Overnight — not by magic, but by your very intentional support — we surpassed our Kickstarter goal of $2,000!
That means that I have the funds to publish not one, but two incredibly special books this summer: Cold World, and Brushfire.
Thank you.
From deep within that dark well I call a soul: thank you, thank you, thank you.
If you haven’t invested but wanted a book or two, good news: now is the time, as these books are a definite go! There are still rad rewards available now that will not be available after March 31st, so go get ’em. These include the version of Cold World I’m printing just for Kickstarter patrons, and a variant cover of Brushfire.
Did I say thank you? Because thank you. All of my dang love on this sunny day. You continue to be the reason I keep on keeping on, and it humbles me and fills me with a kind of feeling I can’t explain, but am terribly grateful for. 💜
Great question, thank you for asking. With ONLY 5 DAYS LEFT of my Kickstarter campaign to go after today, and just over $400 left to find, I’m pulling out the big guns. (No, not these spaghetti arms.)
If you’ve been following my Brushfire journey at all, you’ll know that I’m creating it digitally.
That being said, there are few actual physical pieces of art I have behind its creation.
This is one of them.
It’s the cover to Brushfire. I drew it all in pencil, and then scanned it, recreating it in the digital world. But this drawing is the real one, the only original, and one of the rare pieces not created on a screen.
And you could own it! But how? ANOTHER GREAT QUESTION.
1. You can go to my Kickstarter and pledge $200. You’ll get all the rewards listed for your pledge tier, PLUS this one-of-a-kind piece of art.
2. But what if you’ve already pledged? Not fair! Well, actually, it is: if you log in and raise your pledge to $200, then this piece is yours.
There are no pledges over $100, so it’ll be easy to see if anyone hits the $200 mark with theirs. I hope this goes to a good home!
And I hope you all are having a great start to your weekend and Spring Break!
I freaking love Star Wars. Always have. There is, to me, no such thing as bad Star Wars.
I’m not of the original generation of fans (because they are old and I so clearly am not), so it always existed in a peripheral way to me until the Special Editions were released in theaters in 1997, when I was 11 years old, which may be the best age to experience it for the first time.
I’m of the prequel generation then; the films have some transcendent moments, but also have Jar Jar Binks. This paradox informs who I am as a person to this day.
It sounds corny to say, but Star Wars helps me make sense of the world; it’s been really helpful for my mental health as of late, as I find myself halfway through my first-ever viewing of The Clone Wars series, after too many years of ignoring the animated shows for no reason that makes any sense.
As the world always finds itself embroiled in both politics and war, Clone Wars appears to have been designed to be permanently relevant. It has all the great characters and themes that Star Wars excels at, but it takes a particularly sharp look at those two aspects of life.
As I find myself lacking in what to say about what’s happening in Ukraine or in American politics, I find solace in this show that has plenty to preach.
Here are some notes I’ve taken about what Clone Wars says about both politics and war.
Politics:
– Politics are stupid.
– Anyone who completely believes in any one side of politics is stupid.
– Anyone whose complete personal identity is politics is stupid.
– Politics are a necessary evil and attracts types accordingly.
– Good people do exist in politics and can even try to do better through them; they are often smothered and trampled by all the bad people, who are the majority of people in politics.
– Bad politicians gain power through fear; the good ones use hope and puts that power and their trust in the community.
War:
– War is stupid.
– People who want war are stupid.
– People whose complete personal identity is war are stupid.
– However, being selfless and protecting the innocent is honorable.
– You can support the troops and still say fuck war.
– War is good for the rich.
– War is very bad for the poor.
– War is very bad for the people who are not even participating in the war.
– Peace is awesome and literally the only way we’re going to make it out alive.
– Love of any kind and in any shape is the most important thing in the galaxy, and war tries to kill it.
May the Force be with you all on this eve of Spring Break.
Last night, I got to take part in a really special interview/conversation (hopefully I can share details soon!). The fun part of interviews is that it doesn’t matter how much you prepare; you don’t know what someone is going to ask you, and you never know what you’re going to say until you say it.
My charming interviewer asked an especially poignant question towards the end of our discussion; he wondered if, looking at my work as a whole, there was a unifying theme or idea to all of it. If there was a specific legacy to what I’ve created.
Next year will be my tenth anniversary as a published writer, so I’ve been able to start thinking about everything I’ve done and if there are any connections. So I paused, and I thought, and I knew the answer all along but the word was small.
