Here’s the record for me and the little fae light guys at EOT of old updates to the front page. This is an effort to keep the front page of the website “crisp” and, I dare say. Clean:
THUS BEGINS THE UPDATES/NEWS ROLLING ARCHIVE:
14-JULY-2024: Epitaph 8 ‘Tough Ghost’ is done-and-up. It’s the penultimate. One more. Gotta tell ya what happens to Jonah’s World(s).
13-JULY-2024: Epitaph 8 ‘Tough Ghost’ is actually done, and I’m taking my time because it’s hot and I’m lazy and emulating my cats on this Saturday. I have this bad habit of wanting to caffeinate and plow like I’m grading a pile of papers or still a young graduate student or some shit that I have not been in some time. And I like to stop and smell the roses because I feel older than I am. Month our from 40 years on this ball of dirt, and I’d like to savor the time. So I’m slow-cooking my work. Epitaph 8, still aiming for end of weekend so I can polish it and make sure it aims into 9 (ending proper). The circle liturgical matters here to me as does the spirograph ending up somewhere other than where it started.
11-JULY-2024: Technically I’m still taking a day off if I just type up the stuff I composed on my smoke break at work.
11-JULY-2024: Epitaph’s blocking is done. Torching the plan for a text half way through? I highly recommend it. High-pressure way to get to what you really wanted to say and do. Epitaph 8 and maybe-an-epilogue are coming. Aiming for this weekend (or end of)? There’s that great scene in Chrono Trigger where the heroes go to the ruined future and (try to) help. They say something to the effect of “you know so you all can be healthy…” “Heal-thy?” Yeah, healthy people take breaks and don’t try to work themselves to death. They rest. They loafe and lean and “invite the soul” while inspecting spears of summer grass. Do like Papa Walt told you and chill. That’s what I’m gonna do today. If you’re waiting? Man, that just tickles me. Thank you for givin’ a hoot, eh? I appreciate you. And I feel like I owe you the quality that comes with eating and hydration and proper rest breaks. Parson is wittier than me, and if I’m gonna write her right? I’m’uh’need a day to collect myself (i.e. be lazy and play video games).
9-JULY-2024: Epitaph 8 is actually ‘Tough Ghost, and 9 will be something (or maybe an epilogue). This chapter is rough cut and now that I typed that watch it fall apart and restart a bunch of times. In any case. It’s coming. End of the book is comin.’
6-JULY-2024: Epitaph 8: ‘Slouching Toward Something’ is coming. I’m taking my time this weekend. We’re two (maybe 3 but I doubt it) chapters out from the end of Epitaph. I feel kinda good about this one, and I think I like the change to the cosmology I’m making at the end of it. You reader, you probably know the ‘what’ of the ending as well as I do at this point, but if you are here reading this thing? First: Thank you from the bottom of my shriveled little heart (you should share these stories with a friend, a weird friend). Second: you’re probably the kind of person who knows that the “how of it” is always more interesting than what happens. Thanks for reading. It’s a big multiverse, and there’s an ever-proliferating number of stories to tell. Free to read forever. I will never use AI. I write about AI. And I take a post-humanist approach to it: “sentience is an embodied concept” (I think that’s Lackhoff, but it’s not a unique sentiment). What I’m saying is: a brain-in-a-jar is what any kind of sentient or semi-sentient AI would be, and that without the metronome-circuit (heart and lungs) and a ‘leaking creaking’ body that makes demands of us and tethers us to something we call the real, that brain would be born mad (or go mad quite quickly). I think if we’re made “in gods image”? That’s the single greatest reason to urgently re-think our desire for artificial intelligence. But that’s an amps-to-11 extreme scenario. The real of it? Our broken approximation of cunning (not intellect, never intellect) that we call AI will continue to do what it does: aggregate, guess-and-check-group-think at high speed and ever greater scale. And it won’t do much more than fail spectacularly while driving down people’s wages and doing some enclosure-ing and “primitive accumulation”-ing of people’s ideas. I guess what I’m saying is: fuck AI.
