The Den

Theia: Heroes

September 22nd, 2023

There are certain parameters that people find themselves more comfortable sharing within, and I fit into many of those boxes.

As a bartender, people are surprisingly open with me; as a person who is public about their sobriety and struggles with addiction, people are surprisingly open with me; as a writer, oh boy, people are so surprisingly open with me.

But none of that compares to what happens when I put on a superhero’s suit.

I could write a book about my experiences playing superheroes (Marvel, call me, unless it’s about a lawsuit). But the moments that stick with me are the things people tell me when I’m in that suit.

I’ve heard their severe financial troubles, somber reflections, sharp heartbreaks; serious (and seriously personal) stories of loss and grief, political rage, familial conflict, bitter rivalries. I’ve been the bearer of secrets, hopes, dreams, and tragedies.

And I’ve thought about why this is for a long time.

It actually makes total sense: when you stop trusting the people around you, your family and friends and neighbors, your community, politicians, the media, all of our trusted institutions, who do you have left?

Your heroes.

When you think there isn’t anybody who can save you, you refer to those who always have, even if you consciously know that’s just a normal dude wearing a few dollars worth of latex.

I think we have similar attitudes towards animals.

Animals are heroes of problem-solving.

It’s why we’re fascinated by nature. Humans complicate everything. (EVERYTHING. Is there a thing? We complicate it.) We love watching animals deal with problems because they do so efficiently, in the least complex way.

We know how to do this and simply refuse.

And in 2020, when I, like so many people on this planet, was feeling overwhelmed and anxious and depressed and didn’t think that any human power could fix it, could fix us, I turned to the animals for help.

I wondered what they would do if they were facing the impossible obstacles we were. And one truth became immediately apparent: our problems aren’t impossible at all.

We’re the ones who are impossible.

This is the last essay of Theia month, and I just want to thank everyone who has been so supportive of this now-three-year-old novella. It was my return to writing prose fiction; in fact, it was my first published book since getting sober. To get the response I have is nothing short of grand and humbling. This has been one of my most enjoyable revisits, and the number of people who discovered the book this month is mind-blowing; I hope you’ll consider joining our Theia Book Club at Duck Duck Coffee on October 11th.

Through all the twists and feels and laughs and tears, though, I hope readers take away one thing:

Nothing is impossible.

And, sometimes, the way we fix things is by staying exactly where we are.

Theia: Stuck In The Middle With You

September 16th, 2023

I get asked a lot if I have any secrets for how to finish writing a book. My secret has been shared so many times that it’s gossip at this point: I have to know how it ends.

If you had to run a marathon, but no one told you where the finish line was, do you think you’d keep running far enough to find it? In my experience, people regularly run out of gas when they don’t know where they’re headed.

Once I know how a story ends, I can get there.

Of course, there are always exceptions. And, of course, Theia is one of them.

I knew how it ended, and it was with a game-changing twist. But once I wrote my way to that revelation, I had another one: my ending was only the middle.

(If you’ve read Theia, I hope you’ll keep this twist to yourself. It’s part of the magic of the book and, three years later, I’m still getting messages from people who are absolutely shocked by it, and it’s because my readers have kept it to themselves and they are just the best.)

A funny thing happened once I found myself stuck in that middle, though: I had written such strong characters and knew my themes so well that the ending jumped up and curled into my lap. In fact, my ending had to be a direct result of these characters and those themes, and to think I almost skipped the stages of acceptance and resolution is just silly to me now.

One of the best-ever reactions to the twist was during one of my first writing panels last year at Twin Cities Con. I was telling this story, about how an end turned out to be the middle, and someone in the audience unexpectedly shared that they threw their book across the room when they got to that part.

One of the best reviews of my career, tbh.

And I was absolutely shocked, as I was added to the panel last-minute, to find that I had a reader in the audience and they reacted to my story in such an emotional way.

Keeping the spoilers, again, to a minimum, I also put a tremendous amount of foreshadowing in the book, starting with Theia’s name (the first person to get that reference sent literal goosebumps over my skin; I didn’t think anybody would figure that particular secret out).

All of this to say: you can follow rules and develop techniques and take all the advice in the world, but if you can’t pivot when confronted, and react — see what your characters want and need, where your story is going even if it isn’t where you thought it would go — then you may not be giving your story everything you got.

And every story you write deserves at least that much from you, whatever “everything you got” looks like the day you’re writing it.

