October 25th, 2025
Signed paperback editions of Maple Island have been shipped to everyone who loves me the most, who ordered the book sight unseen during the presale, some of whom have been supporting me and my art for decades (go ahead and brag in the comments how long you’ve been here).
I would like to take a minute to sincerely thank you and write a little about what Maple Island means to me.
I’ve told this story before but I’ll tell it again, briefly: I’ve been working on this book about sober vampires since I, myself, got sober almost eight years ago. There have been moments in my life when the book itself kept me sober. It was almost a graphic novel and there is art from that process you will never see. Unlike other ideas I’ve had that took a while to become real (like Jojo), I was actively working on this for almost a decade.
It is a real form of grief I’m having now that it’s done.
I want to be clear: there is sex and violence and vampires and ghosts in this story, but it is not what this story is about. I have a history of people enjoying my work but not always engaging with it; I get a lot of “I loved it!” or “I really liked it!” or “I read it!” but not why or how. (I do want to say an aside to the few people over the years who have really engaged with what I do, sending over heavy messages full of insights and counterpoints and ideas I hadn’t even considered before.)
My focus has always been on accessible excellence, before I ever heard the term: I want my work to be read and felt and understood by the widest audience without compromising the deep emotion and subtle themes and complex concepts that everyone deserves regardless of reading ability. This was true of Them, my first book; it continues to be true of Maple Island, my fourteenth.
In actuality, this story feels like the recipe I’ve been trying to create all along.
I’ve mentioned to anyone who will listen that I’m burnt out, because I am, because there is too much on my plate and the world is too much, too; but part of that extinguished feeling lies with finally letting this thing out into the world.
Am I nervous? Sure. Some of this — genre, content — is new for me. I don’t really let anyone read my work before I release it because, as I’ve declared countless times before, writing is my art and these books are my paintings. What painter changes his strokes because a viewer asks him to? It’s not arrogance but a very human, anti-corporate way to make these things. There isn’t a team or committee here; if you’re like “fuck A.I.” then you will love what you find when you pick up my flawed but hard-earned feelings and words.
I hope you read it and, above all, I hope you engage with it. It’s made to be engaged with. It will probably make some of you mad, make some of you cry, make some of you think, and make some of you have weird thoughts (you sickos).
It is a deeply personal work, and possibly even my most. Vampires are an obsessive species. I claim that in the book and I said that in one of my earliest days of recovery. I am a vampire. This is an explanation of my entire existence.
The Den 