3-JULY-2024: Epitaph 7 ‘No Mulligans’ is up and live. My actual cat Molly was very into my using her as a character. Editing out-loud is a me thing, and if I ever accidentally write anything pretty or that has any music in it, that’s probably why. So that meant saying “Molly” in a very “dramatic reading” kind of way more often than I normally do as I read-and-re-worked the chapter. That meant a lof of a tiny spicy cat leaping at me and climbing up to perch on me. I’m saying it was the best week ever. Molly in reality is quite spicy, and I’m sure she’d be brilliant in the strategic realm (if fate gave her the chance). But is she murderous? Nope. She’s definitely not laying low until the heat dies down on a parallel Earth. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. Turns out god’s machine is the big bad that did the hubris. Let’s see what happens: Epitaph 8 “Oh shit it needs a name” is coming soon.
1-JULY-2024: Epitaph 7 ‘No Mulligans.’ Is rough rough done (and that’s a lie because it’s gonna be pages past pages longer and I’m cutting a chunk). I am just tired and exhausted and everything is taking so much longer than it used to. I’m not really an old timer, I’m a month out from my 40th. But goddamn. It’s a short work week, with a weird island of a day off. Regardless of how my afterwork ‘roll-face-on-keyboard’ sessions go, I’ll get some proper writing (read: singing Sinatra with Cooper and Molly, both of whom are cats) done then.
25-JUNE-2024: Epitaph 6 ‘Clever Girl’ is up. Chapter 7: “No Mulligans” is coming. I’m’uh’finish this one soon or die trying. You reader, I think that you should be kind to yourself so that you might be kind to others. I also think that I am so very tired. From the EOT to thee, where and whenever that be.
24-JUNE-2024: Took a break this weekend because I can and I felt like it. Back to it. Fuck I’m broke. And no my day job does not pay a great living. It pays almost enough to live, which is better than a lot of people. Not where this is going. I’m just using that to say this: I’m still glad I didn’t try to sell Dolores-and-friends. First, everybody deserves the free-est access to stories. Good ones. Well, ones that are trying to do good things mightily. Second, “I like it but what if…” No. “People want escapism in dark times…” No the fuck they don’t. Well, they do, but ‘escapism’ has never meant what you were taught to think it means. In other news, Epitaph ends with a (hopefully) major change to the cosmology I write and work in. When that happens, whenever we make a mighty change in the cosmology? We’re going to change the site’s front page. And there’s a chance for a little collaborative poetry (something in the spirit of a Renga). I’ll lay down a line, and if people want to contribute? They’re welcome to (will give credit to your name/handle/whatever I know you as). We’ll see.
23-JUNE-2024: Let’s play a game. It’s called can you find all the easter eggs in these texts that point to the source-inspiration? Because I can’t find them all, and I wrote this mess. Here’s a moment that gave me chills: somebody posted a clip from Fallen(1998) (a slow-burn brilliant scary movie 3 years after my ur-text video game: Chrono Trigger). I saw that movie as a young dude in its moments (and it temporarily ruined an Irma Thomas song in the same way Reservoir Dogs ruined a song). Fast forward 20-something-years, and Irma is in my heavy rotation alongside the video game music and soundtracks I’m playing in the background while I write Dolores. If you’ve got the time, go watch that flick and find the “what does it all mean?” conversation and you’ll find the seed of inspiration for my breezy little novella (though I knew it not). And that’s what we’re always drawing from when we tell stories: the Jungian collective-semi-conscious network of narrative nuggets that belong to all humanity (the real and honest library of babel). But that’s just it, that’s my AI beef. AI as it stands is an aggregator. It takes humanity’s collective heritage (the bounty of stories and art owned by the whole human race) and it builds a fence around it even as it mangles what it aggregates. It’s about capitalist enclosure. It’s about building tech-bro fences around things that belong to all of us.
20-JUNE-2024: Epitaph 5 “The Cat that Would Conquer the World” is up, and I’d like to thank my co-author Molly the goblin-ass kitten for her assistance. Chapter 6 “Clever Girl” and Chapter 7 “Shit-where’d-that-post-it-go” is in process. So yeah, Epitaph feels good. It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s a breezy little snack, if I do say so myself. And it’s a transitional text for my goofy ass little cosmology. Epitaph is the one about skinny-lil-Jonah; epitaph is the one about my Parson. As below, so above: something stinky going on with god’s mediocre machine. The Preacher that dodged the pillar of salt will no doubt endeavor to figure it out.
