This is the page where we post what we collect: communiques from the multiverse.
When the tape hiss drips down the AM radio at 3 AM; when you find another frequency pressed between the pages; when the flood forecast gives way to a number station that’s been dead for a decade. That’s a passageway to endless iterations of you and me and every fool we know. Welcome to the multiverse. It’s a grey place.
Train wrecks and prismatic kicks. The echo of a collapsed possibility: my own big ass nose came to me in a dream and dragged me to the end of time. Packed ash and pools of light. Big Bird with the same sad failure eyes and sad slouching mumble fuck. What follows is what we saw together, and what I could glean from reading between the pages of my worst worn books.
Forgive the aphasia, ticks and that repetitive twitch. When you “fall through” you leak the good stuff.
Time travel takes a physical toll. There’s a cognitive cost.
More to come.
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The work on this page is fiction. Any resemblance to anyone (be it historical or public figures or your dog Biscuits who is indeed the ‘goodest boy’) is purely coincidental.
I don’t write smut (though smut is lovely), but there’s adult themes. The tone is grown folks bedtime stories (because grown ass people need bedtime stories so their imaginations don’t wither and die). I wrote you a bedtime story, you can read it if you’d like. Links to episodic novellas are above. Newest to the left. Oldest isht and proto-types to the right.
You do not have my permission to do anything with my words other than enjoy them. “AI art” is an abomination and an insult to human creativity. It’s lazy ass theft that makes content. Do not put my words into AI for any reason. Thanks.
Everything written here is the product of the author: Adam Mitchell. Bluesky: @adamstwitchell.bsky.social
UPDATES/NEWS:
3-MARCH-2026: It is Spring again “when kings go to war” and I hate that. I also hate my first draft of Cancri 10, so I’m gonna fix that. The probability cone of “suck” or “that’s complete shit” on a creative project (I wanna argue any kind of creative project) is wide and forgiving early and narrows as we make our choices on ‘the page’ or whatever our medium is. I hate my first draft and I’m gonna fix that. Also, fuck fascism, and fuck any notion that dropping bombs on people is helpful or liberatory. It’s not. It’s not a war book, Cancri. Right? And I get a couple pages into the one about how the spiders won when they shouldn’t have. They do. The spiders, the little Cancrins beat the precursor mining wreck. It was always going to happen. It’s the why of it (and what happens next) that’s novel and I’m working on telling you all that, dear Reader. I started writing the ending of a war book and that’s stupid and takes a shit on everything I already wrote, so I have to fix it. I’m trying to get better at endings. Cancri 10 is coming.
28-FEB-2026: Fuck nationalism. I am an American, and accident of birth is not a thing to be proud of (it is taking credit for what ghosts did and that bums me out because it is exceptionally weak and pathetic little pinky-dick ass energy). Here’s the deal, I’m on “Team Human” but I know the language of nationalism and geopolitics and all that happy horse shit that people use to justify murder and warfare and crimes against our own collective humanity. Iran is not a threat to the US or US interests. Iran is a regional threat to a US ally’s interests (not her existence). That’s not adequate justification to attack a people. Furthermore, Iran is a target because they have obsolete air defenses. That’s the secret (that there isn’t one). And my country doesn’t pick on people who have a chance of shooting our airmen down (because we’re chickenshit bullies who do war crimes from the sky). Full stop. Fuck war (all of them) and this impending one in particular.
17-FEB-2026: Typos. Hot editing typos. We’re almost at the end of the text so I gotta circle back and catch as many typos that escaped the net as possible before they just get baked into the text like roaches painted over by landlord’s on the walls of shit apartments. Cancri 8? Yeah. Lost record in the library riot. Cancri 10 exists though. Or at least it will when I write it.
15-FEB-2026: Cancri 9 is up. 8? There isn’t one. That’s the lost grindhouse reel. That’s the chapter that fell into a lacuna (one of them). It’s a lost silver tablet. More to come. Probably a chapter and an epilogue.
11-FEB-2026: Real rough cut of Cancri 9 is done. Little spit-polishing and a few editing passes and such. Soon. Then it’s like a chapter (chapter and a half maybe) and an epilogue and badda-yadda novella bing and done.
5-FEB-2026: Reader, I don’t put people in the work whole in any way other than to honor, and whole real people do not appear. But there’s a couple of moments that are mine and someone else’s. The grandfather in Ignatius that gets a little anecdote was my actual grandfather and Jack’s dad in the Dolores books does my dad’s bedtime story repetitive dad joke. The “Johnny be Good” thing. I prolly botched it in the book. We haven’t talked in forever and I just got real bad news about him, and man young me thought he had hardened his heart to this moment, and that was not the case. And I’m glad for that. A hard heart’s useless. Be kind to yourself. Befuddle fash.
1-FEB-2026: January was a hell of a year. Cancri 9 is about half done. After that, we’re gonna try to get the e-book goin to (it will still stay free to read on the site cause a promise is a promise as long as I can afford to keep this website up).
30-JAN-2026: I am once again “up before the other team” and writing at some ungodly hour because my brain decided to eff my sleep schedule. Polyphasic sleep is where it’s at, but that’s best done (or perhaps only possible) when you aren’t hitched work-or-starve to a time-clock. I think that double time reference does something conceptually: time-clock. That’s the work clock. That’s “time time” the meaningful and authoritative. Fuck that. Nature’s time run on vibes. In any case, go forth Fraggles and rock. Remember, Dozers can only Doze. Fraggles can do whatever the fuck the moment demands (and Dozers are really fucking bitter about it, not the Fraggles fault or prob). Stay warm and hydrated (or if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, stay cool). Be kind to people. Befuddle the fash.
29-JAN-2026: Reader, “It may be the coldest day of the year. What does he think of that? I mean what do I. And if I do. Perhaps I am myself again.” And “Mayakofsky” (spell?) is a hell of a poem and O’Hara is awesome. It is also that time of year, historically coldest stretch where I reside, so it’s a lot. Up early to write today because that’s what the sleep schedule says? We’ll see how that goes. Cancri 9 is coming.
26-JAN-2026: Working on Cancri 9, and it has occurred to me that I don’t know how to pronounce the name of the star Cancri 55 (cause I read it). Reader, I am always open to being pleasantly surprised. Solidarity with the people of Minnesota. It’s cold. I’m tired. I got an old cat laying on my chest, and I’m peeking over him to write this (I just smooched his little cat head). He is purring mightily (thank you for asking). Be kind to yourself. Befuddle fash. Always.
24-JAN-2026: This fascist regime just murdered another person in Minneapolis. It was another summary execution caught on tape. No, there was nothing defensive about it. Moreover, they shot him 2-3 times before one piece of shit mag-dumped in his body. See, that’s that ‘warrior cop’ training that they get when they get the advanced ‘training’ bootlickers are saying is the answer (it is not the answer). The cop who chose to execute a man did so, and he then made as sure as he could there was no one to question he and his’ account of things. The fed did as he was trained (and as “warrior cops” taught by mercenaries / security contractors / some alchy from Israel or South Africa are wont to do). Foucault’s boomerang is comin’ for all of us. Duck. Men with guns and no accountability (no matter what flag, no matter what they call god) act as less than men, as savages, as subhuman garbage. Accountability is the only training that matters. Here that means ICE needs to be abolished.