Theia: Bittersweet Symphony

September 10th, 2023

I cried a lot for Theia.

Like, an obnoxious amount. I always tell people that if you want someone to feel something in your art, you should feel that way while you’re making it.

And I do. Arguably, too much.

Look, if you don’t want to feel sad today, I recommend maybe saving this essay in your back pocket for later, or never; it’s taken me almost three years to gather the guts to write it.

Theia was the last book I ever showed my mom.

I wrote Theia in August of 2020, and released it (a surprise drop, á la Taylor Swift) on September 1st, thrilling my three fans.

It was an unthinkably fast process.

On September 16th, my sister called to tell me that our mom was in pain and they brought her to the hospital. We found out soon after that she had an aggressive kind of ovarian cancer. On October 16th, she was gone.

It was an unthinkably fast process.

I think all the time about how we never got time to really process it at all.

The last week of September, I received the paperback copies of my new book. I brought one to the hospital room where my mom was staying. There was a part of me that felt (and feels) like my work is inconsequential, not helpful in any meaningful way; but my mom always reminded me that she was my biggest fan, and I know I will never have a bigger one.

“Cute,” she signed in her expressive way, looking at the cover. “What’s it about?”

“A dog,” I signed. “She’s trying to escape.”

She looked out the window into the gray and I knew she felt the same way.

I’m trying to not spoil my books in these behind-the-scenes essays I’ve been writing this year, but I need to talk about Apple the Golden Retriever.

In 2020, I started feeling strongly that we weren’t seeing each other as human beings anymore. You know the expression, “Be kind, because you never know what someone is going through”? It felt like nobody gave a shit about what anybody was going through, and they were treating everyone accordingly.

So, in the story of Theia, we get to know what the animals in the shelter have been through, to remind us to be kind.

None of those stories made me sob harder at the keyboard than the story of Apple, the goodest boy.

If you want to read it with no prior knowledge, here’s your spoiler warning. ⚠️

Before Apple ended up in the shelter, he had an owner whom he loved very much. His owner gets sick, and he passes away, and Apple learns what it means to be sad.

I wrote this in August. My mom got sick in September. She died in October.

And I couldn’t shake the truth that I had more in common with a fictional Golden Retriever (and one I created, more bizarrely) than any person in the world.

I won’t get into the months and years that followed my mom’s death (I’ve done this plenty online if you have time to kill and you’re really into sad bois), but the pandemic didn’t allow for the natural flow of grief; I had also started a new job at this exact same time, and I don’t know how I did all of the things I had to do while absolutely lost in my loss, a process mangled and swallowed whole.

“And every day, at least once, Apple feels sad.”

I think of that line daily, because it epitomizes grief for me, and I wrote it two months before I would even understand it fully; two months before I would need it.

I cried a lot for Theia. Writing it. Publishing it. Talking about it. I re-read it a few weeks ago in preparation for this month, and I teared up at least five times.

I think I cry because of the relentless empathy in the story. The kind of empathy my mom taught me; the idea that everyone deserves love, and we’re the only ones who can love them, despite and because of who they are.

I think I cry because I just miss her so much, and I don’t know how to deal with that, even three years on, and telling stories is how I keep her close to me.

DURRY!

September 9th, 2023

This is my Durry Appreciation Post ™️, and if even one lucky person discovers them through it then I have fulfilled my civic duty to this country and you’re welcome.

I found the band last winter on my favorite radio station, The Current. I heard one of their songs and thought: “Oh. I really dig this.” But it wasn’t until I heard a second, Loser’s Club, that I had to pull over my car and google that shit, because it hit me like a ton of (yellow) bricks.

I started immediately posting about them because is anything even real if you don’t? (Trick question: no, it isn’t.) I tried to get into their winter show, and couldn’t attend the summer one; but their debut album, Suburban Legend, dropped yesterday, and they played two gigs tonight to celebrate, at the legendary Electric Fetus and Down in the Valley record stores. It was euphoric to get to hang at both.

I love so much about this band, because they give you an abundance to love (like, almost too much?). There isn’t any “overnight” or “luck” aspect to what they do; as someone who knows, I can see how hard they work, how much they care, how much trial and error they must have endured before they got to this moment.

They’re artists whose talents have caught up to their taste and that is literally the highest compliment I can think of.