14-JUNE-2024: Epitaph 4 “Jonah Steals an MRI Machine” is up. “The Cat that Would Conquer the World” is coming (as is the intersection of the Parson and Jonah’s narratives, or maybe that already happened and you just didn’t notice dear reader). I’m baking these cakes. More to come. Trying to write this novella in 1/3 and take a short-break chunks. We’ll see if I stick to that.
11-JUNE-2024: Epitaph 3 is up. I’m so effin tired. Next several chapters are blocked and partially scribbled. First third of the new breezy lil low-fi novella Epitaph is done. Posted here. Free to read. Aiming to honor the exile-aesthetic law of liturgical repetition and self-reference in my cyclical multiverse while still advancing the plot (and by the end of this text) advancing the cosmology. The goal is to work (roughly) in thirds. I need a baby break. I won’t honor that, I’m in a groove and I want/need to keep working on Epitaph. I’m also very good at burning out. So yeah. Baby break. More to come. When? I know not.
6-JUNE-2024(Edit: i effed up the date I think this was posted on June 9 or 10?): Epitaph 2: The consolation of Jonah is up and live. I like my little dying dickhead scientist. I know him a little better than you. Not an A series. He doesn’t look like me. He can math way better. He really does mean well, and in his prime I think he would have handled his interlocuter a little better. Lady Philosophy they ain’t, nah mean? Planned to get chapters 2 and 3 up at the same time. I didn’t wanna leave it on a bleak note, but meh we do what we can do when we can do it in this house. Some days I feel burnout-free. I feel my oats. And I do things like start a new book and outline it. Next week? I wanna crawl into a dune to desiccate. Is what it is. More to come. Remember, kids: all narrators are unreliable, especially the reliable ones.
4-JUNE-2024: Epitaph one is up and live. It’s just a lil’ prologue snack while I bake the rest of these cakes. Episodic and odd from some other iteration of me in the multiverse to you. Next chapter is rough roughed. Third chapter is blocked, and in surprisingly good shape conceptually for my having utterly torched my plan for the story already. We’re writing this thing, so help me the mediocre machine that does god’s work in their unending absence.
3-JUNE-2024: Epitaph rough-rough’s for epilogue and first chapter done. Finish and edit. No idea how long that will take but maybe end of the week/weekend. I dunno man, I’m just rolling my face on the keyboard screaming “sing in me muse that I might tell the story of the fuckup that faired better than me in all things.”
2-JUNE-2024: Happy Pride. That’s cool. Be cool to people. Except bigots. Be shitty to them if they can’t act right. I am really tired. And I am trying to get Epitaph ready. I also really love Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism and “Exiting the Vampire Castle”). I also don’t love how people parade dead people around. I feel doomed. So if I don’t finish Epitaph and someone tries to? No. They do not have my permission. If someone tries to post-facto take credit for Dolores? No they didn’t. I did all this alone in really shitty isolation. And I could see people reading it, I could see evidence it had been read, but I couldn’t get any feedback. Couldn’t find anyone to have a conversation about it. It’s vain, I know. It’s silly. I guess that’s the cost of doing something free? The presumption that it took no effort or wasn’t worth anything (or obviously you would’ve charged for it) and must not have meant anything to the person who lived its making. I seriously had a few “yo, my broke ass will pay you and then buy you a beer or coffee to tell me what you thought.” Nothing. Which is it’s own answer. Meh. I hate that scene in Back to the Future where they give a white boy credit for inspiring Chuck Berry. That is some Regan era nightmare shit. But I’m going to steal that line: “Your kids are gonna love it.” If I get any of Epitaph up, and if it’s not done. Nobody has my permission to finish it (because nobody helped in the first place, and I wouldn’t have let anyone). You can write the rest in your head and tell it as a bed time story. No-take-backsies though.
