About

I’ve actively avoided creating an about page for this blog for what has doubtless been too long. In what can best be described as an ill-advised “Butch and Sundance”-esque, “I’ve got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals” moment, I thought it would be more fun to let the blog stand alone and speak for itself. I wanted it to have an air of authenticity, because the idea of not knowing a story is happening to you, while it’s happening to you, seemed so fascinating to me. It’s the draw of the present tense. Anything written in past tense has already happened, so while it may be a surprise to the reader, it never is to the writer, and that is what I wanted to reclaim. The idea that we are pointilism. We are too close to see the full picture, and we will always be.
That said, I may as well explain the beast and it’s nature, being as I am, uniquely well acquainted with it. It would be lovely to claim a starting point, but it would be difficult. The truest one would probably be standing at the top of Bird Street with my brother, looking into an decrepit and abandoned general store. The paint was pealing and it wore the general facade of forgotten. Unloved. But inside, there was this table, and there was a sheet over it. There must have been old paint cans, or really any number of other things under the sheet, but we talked about it and ultimately agreed it was a Frankenstein. And then a few years ago, I started writing a story about what it would be like if a small town general store owner were to build a Frankenstein (yes, yes, I know, the creature is not Frankenstein, but let’s go with it for the sake of ease). Because I have a sense of humor that’s been described as everything from “bleak” to “perverse”, it jumped the shark from being a horror story to being a sort of gothic comedy full of feels. And I loved it. I created a little, throw away character for it, who I never intended to see again, but she had different plans, and it didn’t take too long to realize that my novel, if it would ever be written would be about Karen. Of course, then it got weird. As things pretty much inevitably will if they’re permitted to incubate too long in my brain. And it gradually turned into a distopian fairy tale, informed by any number of external forces, though arguably none played in so well as my own internal ball of yarn. Anyway, I started it, I walked away from it, I periodically visited it on birthdays and holidays with cakes and apologies that next time I’d be better, but I never was. And then one day, a very stupid slip of the tongue, and I was back. I was in it. And I was committed this time. I was ready.
And so I am.
And I hope you are.