18-JAN-2026. Reader, Cancri 8 is up and live. Now we nap before the inevitable typo hunt of shame and hot edits all them hot edits. Then we continue on. I would like to tell you more about my Parson because it’s vital that you understand her. Hydrate. Befuddle fash. You know the drill.
16-JAN-2026: Woo. We’re writing. I hate piss trickling chapters. We have established this, Reader. The goal is to get Cancri 8 up this weekend (or soon after). Let’s fuckin go. Hydrate. Be brave. Even (especially) if your leg shakes, nah mean?
15-JAN-2026: Rolled my ankle yesterday on the way home. I am not trying to burn every minute and hour of PTO, but the weather certainly is. Reader, I am pretty bummed. I am also pretty grateful for the people in my community and all the ‘we’re gonna get home and be nice to each other’ capacity to endure shitty weather yesterday. The weather was shit, the people are (as they always are) rad. Some people’s personal/sick/vakay is for vacations. Other people’s time is for enduring the effort to make it to work. Which is a function of social class. If you’re reading this, you already know what I’m saying.
13-JAN-2026: Rest of Cancri 8 mapped. Gimme a moment. Dilla came on and I gotta turn the music down. Then I gotta turn it up when he says ‘turn it up.’ Anyway, rest of this chapter is outlined. Reader, I hate piss trickling chapters bits at a time. As apology, I’m redoubling the effort my tired ass can offer these low-fi bedtime stories for grown people. Chapter 8 is coming. Ruth and Gary and Brunhilde and the race against death.
11-JAN-2026: Reader, Jonathan Ross (ICE agent) is a murderer and a coward. And there’s objective evidence of this. I will not be gaslit by fascist trash or bootlickers. That man murdered Renee Good in cold blood, and he must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Furthermore, ICE must be abolished. Stay hydrated. Befuddle fash. Be kind to humans.
10-JAN-2026: Dearest Reader, everything is hard. I’m piss trickling that chapter. I know not when more will come. Yeah, the spiders beat the machine. They overwhelm it with sheer numbers (duh), but that’s the beginning. I told you, Cancri is not a war book. It’s not about the Von Nueman machine sent to wreck the spiders. It’s not about the fight to bring the precursor mining rig down. It’s about the how and the who inspired the what, and Ruth deserves the right ending. So I give myself permission to take my time. I’m trying. You keep doing that too.
9-JAN-2026: Reader, the great piss-trickle of writing continues. Your boy (me) in exile is about to take a bubble bath. Fuck fascist trash. No rest. No peace. “Obey or die.” No. I reject the premise of the choice. You should too.
8-JAN-2026: There’s more important shit going on (all the time really) than my space spiders right now, but we’re advancing the thing. Look, the fault isn’t in the stars out toward Cancri way, but in the author transliterating the spider story from Lep-Tik to English(ish) (me, I’m the author). This is one of those chapters I’m gonna end up Piss-trickling little paragraphs/pages at a time and I hate doing that but like I’m uh crawlin right now. Hydrate. Be safe. Be brave in whatever way you know how to be. Be kind. Look ’em in the eye (yes, even my tribe can do that).
7-JAN-2026: The United States is a fascist state. Thus far, we as a people have failed to stop the rise of fascism, and that’s a problem whose consequences fall on everyone (potentially). I watched video of a federalized thug shoot a woman point blank in the face in Minn. The officer was not in any danger. He is full on 90 degree oriented toward the woman he murders. That’s indefensible. He was eager to use his authority to take a life. Full stop. There’s no room for interpretation if you’re watching the unobstructed view. Anything else is sophistry. Yeah man, I don’t really fucking feel like writing about space spiders tonight. I’m trying. The writing will come when I can write.
4-JAN-2026: Dearest Reader, hearing aid is coming. And I’m looking forward to it. There was a time in my life when my hearing and its abysmal condition was one of those personal red lines. That is: “when I can’t appreciate music or function day to day… I’ll just punch out.” So getting a job with benefits (shitty benefits to be sure) and finally getting the tool I need to function and hear. It’s a big deal because it’s a big tool (took a lot of my very limited resources to acquire) and it’s a big commitment (i.e. not dying which shouldn’t be a big commitment but is). Yay. But also, most people are either gone or I ran them off. So, not really many people to talk to. There’s you, Reader, but you don’t really talk back. There’s Cooper. Grampa cat. I wanna hear every last bit of his purrs and his melodious meows. I’m pretty isolated and lonely, and that’s not going to change. But maybe I just get to hear the silence better? Maybe I can know its counters better. I will attempt to be ok with that.
2-JAN-2026: “Well fuck, the book is longer than I thought…” Is where we (royal we) in Exile are at with this Cancri shit. I am grumpy, for I do still desire nicotine, and we have stepped the fuck down to a lower dose of nic replacement. Executive functioning (is a term that has always bothered me on a few levels), but that’s my struggle that’s old and new again. Planning over the horizon is a challenge and I gotta figure out how to do it w out my cig crutch. “But there’s meds for…” stay in your fucking lane. If prescriptions are how you manage your attention span? Good for you. If you have an opinion on how I should manage mine? Fuck all the way off. Thanks. But anyway, my grumpy ass is going to continue Cancri. I’m doing that thing: breaking the Warhol rule and thinking of the next thing, and that’s dumb. Need to organize the site. Going to see what putting Dolores and some of the early novellas into one-page format (with pagination) looks like (to de-clutter site). I wanna get that self-published bound copy thing going too. Here’s the challenge though: if you are trying to make a creative project (as opposed to trying to fuck people over to make a buck) it takes time to do things correctly. Here, correct means paying a visual artist for their work (and coming up with a plan for fair compensation if you make more cash than you expected).
28-DEC-2025: Cancri 7 is up. Writing things without cigarettes is a lot easier than it was which is to say its still not very easy. The “virginia woolfe spider” line was not while smoking and it found its place here so that’s a fucking win and I’ll take it. Cancri 8 is coming and I’m not putting a goal on that, and there’s no way in hell I’m finishing Cancri by New Years, that’s not fucking happening. Stay hydrated. Be nice to yourself.
26-DEC-2025: I’m tired and burnt out and exhausted. My car died in the fall. Cat didn’t. Every work day is twelve hours now because I got that rust belt bus line (that I love and am grateful for, but boy howdy do we hate pedestrians in this state because old Hank Forge and his ugly stupid children did). I can’t go at a pace I want. And it’s either going to wreck the work or me. So I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’ll be damned if I leave my work for AI-Jackals with austere souls to pick over. Those people are fucking garbage. You’re supposed to laugh at Plato’s hubris. You’re not supposed to think its a good idea to ever cast the poets out of the Republic. It’s a shibboleth argument (like reading Machiavelli w a straight face… that’s proof you failed).
25-DEC-2025: Reader, I’m having a really hard time with the writing and everything that comes with being alive. I know you’re there, as the little website ticker tells me so (and that you keep coming back). Here’s the thing about this site though, it’s not a print book so there’s no revenue-generating reviews for me to farm and this venture, this Exile thing, is a weird duck. I’m cool with that. I’m also kinda writing into the void, and I could use some kinda response. I’m saying it would be good to hear from you if anything I have produced has been any kind of delightful. Thanks.
