Building a Weird Little Fortress

A quick creative check-in

Mar 21, 2025

So the cruel, rapid decline of America is cause for bounteous fear and anger and regret, but the good news (for me at least - indifferent at best for you) is that I’ve been feeling more creatively productive lately than at any point in the better part of the past decade. **Feeble hurrah**

This is partly a coincidence - various workstreams begun years ago just happen to be converging around the same time:

Though it’s been two years since I finished writing and illustrating Congress of the Monsters #2: The Affair of the Pairs, its long-awaited (by me) print publication has set off a flurry of activity. I brought copies with me to last weekend’s MoCCA Arts Fest, and giving them away to fellow creators was a great way to make new connections and engage in some inspiring conversations. If you’re in NYC, please consider coming to one of my reading events next week in Brooklyn!1

Last year, I had the idea to write a screenplay for a short film, and my dear friend Bryan Enk at Third Lows Productions is directing and producing it - we shoot this weekend! It’s called “The Eleventh Waitress” and features some long-time collaborators I’ve been working with for two decades, along with a bunch of new faces. It’s wild to be along for the ride on a project I dreamed up but am not personally producing, and I’ll plan to write some more about it next week after the shoot.

Through it all, the first issue of our literary publication slips slips is continuing to come together. I’ve never laid out a broadsheet newspaper publication before, so it’s been a slow but fascinating learning experience. We’re using InDesign, for anyone who’s interested in that kind of thing, and the process entails shuffling 50-odd prose, poetry, and visual art pieces across eight pages in a way that makes each piece look good while creating a kind of visual cohesiveness across the whole. It’s like a multi-level game of chess, but with the pieces made of paper so they keep blowing away whenever you sneeze. But despite everything it’s starting to take shape!

I’ve also been working on my own individual contribution to slips slips. It’s a sort of comic strip that runs across the bottom of several pages, based on an idea that’s been bobbing around in my brain for many years now. I don’t want to give much away, but since I haven’t had much time for sustained newsletter thinking this week, I figured you might be amused by seeing some of the sketchbook pages I put together in preparation for the project. So that’s what you’ll see below.

The architectural subject matter of these drawings is apt, because everything I’ve listed here makes it feel like I’m building a personal psychological fortress to weather the horrors that abound - a fortress constructed of community, activity, and imagination. I’ll need to make sure I don’t close myself up entirely in this fortress - and close out those near and far who might need whatever I have to offer - but, as we keep hearing, we’re not much good to other people if we’re not good to ourselves.

Before you scroll down, though, let me ask - what’s sustaining YOU creatively during this dark time? Do you have anything to share/promote/display/shout out? If it buoys your spirit, it will do so for the rest of us, so please don’t be shy!

For the record, not everything here sprung from my imagination - I copied and riffed on photos and sketches from various books of bizarre and fantastic architecture. At some point I’ll do a post highlighting all that cool stuff.

Building a Weird Little Fortress

A quick creative check-in

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