31-MAY-2024: So, I’m really trying to at least get the start of Epitaph up, the consolation of Jonah(hex-i-can’t-remember) and the prologue (the Parson of apocrypha). I’m struggling. It’s not the writing. It’s me. Health, right? Yeah people who say “health is wealth” should shut the fuck up. Not trying to be mean, but that’s a “chicken-egg.” Maintaining health costs money, and they’re just saying what some influencer or boss said that sounded cool and “hard workey.” So no, health is not wealth. Health, every sense of the word, suffers most mightily when one doesn’t have wealth. So there’s that. But yeah, book is coming. And I can’t shake feeling doomed. Axe bout to fall doomed. Sword of Damocles doom. It’s dumb and a byproduct of living life like a clenched fist for too long. But here’s the deal. If I may be so bold, and if I’m not around any more and anyone tries to claim the Dolores trilogy? Don’t let ’em. I did it alone. No AI. It’s pastiche. It’s the Pokey Little Puppy’s quilt put back together, little threads of everything I’ve ever loved. It’s new-not-new, but in that way that every other story you’ve ever heard isn’t new. Kinda bummed. I see that people have read it, but no one really wants to talk to me about it. *shrug* what can one do? In any case. Be kind to yourself and anyone who isn’t hurting anyone else. Keep your head up and stick on the ice.
29-MAY-2024: Break over. I’m going at a more human pace now. Epitaph. It’s the new project. First two chapters are rough cut done but need a lotta love. I’m thinking shorter chapters for a quicker turn around. Same multi-verse. Dolores was Dee’s book. Foundry is Jane and Glenn’s. Endling(s) belongs to Blue. This book belongs to my Parson. A series Universalist Unitarian minister “from a world where the you-you’s are a low key big deal.” Things in her US on her world go theocratic quite quickly, and she boogies to the EOT. She’s the founder and the Shepard of the Church Ethereal. It’s aeons past aeons later, and she’s hurting. That’s when beings at the EOT long to go’on pil-greh-mah-jes. The meta-book is her journey to the archives for inspiration and a failed draft of the sermon she’s trying to write. We’ll see if any of the above sticks. Here’s the deal: I’ll draft it to my satisfaction (but really nothing’s getting more than 2), but the thing is going to be episodic and as in-rhythm as I can make it (as a bed time story ought to be). No take backsies. No matter how much I might regret a narrative choice later? If I put it on the site, It’s canon. It’s always free to read. Though maybe someday if more than five or six of you like this stuff I might find a way to produce a nice little bound book with even fewer typos and some visual artistic interpretations of this multiverse (or pomegranate if you prefer). So you know, you could give me money and I could give you a thing you can’t get by coming to the website. Base commerce is gross, but your comrade gotta eat.
15-MAY-2024: Still on a break I guess? Wrote the intro to a Jonah book (different iteration of Jonah). It’s an outline. It’s too bleak, and I like ’em bleak. I feel doomed. I also own this website for a few more years. The Dolores trilogy will be here even if I’m not. There’s a Google drive with .pdfs of the books and whatever else I put in there. If the link finds its way to you, that’s an implied vouch (you got the link because you aren’t a shitheel). I don’t know what I’m trying to say except thanks to the couple of people who read my shit, and I hope it makes you permanently weird (as any good story should). There will be more writing, though I know not when. I don’t know if that last sentence is a lie or not.
9-APR-2024: Writing, slowly. On Blasphemy: it “requires taking things very seriously” (that’s Hayles). I try to be rational about the fact that I am a superstitious being come from superstitious beings. We’re all children of the Enlightenment and signifying primates who get freaked out about sky magic. We’re both at the same time.
I’m not religious. At all. But I was born into a sect where god was the disciplinary tool, the behavioral cudgel and “always watching” And oh man, the invention of language, of “speaking in tongues” and trying for the most godly display. It was that Reagan Evangelical mess, and I mention Reagan because that’s the moment that form of religiosity metastasized into something that today is so very fascistic.
The thing I take seriously is god-as-weapon or mechanism of social control (think Ideological and/or Repressive State Apparatuses). I’m concerned with god as a tool used by snake oil preachers (don’t care what sect) to keep people in line. I’m concerned with any kind of human who wants power or dominion over other sentient beings.