23-DEC-2025: I don’t mind failing. All the good human things come out of recursive processes, and I’m not racing the steam engine chat-bot abominations. I’m slow-cooking the stories, Reader. My tired ass has righted the chapter so I can continue to write it. It’s coming I’m trying to get Cancri 7 up this week. Bedtime stories for holiday hangover. You know you wanna talk about Dolores and Ignatian Puffins with your weird fam that you blow gauge with. Share my weird stores you glorious little reader goblins, and I promise I’ll work diligently on the box of spiders I’m writing you. Merry Festivus Pottersfield and all the other hoo-villes where human beings live.
20-DEC-2025: Quitting smoking is hard, but I took a walk and ended at the library so we got some flicks now and some books coming. I don’t think I’m writing much this weekend, but I’m going to be feeding my soul good stories: 1) Children of Men (those two long single-shot sequences? Living proof the movie can be better than the book). 2) The Witch (cause Black Philip is my d00d and that’s a proper slow burn ‘you know what’s comin but it don’t matter cause the “how” is so good). 3) Rashomon (cause I need some Kirosawa in my world and everything in the Criterion collection has something beautiful in it you need to see). 4) The Princess Bride (because there is a shortage of perfect movies and stories in the world and it would be a tragedy not to celebrate this one because I can). Stay hydrated. Befuddle fash. Be kind to you (and take no shit).
15-DEC-2025: Cancri 7 eludes and evades me. The words they hide from me. Reader, I beg your patience while I wade into the grass to hit my words with a stick, toss them in a sack like Krampus, and drag them to the page where they belong. I shall sick mine yule cats upon these words to menace them (so that they behave and array themselves prettily and poetically). Them cakes is coming. I got a little vakay-stay-kay comin’ and I intend to make spider silk while the winter sun shines tired. I wanna get you a xmas or your preferred celebration present. It’s spiders. It’s a novella full of space spiders.
11-DEC-2025: Reader, we (royal we) are making progress. Chapter 7 is coming along even quicker than expected.
12-DEC-2025: Reader, it is the mid-chapter duldrums. We’re in the cake mines digging batter from the very veins of narrative Earth. Not really. We-royal-we (me and two cats adding up to three) are about to go get some sleep. Be kind to you. Befuddle fash. AI is trash.
7-DEC-2025: Cancri 7 is 1/3 to 1/2 there whatever the fuck that means. It’s coming. I’m now going to take a nap. Reader, be kind to yourself. You don’t earn rest or food.
6-DEC-2025: Cancri 7 base coat is down. Baking cakes. It’s coming. Merry xmas Pottersfield. It’s time to be a hardass with myself in the realm of cigarettes and nowhere else. Be kind to you so you might transitive property that kindness to the rest of the human tapestry. Here’s the thing, Reader. I pick up bible stories and 90’s JRPGs and build on them with elbow patches stories Bronte and Blake and banned-Soviet magical realism (they’ll tell you that shit is socialist realism and just grey, but they lie Tovarish… the bears talk and the cats pack heat and will gunfight the NKVD and jesus christ lives in a soviet mental institution.. etc. etc.). I pick up all these bricks with which to Kilgore Trout it up and make my katamari art, but I believe what I say: god (intelligence or accident, luck or providence) made the whole human tapestry and that whole garment is sacred. The human tapestry is the mission of the whole human race, and the whole tapestry makes it to the future or none of us deserves to be here. Watch It’s a Wonderful Life if you hate xmas films too, btw. Capra is sacred.
6-DEC-2025: Hey there. I’m writing today. It’s gonna go slow because I wanna use writing as an excuse to keep a cig in my hand at all times. “You should get a diagnosis and medication for ADHD…” you should stay in your fucking lane, Brenda. I ain’t taking amphetamines via prescription or w out it for any reason (because I don’t want to). You regulate your nervous system (hopefully wisely) and I’ll endure mine, thanks. Same thing with the Aut diagnosis. Why in the fuck would I spend (w shitty insurance) several thousand dollars for a rubber stamp that gives someone an excuse to discriminate against me in a way they’re likely to do if I don’t mask (for the short periods of time I am capable of doing so at this stage of life)? I’m off the map. Anyone who is like me is off the map. Welcome to the first moment in history where this many autistic adults, well, live past their suicide date. Sorry to be so blunt about it but I’m not. I’m not sorry at all. We are alive and that’s a good thing, and anyone who wants to make our existence seem like anything but a blessing? Fuck off. If I or my tribe annoy you by simply existing? Good. Die mad about it, fucker. If you are religious? God made us. That’s the only answer you will ever get and the only one you deserve. And because god made us, you will sit your ass down and accept the blessing of our presence (because god says so, your god, not mine). Personally? I think god is dead or has abandoned us so I got no skin in that game (except that I find it delicious to annoy-by-existing).
2-DEC-2025: Baking the last couple of cakes for you reader. It’s a couple more chapters. Ruth needs the right end. This commute is dumb. That last sentence brought to you by some aggressively shitty weather. In any case, I like my town and its people and the people’s taxi is a hell of a place to contemplate and scribble. We’ll get there. I’m all kinds of irritated at me when I think about the last couple chapters of Ignatius. So maybe I don’t rush this one? And honestly there’s no ending that’ll be right so fug it we ball is the only appropriate attitude to have about endings.
30-NOV-2025: Alright, here’s the plan: we’re gonna keep Cancri rolling (royal we: me and my cats). The goal is to be wrapping things up in the new year? Soft deadline. I ain’t trying to die over here. After Cancri, I’m going to try not to just dive into the next thing. I’m going to try to shimmy the website’s look a little. Archives (mine) will still be the rolling scroll of this shit (these blog post rolling updates). Done novellas are going to be condensed into single web pages (it’s getting messy on the back end). Again, I didn’t think I or these stories would still be here when I started. I miss the old iteration of this site: the green and black DOS is back look. But it’s readability and I’m old (41 so not really but shit hurts and my eyes are changing, father time is undefeated). My goal is to be inviting to people here, and if that means changing the wrapping paper? I’ll do it to get eyeballs on my words. No apologies. Suggestions? Something you wanna see here or something you liked? Talk to me. FB is on lockdown. My bluesky contact is above. Stay hydrated. Be good to your people.
30-NOV-2025: Reader, thanks for your patience. I started Cancri shitty in 1995 on Earth. Re-booted the story and started at the Cancrin Calamity (which was a better narrative choice). Ruth and Gary weren’t sposed to make it (I mean look at the size of that fuckin’ Geauntoord Von-Neuman Mining Rig monster). But now. Here. 6 chapters in. I have accepted the fact of their survival (for a little while at least). It’s Ruth’s book. I think I know the ending. The goal is to bake some more narrative treats during the holiday(s) season. I am the socialist grinch dropping free to read bed time stories on you meant to counter the capitalist kitsch we all read and eat. Enjoy. Also, fuck a chatbot (but not literally like the tech bros like to do). Those things are trash (and sentience is an embodied concept as the post-humanist’s say… that is a computer isn’t a brain and consciousness isn’t code… bad metaphors don’t hold water (just the opposite they leak)). Alan Turing was the shit, and AI as we know it is born of (and only of) the type of man who tortured, humiliated, and killed him.
