Impossible Dream

November 26th, 2022

I tried several times to NOT write this book.

Let me start at the beginning: I wanted to write something to celebrate my tenth year of publishing in 2023. I was trying to think of a way to get all my characters in one place.

Let me tell you what I didn’t do: the multiverse is hot right now. It’s an easy way to bring together disparate characters and unconnected storylines and it can be done well, but it didn’t feel right for me.

And then I remembered: Liam has vivid dreams.

To have him have a dream in which all these characters existed was an irresistible idea for me.

So, naturally, I resisted it.

I have a lot going on. A lot. I’m busy, honestly. I didn’t NEED to tell this story.

Until I did.

I got to the end of the story in my head and it turned out to be the most personal story I’ve ever told in fiction.

Sure, every book is unique, each story unable to be told by anybody else in quite the same way; but to try to express how particular and impossible this specific story would be from anybody else would be silly. It simply doesn’t exist.

So after trying to not write this story, over and over again, it became impossible to try to stop.

Liam finds himself in a dream that feels like the last one. He is going to need the help of anyone he can find to survive it.

A Dream of Tin & Eternity, my 10th book, will be available December 9th, 2022.

The Language of Darkness

November 25th, 2022

There’s something you feel when someone ends their own life that feels either unnatural or completely understandable.

It’s something I’ve explored a lot, in essays like these, and in fictional characters like Liam, in the book Push, and Axis in The Weirdos.

I had the realization that I had said unnatural or understandable things when I was in a hospital room trying to get sober. They asked me if I ever talked about suicide, and I didn’t think I had, but I was mistaken. Regardless of whether I felt I had been serious or not, I had to get to the root of my thinking, and that grew into thinking emphatically about others who consider ending their lives.

The big question, of course, is why.

And there isn’t one answer.

I write about a lot of very personal things and I share them with you for free. I don’t share everything. I decide on the subjective basis that if something is important or universal or helpful that it’s my responsibility to try to put it into words.

I have said some dark things. They’re still there, if you scroll down. I’ve written dark lyrics and drawn dark pictures, and I think humans make a subtle disconnect from that which makes us uncomfortable.

I think, generally, people meet me and they think that I am always okay now.

In a weird sense, when I talk about the dark stuff, I don’t think people believe me.

And I think that might be a reason why we lose people sometimes.

I think posting impersonal phone lines for general help comes from a good place. But I also think a lot of hurt people don’t feel like the world believes them, and a person who doesn’t feel empowered doesn’t seek help.

I know I didn’t for a long time, and I am grateful when I meet someone who believes me.

Believes that there are days where I’m okay, and days where I am not, and knows that it’s not unnatural to have to talk to your shadow. But that you don’t have to talk to your shadow alone.

I know this time of year is hard, but I want you to know I believe you. And if you ever need help talking to your shadow, I am proficient in the language of darkness.

Grace

November 23rd, 2022

I love this time of year, because I live for times when light and dark are mutually strongest.

The holidays can be f—ing tough. Talking to others around a table, especially those who see the world differently than you do, can be extremely sensitive and difficult.

Kirsten Powers on Substack sent the perfect newsletter out today to help us identify and use a powerful tool: grace.

“In secular terms, I like to say that grace creates space for other people to not be you,” she writes.

“It’s critical to understand that grace does not mean ‘letting people say or do whatever they want with no consequences.’ It does not mean that you should be a doormat. In the Christian tradition, grace is defined as ‘unmerited favor,’ and that’s how I am using the word here. It means people don’t have to earn the right to be treated with grace. Grace is not just for people you like; indeed if you can find a reason to extend grace, it probably isn’t grace. After all, diplomacy is more meaningfully practiced with our adversaries, not our friends.”

I love this. I’m sure some of you are wondering: if I’m not a Christian, why do I follow Christian writers and listen to Christian ideas?

Because I practice what I preach, if you will. Also, I’m a big fan of Jesus, and some Christian ideas are actually pretty good.

Kirsten continues:

“When you create this space, it’s not an endorsement of beliefs or behavior, but you refrain from judging, shaming, demonizing and dehumanizing others and see them as more than their offensive or problematic beliefs or behavior. It’s recognizing that people are doing the best they can with the tools they have — just like you.”