But I am not a serious man, and damn proud to be the whimsical bitch that I am. I’m not a theologian, and I don’t want to be. But I articulated what I believe in the silliest way possible: a sci-fi trilogy. I think if there’s a god they’re dead or they’ve left us. And if that bothers you, be bothered and go in peace, I guess? More than that, I think the creation has the right and responsibility to interrogate creation and creator. That’s not hubris. It’s defiance. The latter is a good and noble thing in the right contexts (such as this one). God doesn’t give a shit about cursing and mocking church authority or smoking weed or fucking other consenting grown up people. God cares about sadism and slavery and genocide and ecocide (if they are there to give a shit at all). To blaspheme in fiction is, in some small way, an attempt to cast stones at “Earthly authority”: vicious people who use god to justify their shit-ass behavior toward the rest of creation. Beware people who call for submission to god-as-parent–that’s that fascist infantalism of grown-ass-people.
30-MAR-2024: On a break. Taking short story and maybe-next-novella notes on paper to see what sticks or gets me goin’. “Exile” is the cosmology, and I like the multiverse I built. I could (and intend to) spend the rest of my days populating it with worlds and stories about probability collapse-congealing to actual people and things. I started this site and the one-draft-and-go stuff (the apocrypha) as an exercise in “this is better than dying.” The Dolores trilogy is an extension of that and an effort to do a story both episodically and with a ‘no-take-backsies’ rule. It’s a three book bed time story where I plotted major points and forced myself to improvise and write against them (and to live with what I committed to the page). I’m glad I did it. I’m reclusive, and if loneliness can be corrosive, I dig my solitude. I’ve got goodhearted and well-intentioned people who, from arm’s length, are like “ok so what are you going to DO with your writing?” As if this has to be shopped to publishers or self-published to justify the amount of time I spend on it (my god the man eats all his 2nd job/side hustle time with writing sci-fi almost no one reads). I already did something with my writing. I put it up here. There’s also a google drive where I “keep receipts”, and those with the link are always welcome to read whatever I put in there. Everything on this site will always be available and free to read, but never free to steal. It’s pastiche anyway (in the way I would argue every story we tell in modernity always-already is). When I was trying to do academic shit, half-assedly as I did try, I had people I thought were friends steal from me even as they clowned on me. I don’t trust anyone enough to work with them. It is what it is. Human beings are wonderful and terrible in equal measure. Beneath our manufactured nature–beneath all the dumb, superstitious and witless viciousness that social institutions under capitalism cultivate–is the vulnerable, curious signifying mud worthy of love and admiration. I’m likely going to keep “giving it away for free”: my Kilgore Trout-esque search for the latter. And how much I can do to keep people from biting? Eh, I’m not sure. But when you want the genuine article and not some AI-shuffled garbage a human couldn’t be bothered to craft? Come get your low-fi sci-fi from me.
16-MAR-2024: Endling(s) 8 and 9 are live. I guess elements of the ending are indeterminate. I started Dolores in April 2023. The trilogy is three novellas written on the back of the Exile/Apocrypha stuff. They’re not “one draft and go” like Exile was, but the “no take-backsies” was in effect. Everything was episodic and any idea put on paper had to be honored in the text. I love Dolores and Jack and Blue (and all the Spock-to-pusses that doubtless populate the firmament). Writing a Kilgore Trout meets Zamyatin trainwreck low-fi trilogy was a thing I started as an alternative to crawling under the porch and dying. Sorry for the melodrama, but that’s the long and short. Now, I’m going to take a break and fish the infinite typos and do the free-to-hear audiobooks chapter by chapter for Youtube. And maybe this thing gets self-published through a conduit without exclusivity so that if you enjoyed it and want to throw a few dollars in the offering plate (to get a bound book with these words and the work of visual artists actually compensated)? You could. After that? I have a nice little multiverse to play in, and there’s always another story to tell re-tell. Oh yeah, pastiche is art. Frederic Jameson can kiss my ass.
8-MAR-2024: Endling(s) 7 is up and live. We’re almost done one-and-a-half chapters left. I’m taking a bath and willing my beard to re-gro. I’m going to re-play Chrono Trigger maybe, bummed to hear that the dude who did the art for one of the greatest games ever made is no longer with us. Hell of a game. Rocked me as a kid.
7-MAR-2024: Endling(s) 7 is done. Going to do some editing and light work on it tomorrow and get it up this weekend. One or two more chapters left to go.
29-FEB-2024: Endling(s) 7 is coming. Who the fug knows when. I’m going slower because that’s the speed this part of the book goes. I’m crawling into the bathtub like it’s weird sister’s cauldron to soak and write.