29-NOV-2025: Cancri 6 is a short one and I’m ok with it. I think shorter chapters are good in the story and we don’t write to page or word count here. “This is not a war book.” Ruth’s gonna be their Odysseus, but that’s wrong. That’s what the book’s about, Cancri. You’ll see. Thanks for your patience, Reader. It will be up later today? I keep effin’ with it. Poking at it (the chapter).
24-NOV-2025: Reader, I got some scribbling in on the bus ride home from work. It was lovely (as The People’s Taxi always is). Might change the process and result a bit, and I’m here for it. I’m a nice few pages into Cancri 6, and it’s Ruth’s book so like the whole plan for the thing is shot. Seriously, Ruth and Gary were supposed to get got but they’re adorable so… here we are. I do this every novella: burn the plan down and make a new one half way through. So there’s that. I’m uh try and get this chapter up over Thanksgiving weekend. If you do American thanksgiving? Do me a favor and be like “you should read this weird Exile shit…” but not to the whole fam (just the cool weird cousin you blow gauge with). Stay hydrated. Maintain whimsy and morale so that you may befuddle the fash. *cue benny hill theme *
23-NOV-2025: Hey Reader, it was a shitty writing weekend. My apologies.
22-NOV-2025: Exile is for the people. No Clankers. No bots. No capitalist Kitsch. No fash trash. You will never see a Dolores plastic popcorn bucket topper destined for a landfill. Socialism or barbarism. The future has to obligation to endure our fuckups and we have an obligation to future people to endure the bullshit now. Stay hydrated. You know the rest. It’s a writing day, we early in the chapter I’m sorry to say. I’m tired and I’m trying. You keep doing the same, Reader.
20-NOV-2025: Reader, I’m working on it–both Cancri 6 and a schedule shimmy. I’m adapting. It will probably make me write slower. That’s probably better? This is silly to me, but this is my spider opera in the way that FF6 had an opera in it and was a meta-opera. I just read that sentence back and decided I need to expedite my trip to bed. Be kind to yourself so you can be kind to others. Stay hydrated. Befuddle the fash. More to come.
16-NOV-2025: I don’t like leaving transitional chapters hanging (we’re walking toward the meat of the plot type chapters). But half-way cliff hangers? Back in the day, little me (“orange on a toothpick”, big head on a “wee lil’ pillow”) might’ve cried himself to sleep at the prospect of waiting a whole summer to see if captain Jeen luke space jammies would get rescued from the bad space robots. I’m saying I’m not gonna make you wait a whole season (hopefully) for Cancri 6. I am however trying not to be creatively fatalistic. So I’m gonna provision myself with proper snacks and adapt to a shimmy in my work routine(s) and back burner Cancri while I do that (because I love my space spiders enough to slow cook the work when rushing it would eff it up). I’m trying to bake these narrative cakes, not ruin them. Apologies Reader, and thank you for your patience. You taking care of yourself? You should.
15-NOV-2025: Reader, I got a big sad right now, and I’m trying to find a path forward with it. Writing whimsically about space spiders weathering their end of days (that weren’t the end of days) is a big part of that. But I’m doing triage and seeing that I need to take care of myself consistently so that there may be more writing. I’m tired. And I’m continually disappointed by the kind of people who see things like empathy and good faith as weaknesses. I’m continually broken hearted over every day sadism and sociopathy and other anti-social nonsense. A-social means you’re a misanthrope. Anti-social means you act in ways that make ‘the social’ impossible. The former is curmudgeonly, the latter unsafe.
13-NOV-2025. Hey Reader, I’m working on it. No, not writing. I’m trying to clear some responsibility from my plate so I have space to write words. Here’s the deal, I was really fatalistic when I started this site (didn’t think I’d be here by end of Dolores). And now I’m still here, and taking up space. And I think that’s neat. But in case I keel over or something mid story (any story, Cancri or whatever comes next). Just don’t let anybody shit on my work. Dolores is my baby. I’m Autistic. I’m a socialist. I wrote these words alone and in pretty shitty isolation and de-facto exile. This is bread and roses shit. Every word of it. This is “every part of the human tapestry makes it to the future or none of us deserves to” shit. And if anyone tries to claim mangle my work as anything else? And if I have delighted you at all? Don’t let some fash take my words (without setting them straight). Thanks. I’m trying. More Cancri coming if I can get through this BS.
11-NOV-2025: Reader, more Cancri comes. When? I know not. I gotta go to the 9 to 5 that is my only source of income. We in Exile (royal we) work hard so that our cats might have a better life. Stay hydrated. Be kind, first to yourself so that you may be kind to others. Befuddle fash-trash. Keep your head up and your stick on the ice.
8-NOV-2025: I want it to be known that in reality, I bear no ill will toward the good people of Cleveland or Ohio. But commitment to bit and the apocalyptic dad-joke we in Exile are committed to is this: Cleveland has unexplained and above average odds of gettin it on worlds with apocalyptic/near apocalyptic events. Just math-accident I guess. Can’t be helped if I wanna tell you these stories about these worlds (I do). In any case, Cancri episode 5 is live with more to come. Be kind to yourself so you might be kind to others. Hydrate. Befuddle them that got to be befuddled.
6-NOV-2025: Reader, Cancri 5 is rough cut and getting some love this weekend. This is my prayer, not to forces sacred or profane, but to you my fellow human reading this. We live in dark times and may my baby space spiders and puffins and cephalopeople and shaky jake coffepot robots in the stories above help you maintain whimsy, amen. If nothing else, fuck it, I’m amusing me. Stay hydrated reader. Befuddle fash.
6-NOV-2025: Reader, Cancri 5 rolls along and I’m finally getting traction on the next little chapter-episode of whatever kind of novella this is. Ruth and Gary gotta carry bad news to a people who don’t like bad news (find me one who does, a people who has any number of legs or eyes or arms who likes bad news). I’m letting the parentheticals (nested even) run wild in this text. Though perhaps I shouldn’t. It’s a little spider joke (get it?). Commitment to bit is the substance of all good dad jokes. And though I have no children, only cats, I am of the appropriate age for that kind of wince-cringe humor (and I crave it like one craves a sharp cheese). Hydrate. Eat. Be kind. Do what you can when you can to help others eat. Bread and roses motherfuckers.
31-OCT-2025: Happy Halloween, whether or not you do Halloween or call it thus. Everybody, every kind of person, celebrates the harvest. And everybody tells stories about what’ll get you (for practical survival’s sake and to delight in survival). Enjoy them all. Stay hydrated. Befuddle fascists.