It couldn’t have happened to better people and I hope they become so big that by this time next year we’re already trying to cancel them. (That was a total joke and I hope they actually have the best tour ever. I have tickets to the First Ave show in December and we can’t cancel them before then.)

Anyway, check them out, pick up their extraordinary record, get a ticket to their gig. I will personally refund your money if you don’t like it (this is not a legally binding claim so just be cool you’re gonna like it).

WHAT A TRIP, SEE YOU THIS Fall Tour 2023

September 8th, 2023

This is a big announcement post, but it’s in tiny fun-sized pieces, Halloween-style; you have FOUR opportunities to hang out with me this autumn, but they come in different fall flavors.

1. SAT, SEPTEMBER 23rd – MINNESOTA COMIC EXCHANGE SHOW @ VALLEY CREEK MALL in WOODBURY!

🍂 First up: The Comic Shows have become a terrific seasonal tradition, celebrating our excellent comic community at this sweet space in Woodbury starting at 9 am. ‘Nuff said!

2. WED, OCTOBER 11th – THEIA BOOK CLUB @ DUCK DUCK COFFEE in MINNEAPOLIS!

🦆 More details to come for this one, but we’re doing a book club at one of the best coffee shops on the planet! We’ll be discussing my 2020 novella, Theia, and I’ll even do a live reading (if that’s something you’re into)! I hope to drop off some books in-shop soon for people to check out or buy; it would be so fun to see you there. Doors @ 6 pm.

3. WED, NOVEMBER 1st – WRITING CLASS w/ ME @ LABYRINTH PUZZLE ROOMS in LAKEVILLE!

🖋 I’ve already announced this, but I’m doing my first writing class! The focus will be a clear look at publishing, but I’ll also be talking a lot about creativity and how I actually complete a book, from beginning to end. Even if you’re not a fan of my writing, I think I have a lot to offer yours. Bring your minds, hearts, a pen, and all your questions. Tickets are $25, 7 pm to 9 pm, and space is limited!

4. WKND, NOVEMBER 3rd + 4th + 5th – TWIN CITIES CON @ MINNEAPOLIS CONVENTION CENTER!

🐿 And lastly: my third year at the best full-weekend convention in the cities! I love this con beyond any rational feeling, and this will be your last chance of the year to hang w/ me and pick up my books for your holiday wish lists! (My books are on your holiday wish lists, right?!)

I wasn’t planning on being this busy, but I am a bee-squirrel hybrid at heart (and probably genetically).

Save these images to your phone! Go follow and visit all the tagged places! Tell your friends (and mortal enemies)!

If you attend all four events (and please, for the love of fricking bats I am begging you, do not, you will get so sick of me [if you aren’t sick of me already]) I will probably give you a cool prize. But don’t. Four times is too many. Three times is probably fine.

But I do hope to see you! We have so much to say and do! I love fall! Please reach out if you have any questions, comments, or concerns (or compliments!) about any of it.

All my 🎃.

Theia: Tainted Love

September 5th, 2023

Have you ever wanted to run away?

Since I can remember, my natural instinct in any situation is to get away from it as fast and as far as I can.

This is still true.

Over the years, I’ve had to train myself how to stay.

And this is where the story of Theia came from: I wanted to explore why we run.

Who better to learn this from than a dog?

Of course, it wasn’t just one idea that inspired the book. My own Boston Terrier was an inspiration. Other stories (Watership Down in particular) were inspirations.

And, subconsciously through the process of writing it, 2020 was an inspiration.

After I wrote the first draft and started editing and revising it, I realized that I had taken a lot of what we were dealing with in that objectively awful year and was using the animals of the shelter to talk about the time of sheltering in place.

If you’ve followed my writing for a while (and especially during 2020), you’ll know that I have a habit of using metaphor to talk about very real things; it gives you and me distance from the thing, a buffer, and I offer different sources of light to illuminate an idea.

One person’s shadow is another’s truth.

This is true even of the reasons we run.

Most of mine are selfish and born of my anxieties, but that isn’t always the case.

A Pitbull named Sal asks Theia: “What’s out there that you want so bad?”

“Possibilities,” Theia says.

And when someone feels trapped, whether literally or just in their own head, the promise of escape can be our only source of hope. Theia’s journey sees her finding a new hope; not far away, in some abstract, impossible place, but right where she is, in a real place she has to choose to stay.