Hope.
In every single book I’ve shared with the world, though the characters and stories and themes and ideas change, the one thing they all have in common is that they believe in hope.
Hope for a better future.
Hope to reconcile our pasts.
Hope to be able to let go of control and to overcome what tries to control us.
Hope for something more.
Hope that our dreams are more than just dreams.
Hope for somewhere better.
Hope to make right here better.
Hope for connection.
Hope for kindness; for others, and to ourselves.
Hope for our planet.
Hope that there will always be a tomorrow.
And as I’m working on these two new books, I can see it plain as day. Hope, hope, hope.
The world (and especially the internet) can largely feel like a cynical place. I’ve been argumentative and a person who used to find himself in fights but wasn’t always sure what he was fighting against.
It was cynicism all along.
And as I’ve gotten older (and I’m so old, you guys) that fight has been refined and distilled and crystallized into the outlook I try to bring to every day, and everything I write.
It’s all about hope. And I hope it will always be that way.
I’m probably just in a mood, or maybe the algorithm is joyously targeting me, but I just keep thinking about good byes.
Sure, there are the big ones that social media seems keen to keep reminding me of, like I don’t think about my big good bye too often already.
But it’s the little ones that step around my consciousness and make these creaking sounds; the little ones that catch my mind and I dwell on.
How do we say good bye?
Do we make every one good enough for forever?
Or do we challenge fate by manifesting the fact that we will see each other again?
Maybe that’s why, sometimes, a simple “bye” is all I can say to my family, because I will not accept that I’ll never say it to them again.
But maybe that’s why I say “I love you” to one of my bros, because I don’t know the last time I saw him, and I don’t know if I’ll see him again.
Sometimes I can only say “bye” because the words I want to say don’t exist, and I hope they know how much I love them anyway.
Sometimes I say “bye” like good riddance, though that sentiment could haunt me just as easily.
I tell people to drive safe or be careful, because that is good bye insurance. It guarantees I’ll be allowed to say good bye at least one more time.
At OC, we got really good at saying good bye, and we would call each other out when we didn’t. It didn’t make the fact that we didn’t get to say good bye the last time any easier.
And my hardest last good bye wasn’t a good bye at all. It was a hug, not so hard that I would break her, but hard enough to make her know I loved her more than anything else in this world.
So, yeah. I think about good byes too much.
And I think I’m writing this down because we should think about them even more.
What they mean. What they don’t mean. And if any is ever really good enough.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the world of Brushfire, and haven’t shared too much about Cold World, besides its title, release date and basic premise. That’s intentional, for sure: Brushfire is a story I’ve been working on for a long time, and it’s visually more fun to share. Cold World is virtually all words, and I like the icy air of mystery to the book.
That being said, I do want to talk about it a little. Where it came from, why it’s my next book, and where it could be going.
As a lifelong Minnesotan, the concept of year-long winter has been an idea in my head since I could think thoughts. Seeing, for example, an ice planet like Hoth in Star Wars just showed me that I wasn’t alone.
You can find easy similarities between the other three seasons, but winter is singular. Metaphorically, winter holds meaning that no other time of year can touch.
With that always sitting shotgun in the cockpit of my subconscious, I was reading Stephen Hawking last year and a creative landslide spilled out of my ears. I was specifically reading his Brief Answers to the Big Questions, and I remember the moment the whole story just came to me; I texted my friend Steve with the synopsis, as I often do when I get a new idea, and he said it sounded cool.
I have a system: breathe, and see how I feel about something in a few days. My time is valuable. I get obsessive about things, and it happens instantly, passionately. But I can fall out of things just as quickly. When it really means something to me, I still feel that pull days, weeks, months, years later.
Cold World had that pull.
Despite the other things I had been working on and want to work on, Cold World became front and center.
I’ve had elements of it in my work before, but I have never tackled spirituality and religion head on. Now I have. And I do it in a book that has a ton of action and romance and takes place in the future.
I break rules and I break format and I break large chunks of ice along the way.
Yeah, it’s a blast, but it’s also art in the purest sense. There is a lot of me in this story.
I did some concept art for this world, as well, like this image of Spoonbridge & Cherry in the middle of June.
