My interest started when the reviews were strangely good. Then it was massively popular. Then it got nominated for a ton of awards, while the animation industry buzzed, crowed, and purred about it, too. Then my friends swore by its brilliance. And then Peacock added it to their library today.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish isn’t one of the best animated films I’ve seen in the past few years. It’s just one of the best films, paws down.
It’s embarrassing how much it made me cry, and surprising how often I genuinely laughed.
It has my highest recommendation (and even Marvel didn’t mind posing with Puss for this photo). This egotistical old cat — I’m referring to me — couldn’t have related to this tale of morality and mortality more.
Like Theia, this is a story of learning how to stay. There’s an inner harmony, and the world makes sense: cats and dogs, living together, no need for existential hysteria.
We’re a week into Sleeping Kitty Stretches, our campaign to release two graphic novels and, potentially, start an Animation + Audio studio!
Just a quick video update to let you know where we’re at if you’re curious, and a sincere thank you to everyone who has already contributed to our project. Some of you have been supporting me since day one and that means the whole universe to this arty kid.
Ugh. I’m going to take a break from a week in which I finally got back my stolen car, nearly two months after the incident, only for it to try to kill me and have to be returned for further repair, to keep talking about my debut novella, Them.
In what place do you find peace? In what place do you feel in control?
One of my favorite Stephen King anecdotes is about his book, Cujo: he doesn’t remember writing it.
He was all kinds of fucked up when he sat down to type that tale, and he’s sad to recount that he can’t recount a thing. He says he actually likes Cujo, and wishes he had memories of creating it.
I’m happy to report that I remember writing all my books. But beer was definitely an active ingredient in the first three.
I can write at any time. I often do, and if you’ve been lucky enough to be sitting next to me while I’m typing my latest post, you know.
But the best time for me to write is when the rest of the world is sleeping. I feel like I’m cheating time; I like getting things done when things are not supposed to be getting done.
So late night and early morning have always been my favorite times.
My late night (and some early morning) writing shifts would have me behind my keyboard, at a PC, with a can or bottle of beer by the screen, which I would slowly sip on as I wrote. These would often be marathons, of both word and brew.
There’s an old saying: “Write drunk, edit sober.” It took me years to get to the latter part of those four words, and then I edited the word “drunk” out altogether.
Those early books, but especially Them, were about control. In fact, control was the main theme of Them, by conscious design.
I was obsessed with control. I had none. I was desperate for it. And I would fall apart over the next several years trying to hold on to the idea of it.
Writing was the place I found peace. Writing is the place where I find, and then release, control.
Nowadays, I still sip incessantly. But it’s on coffee and sparkling water, and a can of kombucha a day.
I haven’t yet written a blockbuster book, like Carrie or Cujo.
But I remember the time I spent with each one, like kids I fully raise over a few months or years.
I remember playing with Them, my oldest child, and knowing then I wanted to keep on having and raising kids like this for the rest of my life.
On Thursday, we decided to take a big swing: we announced exciting new directions and surprising new projects.
(In this post, I’m not going to link to anything, because posts with links don’t get seen as much, but I do encourage you to check out the last few days on our social media.)
It is going very badly.
We’re at only 15% of our base goal, and not even 10% to our first stretch goal. That would be like if you were trying to raise a dollar, and you were sitting on a dime.
However, this isn’t an exercise in self-pity or an essay of despair.
For a long time, I have promised to share with you the bad with the good, because that’s what life is. This isn’t good, but this could just as soon be great.
Doing the things we have to do is stressful and uncertain and often awful and when it works, when we get to make our art, there is absolutely no other magical feeling quite like it.
I just keep my head down and heart open, working on my creative self, every moment of every day. We think that what we’re trying to do is awesome. But if what we’re selling isn’t what anyone is looking for, capitalism will do its job: we won’t get funded, and won’t be able to afford to do cool stuff.
Problem totally solved.