SKP 2023: Theia

September 1st, 2023

“She was a dog with an imagination, which made her the most dangerous kind of all.”

How did a novella I wrote in less than a week while unemployed over the summer during the worst year of my life (just days before it became the worst year of my life) become one of the most beloved books I’ve ever written?

Pull up a soft bed, put on your favorite sci-fi film, and be sure to use the bathroom in the middle of the room beforehand; we’ll be talking about Theia all month.

As always, send me any questions and insights you have about the book that at least one reader threw completely across her room while reading.

Probably the best review of my life, tbh.

The Weirdos, Part VII: The Universe is Bigger Than God

August 30th, 2023

I didn’t finish college (obvs) and I don’t believe in God (sorry, fam), and The Weirdos is what it is because of it.

I quit college three quarters in. I frequently tell people that making this graphic novel was my education; most art students have to do a final project, and it’s rarely a 128-page full-color book. It’s usually, like, a zine.

But to write and draw and ink and scan and edit and letter and color and format and fundraise and publish and promote a graphic novel showed me that there are so many things I can do, and that I was going to do these things regardless of whether I had a degree or permission from anyone to do so.

Having the revelation that the fictional world in these pages existed solely because of me reminded me of my god complex; the thing I had to wash away, grain by grain, to reveal who I really am and fix that broken boy.

The idea of God is important in the way I choose to recover; since The Weirdos is about recovery, I had to address the creator in the ether. I had a thought that continues to excite me to this day: if I am the god of my literary worlds, and there is all this infinite space around me, then there is this logical truth:

The universe is bigger than God.

The phrase has several interpretations and meanings; my current spirituality relies on the concept of “As above, so below,” which are, for me, the most loaded four words in the English language.

The way that God is presented in The Weirdos — not as an answer, but as a different question depending on who’s asking — is one of my favorite aspects of the series, because faith is one of the most interesting aspects of the world.

I’m an agnostic who isn’t against religion or afraid of learning about what other people believe; in fact, in my effort to try to understand as many people as possible, I’ve come to have a deep respect for so many different kinds of faith.

The universe is bigger than God, which means it has room for all gods, and for all of us.

Which, from above, to down, down below in the world of The Weirdos, is what the story is all about.

There is room for you, and room for me; and if you put us in a room together, and we talked honestly to each other, about our failures and flaws, about our fears and dreams, about what brings us joy and gives us hope — well, we would find that we are so different, but we are also so very much the same.

The Weirdos, Part VI: Black & White Issues, Blacklisting, and a Technicolor Graphic Novel

August 29th, 2023

The Weirdos is about being a part of something that gives you meaning, something that could save your life.

Once I was solidly standing on sober feet, I wanted to be a member of the artistic community as soon as I possibly could.

It’s the reason I decided to produce The Weirdos one black & white issue at a time; it would give me a thing to put on my table so I could get started immediately.

At this point, in 2018, I had only released three novellas, and they were all out of print. I was starting over.

I had been attending local conventions, meeting other writers and artists, and I knew I wanted to print my comics locally. So I asked my new friend Dave if he knew a guy who could help me, and he did, and that guy helped me publish The Flying Squirrel #1, which was released in August of 2018 (exactly five years ago!). It was that same month I did my first convention behind my own table: Fan Fusion at the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul.

In February of 2019, I put out The Sketch #1 & The Blue-Ringer #1; realizing that comic shops had limited space, and I had five books planned, I started releasing two-in-one issues. You could read one story, and then flip the book around to read the other. It was a rad idea, and people were starting to dig my books.

Well, not the people who were printing them.

This is when the real life story gets real weird.

I got an email from the guy who was helping me publish, and it said to call him. This message got my heart pounding, if only because I had never actually talked to the guy the entire time we had been working together. I was anxious over the impending conversation.

It turns out, the local printer was not happy with the content of my comic, after they had already printed and delivered it. The reasons given to me were vague, but there was a consequence for their distaste of my work: going forward, they would be closely monitoring any further books I submitted for print.

I was a little shaken, stirred maybe, but not deterred.

When I was ready to print The Wait #1 & The Weirdos #1, the final two issues of the first volume, I emailed my guy and waited.

I couldn’t quite comprehend it when I got an email back, and it said no.

The local printers were refusing to print my work.

He apologized (it wasn’t his fault, and he was a really nice guy), and I didn’t really know where to turn. I started telling people about the situation, and many were plenty mad for me.