27-OCT-2025: Cancri 4 is done and up. 3 is a transitional episode and I had to get to the meat-substitute of the story. Got 4 in process yesterday and done today (riding a wave of “i like where my story is going”). I’m not working this fast on this book (sorry, can’t) but I do not at all like “piss-trickling” half chapters. It’s undignified. Here’s a statement of ethos on AI and why I do what I do: I have a 9 to five, and I do it to pay the bills. This is a thing I do for me and the handful of people who read and its also a “fuck you” to AI. Here’s what techbros want: to train bots on your shit, build an IP fence around your effort and art, and then charge other people for bot-mangled slurry versions of real human creativity (but without all that human shit like dreaming of being free or living in an even moderately better world). So, with hubris that would be at home in one of my stories, if the bots are gonna steal everyone’s shit (are doing so right now)? Reader, I’ll give you my stories free to read (not to thieve) as an act of faith that you’re better than the tech bro shitbird I’m flipping off right now (the guy trying to depress your wages with his chatbot that is also is girlfriend). It’s not John Henry racing a steam powered anything. It’s a boring middle aged socialist nerd slow cooking prosetry chili. Reader, hydrate. Remember to eat. You know the rest.
25-OCT-2025: Cancri 3 is done and up. Short. It’s a transitional chapter. Sorry Reader, its comin. We’re already baking the next cake. In the realm of life, how you doin? Yeah. It’s grimy out there if you still have a soul. Hydrate so you don’t dydrate. We say a new prayer in this house: “May thy riot gear chip and shatter. May thy Stingray blow up in your face. May that LRAD toy end up microwaving the user. May the tools of oppression blow up in the face of the oppressors. Amen.” We also know in Exile that god’s dead or gone on a timeline too long for us to wait. We answer our own prayers on Earth or they do not get answered. Fascists are cowards. Every last one of them (especially the ones in that STASI surveillance role). Be brave and aggressively whimsical in your defiance of them.
22-OCT-2025: Whew. Cancri Episode 3 (real real) rough cut is done. The thing is coming. I’m slow right now. I am a sad bastard. Reader, I am baking these cakes for you though, and we’re gonna get through some shitty times. Hydrate. Be kind (to yourself and others).
21-OCT-2025: I do this thing where I write out of order and forget that I write out of order and spend days banging my head against walls of words because I forgot that I…write things out of order. Chapter 3 of Cancri 55(e) is mapped in my electrochemical meatball and as soon as I can coax it out I will post in on this site. Thank you for your patience in this matter, Reader. Hydrate. Be kind to yourself. Befuddle fash (as one does). It’s ok to be tired (he said to himself).
20-OCT-2025: Sometimes, it’s a whole night of writing just to make a few paragraphs that aren’t going to be in the thing or anything. Sometimes I’m cool with that, and sometimes I feel like Darwin writing in his journal on that stupid boat writing about all the stupid species and their stupid origins. I’m so fuckin’ tired. Hydrate, Reader. Maintain morale and whimsy and be kind to each other so you might befuddle the fash that bedevil all of us.
18-OCT-2025: Writing goin’ slowly cause I’m going slowly. Protest day, I got places to be. No Kings. No fascist trash. No dictators. The United States will pass Trump and his ilk through its bowels and continue on, a far better place on the other side. Remember kids, STASI men (they’re always STASI men regardless of the flag) are weak (that’s why they admire intellectually and sexually inadequate men like Trump). They’re voyeurs. Authoritarianism is a disease and it hits men, the men with tiniest balls, first and hardest. They’ll growl and spit and posture, but they’re weak. That’s why they need 10k worth of tacticool and body armor to stare down people in inflatable costumes. Stay Hydrated. Look out for your people. And when you spot cops on your side of things? Sing out. Do not shut up. To the pig reading this? You’re on the wrong team.
10-OCT-2025: Cancri 3. I’m scheming it. I did not expect to be so emotionally invested in Ruth the spider. So there’s that. There’s two Archivists, and I’m both of them. The moment you start scribbling a little world detailed enough for just one tiny spider (let alone a whole civilization worth), is the moment you start hating the thing that threatens it: archivist hubris. The one who is actually an expert on Cancrins, on space spiders, is gonna come with the intent of beating the stupid out of the Mad Archivist. That’s the book. The shitty first draft is what I’m writing toward in bedtime story parable. You wanna know why (in this fictitious universe) the Earth had paranoid space spiders spying on us during the Cold War? Shit, to tell you that, I gotta tell you how the space spiders got all traumatized and paranoid. It’s a big-un so get comfy. Hydrate, Reader. Be kind to yourself. Outlive shitty people out of spite (if for no other reason).
9-OCT-2025: Reader, I am now fishing typos out of Cancri 2. I did that thing I did in the old early days of this site: felt so glad to finish a thing in the way I desired that I ran with it. Mad archivist’s overreach is the point of the parable. I take no issue with their choice to do crimes. It’s the cost to the Cancrins that I-as-author have a problem with, and that god-hubris is what the god-abandoned multiverse I write in don’t really like either. Cancri 3 is coming. I’m trying to motivate myself to do necessary life chores, but wouldn’t ya know it? These nightmare times we live in are exhausting. Be kind to yourself that you may be kind to others. Hydrate. Befuddle fascist chukklefuckery at every opportunity.
8-OCT-2025: Done and up. 3 is comin’. Gotta get granular w the implications of the Mad Archivists hubris.
7-OCT-2025: Cancri 2 almost done.
6-OCT-2025: Did a lot of people stuff over the weekend that was not writing. But not surprisingly that makes words come easier. I cannot and will not assess quality of those words, but damnit I’m rolling my face on the keyboard once again. I’m aiming for this coming weekend for Cancri 2 in a completely arbitrary and meaningless deadline. The mission is to get a spider up a spire. Ruth is climbing. Advancing the plot. Tall spire. Might take a while. Hydrate Reader.
2-OCT-2025: Man I’m rambling on about the spider Gallileo, and I can’t tell if it’s another bad idea or the best I’ve ever had. So I’m gonna get a lil more herb and this gummy and let it ride. Cancri 2 is coming. Reader, drink water and be kind to yourself and others so you can befuddle fascist stupidity. Also woe to thee, Cleveland. Condolences to the Gribe.
1-OCT-2025: We’re on track (royal we: me and my cats Cooper and Molly). Alright, every text is a kinda low stakes experiment. For Ignatius, since the people are bullshitters I made myself 1/1.5 draft parts of the text involving Puffins/Ignatians telling stories. In this text, its treating everything as a self contained (if not sufficient) vignette. I want each chapter to pass the Warhol protocol: “Every picture is the only picture…” and still work together and its really not that serious because these are silly little stories and im scribbling. Reader, it is also that serious (and more serious, even). It’s coming. Thanks for your patience.
1-OCT-2025: Sometimes I forget I can just not finish the dead end I started writing down. So I’m doing that and Cancri 2 is coming whenever this spider climbs this tower in this vignette. I dunno, reader. Could be days. Hydrate. Befuddle the fascists (it’s not hard, they’re fuckin’ stupid, every last one). Maintain whimsy (if only for sake of morale).