Anyway, this photo is another attempt to put my arm around the algorithm, and an excuse to show you Marvel, though I never need an excuse to show you this actual angel on Earth.
If you’re thinking about supporting cool stuff and investing in neat people, support cool stuff and invest in neat people today.
My good pal Shaun Thibodeau is running his own Kickstarter to fund his first book, and I thought it would be a wonderful time to talk to him about writing, creativity, and the Kickstarting process.
We’re going to be doing a LIVE chat on YouTube this Monday, March 6th, at 7 pm Central Time.
I understand that we’ll be competing with football and The Bachelor.
Wait — football season is over and The Bachelor sucks this year?
Then you have no excuse! Join us, ask us questions in the chat — it’s going to be a blast.
It’s happening at youtube.com/thenextstepislast and we really hope to see you there. (And feel free to check out our projects in the meantime!)
In case you missed it: we launched a brand new Kickstarter yesterday! We’re trying to do something we’ve never done before; you can visit our page here:
The basic goal is to release two new graphic novels, but it’s the stretch goals that have people talking: if we raise enough funds, we are going to start an Animation + Audio division of Sleeping Kitty Productions, starting with short films and audiobooks based on my previous work.
I am so nervous but very excited though most of the time I am terribly both.
I just hope I get the chance to prove myself to you.
Please check out yesterday’s post and video, and our Kickstarter page for more information (there is a lot of stuff to talk about). I thought I’d share some of the art from the campaign here for you to enjoy.
Like, love, and share (and make it personal!) if you want to help; don’t make any investments you can’t afford, and take care of yourself first.
No more teasing. Let’s talk about the future: you and me, right here, right now.
Our brand new Kickstarter, Sleeping Kitty Stretches, starts today.
So what does that mean?
When a cat sleeps, it dreams; when it wakes up to get what it wants, it stretches.
Playing our cards right, this opportunity means we’re going to expand in ways that are both a natural evolution and hopefully a little unexpected.
The base goal is to publish two graphic novels: Brushfire: Wave 2 in July 2023, and Jojo’s Time Machine in 2024.
This is something I have done before.
But for the first time ever, we — yes, we — have stretch goals that could have fantastic and far-reaching consequences.
I want to create an Animation + Audio division of Sleeping Kitty Productions. If enough people invest, we’ll be able to acquire hardware and produce one, two, or three animated short films, and one, two, or three audiobooks, based on my previous work (including Them, which I’ll be talking about all month!).
This is what I want to do, and these are the things friends and fans have asked me for for years. We can make it happen together. You and me.
All the details (there are so many details!) are at our Kickstarter:
The video I produced might be my favorite ever. There’s a ton of photos and original art there, too.
Oh — who is this “we”? My good friend Steven Starks will be joining me in this endeavor, and he has a whole lot more to say on our page.
He and I just want to create art — the grand and intimate, emotional and funny kind — and we’re finally making the decision and taking the plunge to do a big project together. I am terrified and excited and mostly terrified but gosh, am I excited.
I hope you’ll join us.
As always, always, always — all my love.
P.S. Like, love, and share if this is something you care about, too! Even (or especially) if your financial support isn’t a viable option, which I totally understand. You do what’s right for you. I support that above all.
What would it look like if Quentin Tarantino wrote a sci-fi book about an alien invasion?
My first novella, Them, might be the closest we get, and this is how I’ve sold it to everybody else over the ten years since its release.
The book is an explosion of pop culture, complicated characters, and bodily fluids. It centers on Kim, a complex, sweet, and violent young woman whose parents are taken away from her the day we’re invaded by beings from the sky.
It’s the first half of a wild series that concludes with Us, which is our feature for next month.
For March, we’ll explore everything my first novella has to offer, what it meant to me then, and what it means to me now.
We’ll review a review, discuss the problematic and progressive elements that make up its structure, and I’ll try to elaborate on what it’s like to be in active addiction while trying to publish your first work (and raise the cash for it, to boot).