23-FEB-2024: Endling(s) 6 is up. The author shall retire to the bathtub like Lebowski. There, I’ll make my phone read the thing aloud and fish typos later. Socialist Cephalopods mount an aid mission. A super-Earth sized hive mind hell ship (All is Gary;Gary is all) is coming for Earth–where they just can’t stop trying to kill Dolores (bless their hearts).
19-FEB-2024: Now I’m taking my time. Endling(s) 6 is half way there. Taking my time to try and shape the ending right. Also, I’m tired.
13-FEB-2024: I lied on the taking my time. Endling(s) 5 is up. Probably going to need some rest. But the table is set for the rest of the story and the grand finale and the end of the trilogy. I love Dee, I don’t want to see the thing done (the story). Time and narrative time are both relentless in equal-and-opposite ways. As always, no-takebacksies is in effect. Narrative decisions are final. More to come.
13-FEB-2024: Endling(s) 5 is done. Editing as I can. Work full time at a job that pays almost enough to live. And if I can get OT I have to. I had this weird moment last night after I finished the chapter, this 32nd wind for thirty seconds. I could smell, like my sharp sense of smell I used to have. It was beautifully quiet except for Sinatra and the cats. That’s a rarity, and I hope that feeling visits you, wherever you are, and lives with you like it loves you. I hope you and that feeling have long, lazy days. I’m the kind of tired when the stupidest shit weighs a ton. I love soldering. I used to teach writing. Now I write in metal. Then I come home and write till I corpse sleep. It’s the kind of tired where that little dopamine burst from “goddamn look at fillet” moment where you’re like “Hephaestus blessed these fuckin’ hands” to the brutal realization it doesn’t matter that Hephaestus blessed these hands if I’m crawling into every fucking paycheck with next to nothing for the rest of my days. Hey man, I’ll have enough in the HSA to see a doctor in 2025 though. This is my year, y’all. It’s everybody’s year. Stay hydrated. Love yourself. Eat the rich. Just fuckin’ gobble them up.
10-FEB-2024: It’s always mid-story when the thing takes on its own momentum and I fall into the process of making it. That seems to be where we are with Endling(s). I love Leonard Cohen, and if I knew you I would make the case that you should too. This is the book that rings what bells can still ring. And the Keppler stuff is “on the nose”, but I’m fine with it because I think some things work, story-wise, by being moved from a familiar setting (Earth) to a purely imagined one (Keppler). Who is the endling is the question supposed to hang over the text? And if I do my job well, you’ll know but doubt the answer till the epilogue’s done. And the religious stuff. I don’t wanna end with “god loves you” or “god has utterly abandoned you” or “so it goes” existentialism (that’s really nihilism). I think I need to reiterate this point: sacrificial love is a wicked and destructive thing. And if you’re the kind that would refuse to put Isaac on the altar because sky magic demanded it? You are of my tribe.
8-FEB-2024: Endlings(4) is up. This one went quick because mid-story is where it gains momentum. He looked upon his works, the cephalopod-dance-battle, and wept for it was good in that deranged way we aim for on this site. Rushed the editing which means I will pay the cost of so many more typos fished out after work and over the weekend. Sisyphus gonna’ Sisyphus. Stay hydrated and treat yourself as a friend.
1-FEB-2024: Endlings(3), did the thing where I make my phone read it to me while I’m working at the job I do to live. Chapter still live, but with at least 70% fewer typos. Who has two thumbs and a broken brain that’s getting it’s editing capacity back? Perhaps but probably not this guy. Endling(s) 4 and beyond is coming just as soon as I can bake those cakes. I know the ending. I don’t like my ending (but it’s right for book and trilogy). It’s either going to take more than 10 chapters or just perhaps longer chapters to do the thing, and this is because I’m going to continue to fight with the ending I wrote (on paper and only on paper). You got three planets, and now HVAC is involved. And if low-fi is about the blurry sketch as you pass the thing? (It is). Some things still deserve to be slow cooked–given the time and space they need.