27-SEPT-2025: “Establish a conspiratorial air” is some might as well be training manual language that people who do work gathering information keep in their pocket. I just took a walk and had a random guy claiming to be a preacher man (who ain’t mention the name of his flock, and boy howdy are clergy always eager and happy to do that) chat me up. I live in the United States, and I don’t know if you know this Reader, but disappear is a verb in this country and they’re snatching people off the street and using a racist immigration crackdown as justification. Now, this fella wanted help making contact with ‘spanish speakers’ in the community, and of course there’s a reason for his urgency (a ready made innocent enough excuse to circle back to his goal: info on where people of a certain set gather). Here’s the deal. Paranoia does the devil’s work for him, but the 21st century is ‘trust but verify’ times. How do you build solidarity when the fash and the good old COINTELPRO playbook has a million ways to poison any sense of community? I’m not being smarmy and offering answer, I’m saying that’s the thing you all out in the world gotta answer. Stay hydrated. Befuddle them fascist turds. Always.
23-SEPT-2025: Chapter or episode 2 is in process. Mad archivist writing some Gee-Tee derelict tech into contact with Cancri to alter time by putting the spiders on the Von Neuman Altar. Gotta see if I can hit the cosmic horror marks. There’s a trick to it that I’m not saying in the clear (and I don’t know if I can accomplish it anyway). I like that I’m populating my little garden. We’ve got the Cephalopeople of Keppler 22 b, the Gliesian bugs, the humans of Earth, fungi moving interstitially through the multiverse like their kin do in our soil. Now, we’ve got the Cancrin Space Spiders and the Gee-tees. Through no fault of my own, there’s now 3 species in the book to say something about humanity.
20-SEPT-2025: If you’re gonna be treated like a threat-pariah by fascist trash you might as well earn their ire. Transgender people are trying to exist. Yesterday, someone in authority in my government (US) did advance the claim that this whole group of people, transgender humans (which cuts across every color/culture/creed) is somehow a threat. Well here’s the deal, accelerationism. The nihilistic desire to see humanity’s end, that’s a thing. Accelerationism is the baby of the tech bros. It’s their money. It’s their backing. It’s Peter Thiel and the boys desire to see society collapse and “rule” the ruins from a yacht in international waters or a spider hole bunker. But those are the guys who bankrolled Trumpism so we won’t be doing anything to hinder their wants or whims. We will, in this country, continue to destroy the economy and human dignity in the interest of making fascists and their most deluded hillbilly lumpenprole fans “happy.” Defy that shit. Defy it however your skillset allows.
19-SEPT-2025: Cancri Episode 1 is up and live. I like it better than before. EOT is the counterweight to the silly little story on the silly little world. Look, end of the day the whole thing is a silly little story. And that’s what humans do: we tell silly little stories. So here’s my next one. Archives at EOT. It’s an unfunny joke I am dad-joke cringe humor committed to that in my fictional multiverse one’s reward for the non-zero lottery of making it to the afterlife (at least as far as these characters know), the reward for living a life in a world that makes you work for understanding? An afterlife more esoteric in the way it hides its answers and time and distance spans that can and will drive you mad. I like that, I guess, yearning on an unfathomable time-span. And I like sci-fi that tries to see humans from the eyes of the other (as doomed an exercise as that is). I’m trying to look at us from a species that’s going to have good reason to be a bit fearful (and defensive if not hostile). Reader, I know what the whole story looks like. Not sure how we get there (because I’m uh try to break it half way through as I tend to do). Stay hydrated. Take care of yourself and be decent to people. Befuddle fash. Those goals are not contradictory but mutually reinforcing.
17-SEPT-2025: Selling my car. She runs but doesn’t drive (so we aren’t selling Vicky for much). She is a car of legend, for real and for true. Best thing Forge Motors ever made (or will). This particular one was both my grandfather’s ride and the car that inspired the 1990-Something-Silver-Forge-Sedan. Ya gotta get superstitious (lest you accidentally become it) when you have an old pay-check eater. So Vicky (the car) has a legend that includes Victoria (the eldritch horror that haunts the ride). Any noise I couldn’t afford to get fixed? Vicky angry. She must be calmed by car shamans. Fluid leaks? She fed. I promise to have Victoria properly exorcised by the time the ride is sold (which is not a legal requirement where I live, I’m just such a nice d00d). Yes Reader, I’m also working on Cancri. It’s comin.
15-SEPT-2025: I’m alive over here. Writing too. Cancri is coming. Wrote the first few paragraphs of the thing, and we’re back at Archives where I think I do some of my best things. Look, the story about the space spider in Cold War cover on Earth at the End of History is still happening (but mostly in the background and relayed by my entirely reliable archivist narrator). Hydrate, Reader. And befuddle fash. I remember a brief stint on the overnight shift at a shit job where the sun coming up had me looking for some old Wizard every shift. Ain’t no wizard coming. The wizard is you. Take heart. Be kind. Fight nihilism (in all its forms).
8-SEPT-2025: Reader, I’m re-setting Cancri. This is the loophole around my ‘no takebacksies’ rule. I get to burn a text-in-process down and start over in another direction. The silly little story I was going to tell is still going to happen in the background. Dez (space spider under cover as human) and Mal (Fed interrogating her)? They ran off in 1995, got to a Cancrin spacecraft and boogied from Earth to do whatever (probably be space roomates). It’s canon in the Exile-Verse. Cancri (the other one) is coming. It might just be a one-chapter thing. It’s about Archives and intelligibility and first contact (cause they all are). It’s not about topping Unanimity. It’s about that text hit a spot I was trying to hit. So Cancri should be about doing something new (not a new version of a story I’ve already done). So I’m gonna try to do that.
8-SEPT-2025: So I took a weekend to fall into a game again: Stellaris. It’s fuckin’ glorious. Yes, you can play the pacifist space vikings in Endless Space as pacifistic as you want (but that game is 4x as fuck). Stellaris though, that’s the game we can play as the UFP (which is really all I want out of a game at this stage in life). I’m also gonna take a break from Cancri. There’s a well-executed bad idea in there, but I don’t care to waste what limited energy I have at the moment searching for decent execution of said idea. Dear Reader, I apologize and beg your patience.
2-SEPT-2025: Well, shit. I wrote a paragraph today. I think it’s a lovely paragraph, for now. I aim for loose non-binding deadlines only ever, and if my words aren’t here. Well, when they come back and when they’re done with their hangover, we will cavort. We’ll get there. Reader, thank you for your patience. Go drink some water and befuddle the fascists. Confound the foe.
1-SEPT-2025: Reader, forgive me. I did not write much this weekend (and I ate the plums you were saving and they were fuggin’ delicious and cold and refreshing). I did however play a lot of video games (a feat I shall reproduce in a moment). Cancri chapter 2 is coming (I know not when). Probably in the next two weeks. Also, The Death of Stalin is a lovely flick whatever your politics (no reason, just dig the movie). Stay hydrated. Befuddle fascists. If prayer is your way? Say a prayer in honor of the great and terrrible mortality that unites prince and pauper, peasant and man vein (oops vain) enough to call himself king.
28-AUG-2025: Cooper does convalesce (lovely word, right?) and I did write today. Cancri 55(e) episode/chapter 2 is coming, though I know not when. I dunno what this new routine is going to do to my approach to life or my writing routine yet. I guess we’re gonna reset. That’s nice for Cancri. I didn’t leave enough time between Unanimity and this. At least life did that for me. I have another tangent idea that maybe I’ll circle back to. It’s a take on the Truman Show where the subject can’t escape literally so easily but can use the megaphone to lead a lot of venture capital off a cliff. It’s’ an exercise in making an existing story more literal and less at the same time. It’s not really a ‘me’ text, but it would be fun/funny to write.