Feel free to ask any questions you have about it, too.
Like the road trip in its pages, I hope you’ll trust and take the ride with me.
Before this month is over, I have one more Unproduced Work to talk about.
I saved the most important to me for last.
The bunny in this photo is my good friend, Jojo.
We go way back.
I created him when I was a teenager. He lives in a place called Bio City, a town that literally flies over our heads.
He tended to have whatever job I had. If I worked in a grocery store or a gas station, Jojo worked in a grocery store or gas station. He existed as a way for me to express myself over how I felt about work.
It wasn’t until I started at a coffee shop that he got his permanent job: Jojo owned a café that he named The White Rabbit.
But the café isn’t his purpose (even though he cherishes the community he fosters within it).
Jojo is an inventor. His inventions are his passion, his craft, his art. And his inventions drove all the stories I wrote about him.
So what happened to him, and his friends and family of Bio City?
They lived in me, and in a box at the bottom of my closets.
I kept coming back to it, but I never felt ready to share him. He has existed for decades (goodness, I am old, but so is this rabbit) and it never felt like the right time to let him play with everybody else.
I kept him to myself because he’s been one of the only constants of my life, and maybe if I shared him, he might not be mine anymore.
If you’re been following this page for any number of days, weeks, or years, you’ll know that I’m kind of a mess. I’m insecure and a people-pleaser and I’m constantly recovering from something. This rabbit (and, later, The Weirdos and the animals of Brushfire) somehow keep the world at bay for me (pun intended), and they help me make sense of it.
I finished Matthew Perry’s book this afternoon, and I have a lot of feelings about it.
If I were the kind of person to share my feelings, I would do that here, but I’m just not that guy.
jk. Let’s get to it.
I want to start by saying it is not a well-written book, and I absolutely loved it. Its scruffiness is a big part of its charm (and lack thereof); Matty definitely wrote this book, but if I’m wrong and he did hire a person to write it for him, that person did not do a good job.
Matthew Perry is not a likeable man in his book. I believe this is the point.
Addiction makes addicts do things that are not likeable, and sometimes outright despicable. I don’t care if you like me right now; if I told you everything, you would find parts of me and things I have done to be wholly unlikeable, too. In reality, there’s a decent chance you already don’t like me, and that’s a perpetual and deep fear.
The fact of the matter is: addiction is still largely misunderstood by the majority of people, and this is nobody’s fault. You should not have to relate to an addict (and you should count your many blessings if you don’t); you should only have to relate to being human, and to what humans think and feel and want to be.
Matty is a human being in spades. I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered a memorist who is, simultaneously, both so horny and so haunting.
If you came here looking for a boiling pot of addressed gossip and illicit content, you’ll find it in bubbly abundance. No shortage of Hollywood talk here, and he’s candid about his time on Friends, which he admits was the best job in the world, but couldn’t stop him from being who he is.
He’s also open about his childhood and present life, which sometimes feels like a undeserved gift.
It is both immensely comforting and makes me uncomfortably sad to relate so much to the behavior he inhabits. Often, it’s just a giant-sized edition of my own issues.
He and I differ in many and obvious ways, but there is one thing we hold to be undeniably true: this stuff needs to be talked about. Honestly.
And that’s why I think he shows himself to be so unlikeable here: it’s proof of his ability to be honest.
And honesty is both refreshing and in short supply these days.
I’ve seen people who are really upset with him for a variety of reasons, and those people represent what addicts like he and I go through every day.
Who we are makes no sense, and no amount of intellectualism will fix that. What we do sometimes makes even less sense, and thinking about it too hard makes everybody, including us, upset.
It feels impossible to talk about addiction without getting upset.
“Had my habit killed me,” he writes, “it would have killed the wrong person. I wasn’t fully me yet; I was just parts of me (and not the best parts, either).”
The fact that so many people are upset means we still have a long way to go.
The Den 