I often tell people that I do not believe in generalization; it turns individuals into a faceless mass, and that mass is easy to hurtfully target. She says:

“Grace helps you see that other people’s beliefs and actions belong to them, and that marinating in judgment, rage, hatred, frustration, and resentment toward them helps nobody. In fact, it harms you. If you are anything like me, it steals your peace, makes your body hurt, creates a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, causes anxiety, and in the worst-case scenario leads you to adopt the behavior and tactics you are trying to oppose.

“Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche warned that if you are going to fight the monster, you need to make sure that in the process you don’t become the monster.

“Grace creates a buffer zone between you and the people who are driving you to the edge and even causing serious harm. Practicing grace protects your energy, so you can put it toward something more beneficial than furiously typing mean tweets, raging at a family member with a problematic or offensive worldview, or screaming at the television every night.”

This is all excellent insight, and stuff I use day-to-day, that I wanted to share with you from a better writer than I am.

She gives three simple steps to remember at gatherings:

1. Use boundaries.
2. Facts and data are useless; use personal stories to connect to others.
3. Engage in healthy confict, remembering the boundaries you set.

It’s not easy. But it is more than possible; it’s actually hopeful.

I hope you have a grace-filled holiday weekend.

Season of a Thousand Nice Moments

November 19th, 2022

For the last time this season, I get to thank the best community in the universe for being the best.

Out of all the exchanges I had today, a unique one stays with me.

A woman in her seventies walked by my table. I asked her if she read. She glanced quickly over my books and told me she didn’t think she’d like any of mine.

I lightly criticized her for judging my books by their covers.

So she stopped, and we talked about my work. I got to my non-fiction book, and I told her that I write about my life.

She asked:

“Well… do you have anything to say?”

I laughed, looked at the stories I’ve created over the past ten years, and said:

“I hope so.”

I mentioned sobriety, and she told me she was three-and-a-half months sober herself, at seventy-something years old.

We had a nice moment.

It was a nice moment in a season of a thousand nice moments.

Thank you once again. For being supportive, for showing up, for being my friend.

All my love.

To fill or burst, to break or bury, or wear as jewelry

November 18th, 2022

I’m reading a book called The Gift by Lewis Hyde and have a longer essay forthcoming, but I wanted to write a little on it before my last table gig of the year, tomorrow morning at Valley Creek Mall in Woodbury.

The Gift is about (spoiler alert, I am so sorry) gifts.

Gift-giving creates deep relationships; it forms and strengthens bonds, and maintains communities. Commerce does the opposite; it allows two parties to remain free of anything but the desired transaction. (It’s why capitalism breeds loneliness.)

Gift-giving is common in the artistic community. At cons and shows, people are constantly gifting and trading their work, and you see all these relationships grow before your eyes. It’s beautiful stuff, and it’s a practice I both strongly believe in and occasionally do a bad job, in regards to participating. Not always on purpose, and sometimes out of capitalistic necessity.

Being an artist who tries to sell their gifts puts you in a strange position.

I want people to think I have a gift, and to compensate me for it. Conversely, I wish I could freely give away everything I create and also have a career doing what I love to do.

I am not a great businessperson. My motto behind the table (and I know you’ve heard it if you’ve met me at a con) is that I am not here to sell you anything; I’m just here to talk. Because of that, I am regularly informed that I am almost always talking to someone at my table.

I also encourage people to barter with me. (I actually tell people to do so on my sign.) I don’t twist arms. I don’t beg, plead, or demand. I plant seeds.

And it’s because I want people to choose me. If someone has to spend money on my gift, I want it to feel like a gift as much as a transaction. I want my work to keep moving, to be shared, and to hopefully inspire, because that’s what gifts do.

“It is when someone’s gifts stir us that we are brought close, and what moves us, beyond the gift itself, is the promise (or the fact) of transformation, friendship, and love.”

I don’t know how to solve for art and commerce. (I’m also not quite done with the book so maybe the answer is at the end of it?)

But I do know what feels right for me, and I know that I have to remember that I am part of a community: a vibrant, inclusive, passionate pack of nerds.

I hope I see you tomorrow. All you need to bring is yourself.

Gratitude For Fall Tour ’22

November 15th, 2022

Encore? ENCORE!!

First, I want to thank everyone who came to any (or all!) of the dates on my Fall Tour 2022. I was able to do a full week’s worth of appearances this season, and I met (or reunited with) hundreds of you delightful people.

Every event was a success in so many ways, and that’s because you showed up and have been so supportive. Whether you just discovered my work or fully engaged with me in it, I have nothing but the best feelings from our time together.

That being said: should we do one more?