28-AUG-2025: Apologies, but not really, for the pause. Had to get my fuzzy guy through his medical thing. Cooper (Papa Coops) is ok. Thanks doc(s) and other practitioners of feline medicine. Dude is a sweetheart on any old day, but nothing brings out the purrs like the absence of dental pain, nah mean? Tomorrow I go back to work, but my commute is an epic poem. Mass transit is awesome, and I’m grateful to be in one of the rare patches of my country where it functions-actually-functions. But 5 miles will take one hour, so let’s not lose our heads here. I’m saying it’s gonna look to me like when I was last a graduate student and tried to carry my work on my back. This was back when I knew the DMV map because of Fallout 3 and I thought I was going somewhere in life (here, here is where I was going :/ ). I’ll live, and I’m properly motivated to get my ancient car back on her feet again. Vicky is allowed to die when I (and Victoria the thing that haunts the car) allow her to pass on (and not one minute or mile before).
25-AUG-2025: Car just took a shit. Mercifully. In the parking lot where I live. This is the week where the cat has his surgery (and the effort to make the money appear to cover the surgery pays off). I’m grateful to have the vacation time I’m taking now. It’s a poverty staycation. It’s where plan re-plan how I survive the next patch of life. We got busses of the sort you get in the upper midwest. I am lucky that my car did not do what it did on the road, at speed. But I got the kinda luck that tries to kill one in other ways, and that’s not really fun or easy to contend with. So hey, reader, if you’ve enjoyed any of this work? At all? If you’ve drawn any kind of inspiration, when I pass the plate with an illustrated volume? Please buy it. I’m putting the project on pause cause I gotta eat and figure out how to survive my good luck.
23-AUG-2025: I’m not doing very well at being me. I’m gonna burn some extra vacation time this week because I am exhausted from my cat’s health saga. I wanna spend recovery time w him. And this weekend, this time set aside by schedule for rest and recreation, got shit on by fate. Since I have PTO, I don’t have to accept that. So I won’t. Recreation is a literafigurative word and is an absolute human necessity in all times (especially dark times).When I lose that recreation time, or when I see other people’s recreation (and thus dignity) fucked with in any way? It makes me fucking angry. And I’m too broke to ever take a vacation so cat staycations in this little weird town I love are all I do anyway. I’ve also made the determination that I should just mask forever, aut- friendly environment or no. And I’m not explaining that because I don’t have to.
21-AUG-2025: Reader, I’m working on it. Chapter 2 is coming, but we gotta maintain quality control when it comes to these science fictions. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is middle aged and sleepy. I’m baking these cakes when I am not nine to fiving it. Stay hydrated. Befuddle fascists. Don’t let the world take your whimsy without a great deal of effort (make the world work for it is what I’m saying).
20-AUG-2025: It’s a writing night. It’s an “I don’t wanna” night. Reader, I’m fighting with it because I need the right MacGuffin for the other spider (the one that did most them murders). I have the right MacGuffin. It’s a phrase: “the end of history…” that needs to be literalized (attached to an object of pursuit in the narrative world). It shall be. But it’s fuggin irrelevant. It’s not important. This MacGuffin. So it is extremely important (it is though, its an aesthetic choice). It’s inevitable. I make a plan and immediately want to take it apart, and maybe that’s why planning is a good thing to do (even and especially if you plan to improvise). Cancri 55(e) chapter 2 is coming. Reader, I know not when.
13-AUG-2025: Chapter 1 is done and up and the teaser for 2 is gonna sit a bit (a bit being an entirely undefined span of time determined by my focus energy and general moody-ness). I turn 41 tomorrow, and it is my modest goal to do another year of this shit so that I might make it to the Douglas Adams answer year (to giggle wryly that there is no answer you silly billies). Anyway Reader, chapter 2 is a lovely little baby zipper plot jaunt. Grampa cat is doin well (I gotta wrestle the Nemian Lion twice a day). Stay hydrated. Befuddle fascists. Be kind.
12-AUG-2025: Chipping away at the rest of the first chapter. It’s almost done. I’m aiming for end of week/weekend. I know the ‘how’ of two and whence-goes-the-zipper plot. I’m trying something new in this book. I’m writing to a narrative location I determined on paper. That way I can argue w myself outside the text and in advance. We’re taking things of our plate (royal we that is me). May my reach exceed my grasp, but in a ‘happy accident’ way (side note: deep abiding love for both Bob Ross and everybody who borrows that man’s words). “Hydrate or dydrate” and befuddle them fascist fools at every opportunity.
11-AUG-2025: Cancri 55(e) is in-process. The teaser has been replaced w the first couple of pages of the book. “First Contact. It’s a process!” (that can include hostage situations). More to come.
7-AUG-2025: Every day is a writing day. But some days are, words ain’t coming let’s piss off and play Rocket League days. That’s today. In mundane doesn’t matter good news: post Lyme treatment my hands will let me play pretty well (for like beer league rando dude).
6-AUG-2025: Sometimes writing is like slamming the body part you care most for in a car door repeatedly (until its not). The third draft of the intro to Cancri is the one I like. Ignatius had a ‘write toward it’ first chapter that I am glad I kept for happy accident purposes. It’s the new book that’s like the old stuff. Ignatius is the closest thing to one-draft-and-go I’ll ever go with, and I love my Puffins. I have this dream of a dad-joke where people who don’t know what the hell a Puffin is read the whole book imagining these land-pirana devil birds only to google the word Puffin and meet the cute little Auk. I like that thought. Brings me a giggle. Stay hydrated, Reader. Befuddle fascists and be kind to yourself and others.
5-AUG-2025: I am currently using writing (more the idea of it), to keep myself focused while we wait for the cat’s surgical date. It’s good for my mental health, less so for producing words on a page in any quantity. One of the challenges of Cancri, the new novella, is that its more put together and planned than anything I’ve done for this site has been. There’s a lot to be said for “no, I hate the plan, fuck the plan” or “shit I didn’t think that far into the book… buy time….” One of the blessings I didn’t intend to receive when I started this site is this: sitting there karaoke-ing to my cats and remembering (in greater detail than my old middle-aged ass thought possible) my grandfather’s “greatest hits” and some of my dad’s old-bullshitter techniques for keeping a bedtime story going. I gotta go take my Nimean Lion (one of them) to the doc in a bit here. Dear Reader, I shall endeavor to get some writing, or at least rolling my face upon the keyboard, time in this week (with whatever fingers remain to me after this whole “go to the vet again” and “give a cat who will fuck you up a pill 2x daily forever”).