31-JAN-2024: Endlings(3) is up. So fucking tired. We’re into the meat of the story. Every time I edited the damn thing, I extended. We’re gonna continue to get weird with it. I wrote the ending on a scrap of paper in my home. I’m arguing against it and fighting it and I want to tie in and proper-say-goodbye to some characters from Exile (the one draft apocrypha shit). I’m sure it’s got typos in it. I do editing passes when I get stuck and fish them out and make new ones. And its fucking awful. Ever since I stopped teaching? My brain refuses to “grade” writing and editing is exponentially harder. And some of the typos? Like misspelling Carole King’s name in the Exile stuff? I dunno man, at this point I’ve made note of it so many times, I can’t bear to change the error :/ In any case, gripe about the typos, but if you get really huffy? Hon, it’s free to read and I’m a one man band w a working stiff gig. I’ll get ’em eventually (or I won’t). I don’t always pull off the “patter dialogue” (Who the fuck is talking to whooooooom?!?! Dude, read it out loud). But I’m trying to build in the “pedagogical element” by which a book teaches you how it wants to be read. I dunno if I’m a good enough writer to pull that off. You decide. Typos aside, I hope you enjoy my baby, weirdo. Be kind to yourself. Even tardigrades need to hydrate. More to come (I hope).
28-JAN-2024: Endlings(3) is pretty much done and just needs some editing love. Lost a whole weekend of writing to exhaustion and bad physical and mental health. I’m not ok, and I don’t know that I’m going to ever be again. It’s ok. It’s not, but I can’t do anything about it. Hey man, I have a HSA (healthcare savings account). So if I live a few more years? I might get to see a doctor once or twice. The key is deciding whether it’s the MD or a shrink or if I just save the cash and go to the dentist. Choices, y’all. Here’s the other thing because I feel doomed and morbid: if I die? If Endlings(3) is not done? You do not have my permission to finish it. Leave it undone or I haunt you. You also do not ever have my permission to put my words through AI for any reason. That shit is fucking creative abomination. No human should ever waste time on words another human couldn’t be bothered to think or dream or write. AI exists to eliminate toil. The people who want to automate creativity? They’re subhuman garbage who want to steal creativity because god didn’t bless them with an inner light and they’re bitter about it.
18-JAN-2024: Endling(s) 2 is up. Fuck this week. Chapter 3 will likely take a bit longer. Also working on the youtube audiobooks for Dolores and Foundry. Those might be a while too. I move at the speed I’m capable of: the speed of a motherfucker who gets paid almost enough to live and whose body has decided it doesn’t like him any more.
18-JAN-2024: Had a really rough week physically. Endling(s) 2 has been ‘done’ for days, but it needs a little more love and life is kicking my ass. I’m a one man band, and I’m proud of that. But that means months of fishing typos and rough edges and rough cuts that give you splinters. I’m also working on the poor man’s audio book (it’ll be on youtube chapter by chapter) for Dolores and Foundry (and as I finish it, Endling(s)). So yeah, Endling(s). Here’s the arc (without spoiling it): Dolores on a changed Earth dealing with how little the rich folks and the ones who wanna rule have changed. Keppler 22B and isolationist cephalopods and their campaign of terror and sabotage and their desire to militarize-remilitarize. And then there’s Gliese. Poor little bug bastards. Gary is about to fuck their shit up in all kinds of ways. This one has a happy ending. I swear it.
2-JAN-2024: So that was fuggin quick. It was closer than I thought. Tomorrow I will doubtless have like a billion tally marks on my post-it note after work from where I listened while working and heard typos :/. Here’s to hoping the post-it makes it home with me on the first try.
2-JAN-2024: Hey, I’m alive and Endling(s) chapter one is coming as soon as I am done-done with it. There’s a chunk that needs to be “half brief and twice strong.” I finished it a week or two ago and felt like dog shit and exhaustion slept through my week off work.
10-NOV-2023: Foundry(9) live and up. Book is done. Whew. One more to go for the trilogy. Truth and Reconciliation on Earth and Jackboot’s revenge. “Dee3” cannot be the title. Soon. Whenever I can start it. Need rest.
8-NOV-2023: Foundry(9) (and thus the ‘book’) are done. I’m just editing and arguing with myself over the ending. I get more than 1 draft on the Dolores trilogy, but “no-takebacksies” is in full-fuggin-effect. It’ll be up when it’s right. Probably this weekend. Life makes demands. I’m probably jinxing it, but life is (for the first time in a long time) not actively trying to kick me in the head. In any case, the end of Jack and Glenn’s story is coming. Soon as my exhausted ass can make that happen.