They said I should sue and it was a violation of my First Amendment rights (oh my gosh, did I get canceled before it was cool?) and how dare they, how DARE they, HOW dare THEY?!

My feelings about this, still, are very complicated, because it’s a very complicated situation.

On one hand, these printers were not my publishers. I did not work for them, nor did they pay me. Meaning, we had no contract together, and they had no right to tell me if my work was or was not acceptable to them. They had a product — ink and paper — and I paid them money to put my work on that paper with that ink.

On the other hand, people have the right to refuse service, as it is.

Understanding this discrimination didn’t give me any solutions, however.

My friend Eric at Mind’s Eye Comics heard my story, and, to be honest, he didn’t really believe me entirely at first. So he said he would reach out to those printers and see if he could make a deal.

He could not. They all said no, and he told me he wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t have heard them say it themselves.

Even though I don’t feature nudity or gore or excessive violence on any of my pages, my words were apparently powerful enough to make me an enemy of the Minnesota printing elite; anyone here, from the future, who has read The Weirdos in its entirety, can be a judge of whether my outlaw status is warranted.

In any case, Eric himself decided to do a small print run of my last issue so I could finish the first series of black & white issues, for which I am eternally grateful. And we got a lot of mileage out of the “banned” comics story and my bizarre experience of being a blacklisted nobody.

The black & white issues were my whole plan. I was hoping, somewhere down the line, someone would want to take the series, colorize it for me, and publish it as a graphic novel. That did not happen.

So my friend Steve did that stupid thing that friends do and bought me a gift: a Wacom tablet, so I could learn how to draw digitally. He said something dumb about believing in me or some bullshit and I knew he was right. This was something that would take more work, but I could make it happen.

I went back and colored every issue, corrected every error, and then collected it into a single book called The Weirdos Volume I: From Sand, To Glass.

I raised money through Kickstarter to publish the initial run (and had no problems with Comix Well Spring, who handled printing duties on the graphic novel and love my money), and have since moved hundreds of copies of my little banned book that could.

A book about people who just want to be a part of something that gives them meaning, something that could save their lives. The fact that real life people tried to prevent them from doing so is a terrible, ironic tragedy that I, am happy to report, did everything to overcome.

The Weirdos, Part V: The Wait

August 28th, 2023

Das wasn’t supposed to be a Weirdo.

The Wait actually started out as a comic book about the restaurant industry, after years of people telling me that I should write about the experience, which explains its title and setting. It was a separate thing altogether, until I realized that I had written in Das the same code I had installed in the other three characters.

He was like me. He needed help, too.

The Space Bar got its name from an old joke I love about where astronauts like to drink; among the stars and aliens in the story is a layer of mythology, and those seeds of detail are intentional.

Das is a bartender in The Keller, a bar within the Bar, and works for his uncle, the terrible Green Wolf. We learn that, as a kid, Das put a bully into a coma with his fist; after discovering something odd was happening to his hands, he was outfitted with chained gloves to restrain his power. After Das’ parents died unexpectedly, the key to his chains was lost, and he was forced to live with the Green Wolf, who did horrific things to him as a child and became his employer as an adult.

Das’ rage is easy to write because it resembles my own; always righteous, a fire hungry for justice, fanned by the ignorance I perceive, but struggle to recognize within.

It’s cute, except it’s not.

Like the other character defects I share with my Weirdos (addiction, depression, anxiety, illness, etc, etc, lol), anger isn’t something I’ve conquered; it’s something I deal with every day, to varying degrees of success (and failure).

Sometimes I get so mad I forget how to human.

Sometimes people tell me I’m a very patient human, and it may be one of the biggest compliments I can recieve, because I am not patient by nature, and it often takes an enormous amount of effort to appear that way.

But the parts of me I put effort into turn into integral pieces of my structure; the more I practice things like patience, and kindness, and sobriety, the easier and more natural it becomes.

It’s a micro-evolution, a progression that happens in my own cells; the old ones die, and the new ones, with better information and intentions, take their place. I apply Theseus’ theory to a boat that could barely float before.

The echoes of the past are still hard to ignore.

Das finds people who listen to him, affirm him, and take him in as their own. Their collective voice is louder than the single, lonely one he’s known; they shout of love and honesty and acceptance, and though Das isn’t saved from outside forces, yet, he is finally saved from himself.