1-AUG-2025: “again again” isn’t mine. I heard the song again (again) where I stole it (accidentally) from my favorite rapper, and that’s my bad. You should listen to the Blackhole Superette album (and everything else the man has ever done, which you’ll want to get to after that album if you don’t already know). What’s more, there’s that quote about bad writers borrowing and good ones stealing that’s true bullshit (for the record I ain’t steal that one on purpose). It’s the ‘how’ of it (always). I’m trying to aim you at the art I love when I use other people’s bricks (self consciously and with great care most often). That’s the right way (right-est) way, and to be clear: the bible, myth, and public domain art. The way AI steals is gross. It’s abomination. And boy howdy if I hear another motherfucker talk that em-dash shit, I’m gonna force feed them my MA thesis and all the other non-NT people’s work that AI tick/trait was derived from. In any case, it’s a writing weekend. I dunno how much I’m gonna get done. And I’m having a moment here, Unanimity had that thousand-year jump that juiced the prosetry–gave me context to get baroque with the minimalism. I have no holy highground to jump back from the narrative here, and that’s a good creative challenge for me and my one trick (zipper plots). Anyway, Cancri 55(e) and Earth(0x20) and the fucked up first contact that don’t end the world (OR DOES IT?). Dark forest hypothesis. Says the firmament is full of life, just rotten with it, but they’re scared to say ‘hi’ to each other (maybe for good reason?). Let’s see if I can pull it off.
28-JULY-2025: Writing the thing. Don’t know what it’s called yet. Here it comes: Cancri 55(e). Fuck, I’m terrible with names. This world doesn’t end (at least I don’t think it does). Times are too dark for that, but due to fractal self-similarity and its recursive reverberations through the Exile-verse, “Woe to thee Cleveland” is always in effect (rules is rules).
28-JULY-2025: Cancri is percolating. The star can’t be the title, can it? I like Leptik (the name of the language, it’s an EOT interlude in one of the earlier books, Epitaph maybe?). So there we go. I got a sick cat, and we gotta push back the surgery he needs so we can get his old timer thyroid calm, and I’m over here daily asking myself a question I would like to ask in a fictional frame only and ever because it does hurt to ask in the reality I live in. My guy is a tough cookie, and he’s doing well and has a puncher’s chance. Then there’s the difference between mercy mild and the technical definition of it. I would like that fine distinction to stay over the horizon or at the very least the fuck out of my house, ya know? My boy, Cooper, is doing well. He’s laying on my chest right now, turkey leg dangling lazy off of me, purring. We’re gonna put on some crooner shit in a minute. He loves Sinatra. Shit you not. Got him right as the pandemic bit and me and my ex split, and for the 6 months or so of having this grampa cat that did not like me (no way no how) I was at-home karaoke-ing a lot of crooners. He came and snuggled up to me while I was doing my very best bad Sinatra impression, and the guy’s had a soft spot for the Rat Pack ever since. I guess what I’m saying is this, I’m never gonna be ready to lose the old guy.
23-JULY-2025: Thinking Cancri. Taking a break. Doing the 9 to 5 dance and tending to chores so I can focus on writing and living. Cat is doin well. We live in cautious optimism land. AI. I hate it (not machine learning, LLM’s I hate them). No one has my permission to use this site’s content to train AI. I’m too old and tired for some John Henry race-the-steam-plagiarist shit. I’m old enough (bout 41) to know you’re suppose to honor-not-emulate the guy who dies at the end of John Henry’s story. So we’re gonna slow roll the writing in defiance of the gross plagiarism machine, and in a genre that is simple (elegant) I’m gonna try to do a thing a machine can’t (even when it does). There’s a thing I do on the page (a couple actually) the chatbots can’t. And I’m throwing at least one more novella up here episodically: Cancri.
22-JULY-2025: Reader, I made a to-do list. I despise lists. I hate them. But I made the list so I could do the chores of life to sufficiently organize my life to find time to write.
21-JULY-2025: February 4, 2025 (thereabouts) is when I started Unanimity. Finished mid-July. I’m ok spending 5 months of the free time I can steal from myself to produce that text. The story of me writing that thing is in Archives (top of the site) where it belongs and the next thing is percolating. I’m taking a break still, and the little placeholder teaser is not next-book content. Morningstar was a creation story and Epitaph an Ending (in a multiverse that abhors them). Dolores books were yellow brick roads to sacrificial love (and the resentment of it). Ignatius is about going home, to a home that isn’t yours anymore (and island that wants to eat you). Unanimity is about eco-rage at disposability and the eating of the rich. Next Book is about “the dark forest hypothesis”: the firmament is full of life (just rotten with it), but all that bible black is a big dark wood and would it be wise to shout out? Past that? It’s percolating. On paper and post-it scrolls. Project goals: well executed bad idea that got a little whimsy and poetry clinging to its bones, a text somebody might waste/not waste an evening or two of reading on. If I have done that so far? Thank for your time and attention. Next book coming, when I know not.
21-JULY-2025: My cat is doing well, so the optimism is overriding reason, as I knew it would.
AFTERACTION ON UNANIMITY: I really like Unanimity. I’m proud of maintaining that style whole text (the vibe someone said they liked in a workshop class in undergrad forever ago “but I doubt you can maintain it whole text…” Motherfu… Well I did (20 years later and no one give a fuck.. but I do give a fuck and I did the thing). I love ‘lofi’ because I love my Soviet Heretic: Zamyatin. And I love writing lofi because I can make my claim that the genre (whatever the medium one uses) ought to be rich-minimalism or baroque-minimalism. Lush sketches. Excessively lush. Yeah. That’s really all I got. Oh man, that and this: the book rhymes with Ignatius and Epitaph and Dolores in ways that are precious and important to me. Plot, or the plot of one book or text, is not driving things in Exile. Character is. Poetry is. The sacred Circle Liturgical is a driving force. Fractal logic is part of it: self-similarity above and below in books (and across the z axis across worlds and texts in this multiverse). If you’re looking carefully in Epitaph (less of a success but it was fun to write and my cat is in it so its a win) and here in Unanimity, there’s opportunity for someone of faith to see god’s machinations (though god is absent in Exile, they walked the fuck off and left us). And if you’re not a theist (like me), there’s an opportunity to consider the firmament with a little awe at the majesty of creation–even and especially if creation was only the product of accident without intention. Stay hydrated and befuddle fascists at every opportunity. Make opportunities.
19-JULY-2025: My big boy is recuperating. Cooper is a hell of a cat. “Rationally superstitious” is a contradictory state I aim for. But I’m sentimental fool. Little big-headed dumb baby me thought them Buffalo Bills were going to win all 4 of those Super Bows (with sincerity). My boy is doing better, but he’s an old timer. And the speed with which he had an infection emerge means their might be a no good, nobody wants to see, tumor surprise. And I’m sitting here trying to soak up every hug my guy wants to give me, and that’s a blessing. The student loan shit is the sword of damocles and always has been. But my guy is gonna get his peace and care and I’m gonna do my thing: ‘pray’ for the wisdom to recognize the difference between fighting for my friend and fighting to make him continue to suffer (to see the moment soberly when we are at that point). I have an elder cat and a lil goblin found-cat to take care of, and I’m enjoying my break. Writing: I got a jumping spider as my background on my computer at work and I have some post-it scroll notes and I’m scribbling (when and only when) when whimsy hits me. Gonna sketch the Leptiks (the offended if you call them spiders people of Cancri 55 whateverthefuckletteritis). They’re the ones whose language taught me the Circle Liturgical: the how and why of sacred repetition.