the zines are a lot closer to what I want to be doing than this new thing but writing in a mode that splits the difference between journalism and personal essay is muscle memory by now. Low stakes. It’s the thing I’ve been trying to quit but sometimes still dip back into. A lot of the reason is Zona Motel, which has an audience I otherwise don’t have access to because of my social-media policies.

Contributing to Zona is a compromise. It gives me a nominal presence on a platform I quit a couple years ago and doesn’t require me to do any of the things I can no longer stomach, like performing some kind of online identity. They’re nice and even pay a little.

Another thing I thought I quit was the horror movie podcast. But I’ve been dipping my toe back in. A lot of the reason is that Mallory is more or less becoming my publisher—having put out Moby Dick and promising to put out others.

Monday morning we recorded a talk about Daughters of Darkness (1971), starring incomparable ice queen Delphine Seyrig and a guy who would go on to play the angry, frustrated husband of one of the cops on Cagney & Lacey on 80s TV. It’s a cold, stylish riff on vampire lore with allusions to Nazism and general European post-WWII malaise, but what’s most refreshing about it is that it doesn’t spoonfeed or over-explain much of anything. It’s a mood, as the kids used to say.

My show continues at the bar. People seem to dig it. A few pieces sold. Here’s what’s left.

My brother asked for a print of my Marvel Universe painting. You can get one too.

Krystle now sells her amazing zines direct, cutting out Etsy or any other middlemen, so go get yourself some already!

When I started on my public domain book design project last November I didn’t expect it to snowball into what it’s become. I figured I’d put out a book through Amazon or Ingram and that would be that.

Instead, the first one was immediately snapped up by a small press and, a few months later, I had a deal with a New York publisher for two books, with the very real possibility of many more to come. I’d self-published the first of those two and they wanted a new cover. I worked and reworked and reworked it until everyone was happy. There was no additional payment but I figured the extra labor might grease the wheels for a continuing financial commitment.

Everything was humming along apace until an email arrived stating that the publisher’s designers couldn’t use the print-ready files I’d sent and instead needed me to generate a text manuscript with instructions on where to place the images. Such a document did not exist. I assembled these books piece by piece, marrying text to image. I was taken aback by the request but sat down and made the thing they asked for.

A month passed and another email arrived. It had a sample of what the designers came up with. They changed typeface in places, changed the margins, and printed the author and book names at the top of every page. It was horrible and had little in common with what I’d made.

I didn’t write these books so my contribution is the art and the design. If you take apart those elements and reassemble them your own way it is no longer my work. I told this to the editor in my reply. He wanted to get on the phone and fix things. To see what he could do to make me happy. But there’s nothing to be done. I signed a contract and I’ll honor it. But these are no longer my books.

This morning I got an email from the designer requesting a link to the files. I wrote back that the editor had them. He requested I resend them, then wrote back that he couldn’t open the links. He wanted me to transfer them to another cloud storage site. That’s when I lost it. Told him to figure it out and not to contact me again.

Had a lovely talk in a park with June Skinner Sawyers.

Updated my events page.

Moving to another town is a time-honored way to give oneself a fresh start. Wipe the slate clean. Get rid of the old patterns. Change the scenery. Be reborn.

Sometimes, though, the thing you’re fleeing follows you, no matter how far you run or how hard you hope to be free of it. If the thing you’re hoping to fix is a marriage, it can become an albatross dragging you under, rather than letting you fly.

A new job tempts Krystle Ratticus to leave Chicago and try Milwaukee. Her new marriage is already floundering but she’s bent on making it work. This is such a familiar impulse. You don’t wanna keep failing like all the times before, so you double down. Put all your chips down on the one “lucky” number even though you know deep in your bones that number’s cursed.

Felix barely lifts a finger. He feels Krystle should pay the bills while he pursues his music pipedreams. He’s a user and she lets herself be used, believing her love and care will pull him out of the mire he wallows in. But no one can fix anyone else no matter how much they want to or how hard they try. Insert whatever truism you like best here because they’re all true. We all run our own race. Best that can be hoped for is to run alongside someone else for a time, maybe share a few gulps of water now and again. Let them get a breather. Share a laugh.

Krystle tries a bunch of jobs to get by but each eats her up a different way. She’s in a strange town with no support system, no one to turn to when things go sideways, tied to man who expects her to pull him along. It’s a goddamn disaster. Yet she keeps trying to make it work. They give up on Milwaukee and go back to Chicago, then the marriage goes tits up.

What I’ve always loved about Krystle’s writing is the plainspoken humor of the way she describes her jobs and relationships. The first zine I read of hers was The Greasy Spoon’s Weirdo Du Jour. It documents her time at a restaurant I knew very well. I liked the zine so much I tried to get my then-publisher to give her a book deal. Everything I’ve read of hers since confirms she should be publishing books. Not that, at this point, a book is any more legit or real than a zine. The technology is such now that anyone can put out a book-shaped thing. There’s no bigger percentage of people with anything to say than there ever was, going back to the advent of the printing press.

This is one writer who deserves a wider audience.

This new thing she’s made is tough and funny and kind of heartbreaking. Get yours here.

I wrote about Amalia Ulman’s movies, which I love.