The Comic Exchange has one more show this weekend, and things fell into place just right for me to be there. You can get some early holiday shopping done, and I even have a few of the Winter 2022 prints left if you ask nice!

Thanks again to everyone who made it out!

FALL TOUR 2022

The Comic Show 09.17
NerdinOut Con 10.07 – 10.08 – 10.09
108 Alchemy 11.05
Twin Cities Con 11.11 – 11.12 – 11.13
The Comic Show 11.19

And more info on this weekend:

The Comic Show
9 am to 3 pm
Valley Creek Mall
Woodbury, MN
Free!

Kevin Conroy, Batman

November 14th, 2022

Kevin Conroy passed away on November 10th, 2022. For many people, he was known as the voice of Batman.

For some of us, he simply was Batman.

It’s odd, because last month I started a series of essays about Halloween costumes I’d worn as a kid, and what those characters meant to me; I had started a piece about Batman, but I couldn’t finish it.

One of my most vivid memories of childhood is from September 5th, 1992. I was 7 years old and still living in our first house, on the west side of Minneapolis. I had taken every pillow in that house and laid them around the floor in the TV room to watch the much-advertised first episode of Batman: The Animated Series, leaping from pillow to pillow, emulating my hero.

I’ve written about this before, but Batman (and Spider-Man) taught me a major life lesson at that young age.

As a kid (and I think this is normal), I wanted every bad guy to die.

I could not understand why the Joker (or Green Goblin) were allowed to live.

But those heroes continued to believe in the power of being human; they were committed to the idea that every life is precious, and that ideology extended to their enemies.

Whether or not their foes actually wanted to change, they all deserved the opportunity to.

That lesson stays with me to this day.

And it is not a lesson I see shared among many fellow adults now, which is apparent if you’ve ever visited the internet.

Conroy isn’t just the voice of Batman; he’s the voice of reason and compassion in my head. As a man, he embodied all of the heroic attributes of his alter ego, a life that he beautifully shared in a DC comics story recently.

I found out the morning of opening day at the convention about his passing. It reminded me of the convention where I encountered him in real life, regularly walking down his aisle, just to hear my hero talk, the hero I never found the time, or courage, to speak to.

People die. They do. (I write about it a lot.)

But parts of them live on as long as we do, as long as we remember and live by them.

Good night, Batman.

Twin Cities Con 2022 Recap

November 13th, 2022

“It’s so nice to finally meet you in real life!”

There are a thousand thinkpieces out there about how to cure the internet and the problem of being very online; the solution has always been conventions.

Being at a convention is a special kind of feeling at home.

The amount of kindness and inclusivity you encounter is overwhelming at times, in the best possible way.

I can’t give enough thanks to Twin Cities Con for putting on such a magnificent second-year show; the only people I am more thankful for are the those who stopped by and wasted their time with me.

Before this weekend, I had never done a panel as a writer, and on Saturday, I did two panels with a cast of brilliant writers and audience members. It was an absolutely magical experience.

I could not even begin to tag the hundreds of folks who made this weekend so surreal. By the whirlwind nature of a con, I broke so many promises of connecting to people but I promise, again, to connect to you soon.

Just know I appreciate you all from the bottom of my heart.

All my love, and see you next year. (I already got a table with my name on it.)

Twin Cities Con ’22 Highlight

November 12th, 2022

I’ll do an entire Twin Cities Con weekend recap tomorrow night, but I am exhausted; I’m also exhilarated to be able to do it all over again, one more time, tomorrow.

I just wanted to share this photo from one of the two panels I got lucky enough to be a part of, and give my heartfelt thanks to everyone involved, on both sides of the table.

You made my day absolutely magical, y’all.

See you Sunday.

Twin Cities Con Panel News!

November 11th, 2022

So! Some exciting news!

First of all: how are you? Good, or sorry to hear that.

Secondly: I’ve been asked to participate in not one, but TWO panels at Twin Cities Con on Saturday!

The first is called Creating Believable Pseudo-Science. It’s @ 2 pm in Rm 202.

The second is called Chaos & Control: A Writing Process, and it’s @ 6:30 pm, also in Rm 202! Both are taking place on Saturday, November 12th.

I am thrilled! Both topics are deep wells and it might be fun to hear writers give you more than the quick pitch you generally hear on the con floor.

Day 1 was so much fun and it was a blast meeting (and reuniting) with you all!

See you tomorrow!

(P.S. I don’t have the bandwidth to process the death of Kevin Conroy right now but I do have an essay coming next week. We are all the night.)