And while it is a complete journey, there are so many other avenues you pass along the way. When I finished the first draft, I found at least three other stories that could take off from here — one before, one concurrently, and one after. And that’s ridiculously exciting.
So, that’s the tip of the iceberg that is Cold World. As always, you can support me and this book at Kickstarter for a few more days! All my love.
Some of my wonderful co-publishers have been asking me how they can further get the word out about the books I’m releasing this summer and the campaign I’m running to publish them.
“But wait,” you might be thinking. “Co-publishers? Don’t you self-publish your work?”
Well, yes. I do self-publish. But I don’t do it without the financial support of my friends and family and fans (and sometimes mortal enemies). And instead of referring to them as backers, I refer to them as who they actually are to me: my team.
You publish my books WITH me.
As far back as my very first novella, Them, there are names that appear on a page that are the first people who ever dropped a dollar on what I do before they ever saw it. They were my first team. They were my first co-publishers. And that team has only grown over the near-decade I’ve been a published writer.
So, if you want to help, for free, here are two steps you can take:
1. Save this image for you to use anytime, anywhere.
I’ve been trying to talk this idea out for a while now, but I should just try to write it down. Because I am an absolute idiot when I talk, and I am slightly less an idiot when I do not. So very slightly.
There’s this oft-repeated warning about good people; it’s the reminder that it can’t last, that nothing gold can stay. A great example is this memorable quote from The Dark Knight:
“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
”
I think about it a lot, but not as it is.
No, I often think about its inverse.
If being good forever is seemingly impossible, then being bad must have similar limitations.
For some people, they must be scraping the bottom so hard that the only opportunities that present themselves are ways up.
And with that in mind, I believe that some villains just last long enough to become the hero.
Not a hero in the heroic sense. A hero in a more tangible way, in how they see the world, and treat people, and enact sincere and permanent change.
Sure, you see this in pop culture all the time: the anti-hero, the bad guy you love to hate who eventually does the right thing. The cliché could spring from either a strong sense or severe lack of self-awareness.
But people aren’t characters. A character is written to change and a person has to write their own. And then be it and do it.
I felt like a villain for so long that I had to hope and believe the opposite of the popular sentiment was true.
That good things can come out of bad; that black can be gold under the right light.
I just ran into my buddy, Bay, and he says hi! He’s wondering, too, if you have any chips.
He also can’t believe we’ve already raised 54% of Fire & Ice — almost $1,100 — to tell his story. He actually got teary-eyed as I told him how excited people are to get to know him and his friends and family.
And then I got teary-eyed and I realized that the cartoon manifestation I was talking to was a cartoon manifestation and that I probably have some deep-rooted issues I need to work out.
Anyway!
We both hope you all had a great weekend and a happy Monday. If you’re looking to get into the Brushfire business, you can follow the link below.
Me and these little squirrels are beyond appreciative.
I’m a firm believer that when I have feelings while I’m creating something that it will hold those feelings and then give them to the person who experiences the art.
From my personal interactions, this seems to be true. I’ve had people reach out after reading something and say, “When I got to this part, I just started crying.” And I’ll respond: “When I wrote that part, I was crying, too.”
It’s a relationship and feeling unlike any other I’ve known or felt.
I’m having a hard time drawing this character.
Her name is Ava Marie. She’s the mother of Bay, one of the main characters in Brushfire. And she is based on my own mom. I created Ava Marie before Diane Marie left, but I don’t know if they ever met. I spend every day with both of them in different ways.
And every time I draw Ava, or have to write something she says, I get real emotional.
And if there is any way for my mom to live on through me, I hope it’s in these emotional exchanges through art.
There’s a chapter in Flip where Liam is having a conversation with his mom in space (this is happening in a dream, as is most of the book). I wrote this scene almost ten years ago, but it was really difficult to articulate the idea of a parent telling their child that they have to let go.
When I revisited that chapter last year for the Special Edition, I had a minor emotional breakdown.
Because I wrote that chapter when she was alive, it now felt like she was actually speaking to me from wherever she is, from heaven, from the nonempty space between us, from dreams.
She had something to say from outside of time. She told me that she had to go. And it didn’t matter if I understood.
And maybe that’s why it’s so hard to do this sometimes. I should be able to just draw some lines that look like a squirrel and move the heck on.
Instead, I’m over here wondering why this squirrel smiles, why she needs to hug everyone she meets, why she is so damn alive.
The Den 