25-OCT-2023: Foundry(8) live and up. We’ve got a chapter and (maybe-likely-most-definitely) an epilogue to go (gotta wrap things all nice and neat). I am tired, permanently exhausted. But I’m scraping by. And there’s a bit of a light on the horizon. I’m going to try to make hay while the sun shines as the shit-cliche goes. Hay here is: write Kilgore Trout low-fi sci fi and put it out to the world free to read. Thanks to the handful of you who read this. I appreciate you.
7-OCT-2023: Foundry(7) is up, and its a lil snack with maybe more exegesis than I’d like, but no-takebacksies is no-takebacksies. We’re rapidly approaching the end. Narrative synchronicity: a sick kid demanded that ‘good guys’ not only survive but thrive. And some years later, they would. Just as the Judge said they would. Rules of reality and physical law be damned. The ‘how’ of it in these last few chapters is the interesting bit. Foundry has a few more chapters/episodes to go. And then we’re off to “Dee-3” to finish the trilogy and finish the story of the half a water bear who tried to save the world
20-SEPT-2023: Foundry(6) is up. It’s long as fuck. I got stuck in this shame-loop of feeling guilty for taking too long and adding to it. I broke it and fixed it a few times over, but I like where I’m going. We all know Abel is Skynet, but the personal ‘how’ of it (flavor not fact) is what I want to privilege (and what this aesthetic says matters more). Lets see how this ends. Foundry(7) starts with the miracle of the Squattersville evacuation and the misadventures of Jack and Mal (and the Judge’s fate).
19-SEPT-2023: Spitting distance from done with Foundry(6), and I think I fixed the book (not that it was more broken than expected). But here’s the thing about writing in the apocalyptic vein: let the light in, do it whimsically. I’m not saying I succeed, but the attempt to approach apocalypse armed with whimsy is necessary. I also fixed, shuffled, re-sorted the menu above. Exile was written in 1/1.5 drafts, ‘no-takebacksies’, and I’m really proud of the first two books (Cassius and the Witch needs an epilogue/ending). Dolores and Foundry are the things that carry the spirit, but are a little less make it up on the spot. Audibles? Oh hell yes, I’ll change my mind on what the text is and where it’s going. I’ve buried ten versions of all the Dolores stuff, and I’m sure I’ll burn ten drafts of Foundry before it’s done. But they’re my babies, for good and ill, and this site leads with them. The Exile stuff is apocrypha, my Kilgore Trout Silmarillion. I’m glad I wrote them. Foundry(6) trying for this weekend. No promises. I got the sciatica, and it’s trying to kill me.
20-SEPT-2023: Foundry(6) is coming. Unsure when. Hoped to have it finished this weekend, but I needed rest. Badly. Working. A lot. As much as I can. Gotta try and make money and move the debt sword of Damocles a few inches higher that I may live-long-term (in so much as one can plan such things). Foundry is a different book than Dolores. Dee is the Wizard of Oz in a dystopian fever dream. And Foundry has to put flesh on the dream’s bones (Earth(0x7C0)). That’s a tough task for low-fi and for me as a writer. The book is about Jack and Jane and Glenn. I have that on repeat in my head, and I think I’m staying true to it? It’s a letter to an imagined reader: “Oh, so you like Dolores? Let me show you more of that world that was about to burn down.” It’s Jack and Jane and Glenn’s book, but the story I’ve advanced the most is god’s and Eye’s out on the scorched plane at the End of Time. I think I am ok with that.
20-AUG-2023: Foundry(5) is live and if life is grimy? It’s good to be on the green side of the dirt “with the sun on our faces.” Is it not? I’m wearing a new pair of spectacles, and I’m gonna fly close to the sun in terms of being saccharine: some days are so beautiful I wish I could I save them. The light falls right on all things and they please my eye. And those days hurt in their own way. Life is grimy, but the act(s) of living mundane/mighty and all points between are good.
10-AUG-2023: Still stuck on Foundry(5). It’s coming? In cosmic terms? Quite soon. Human lifespan? I dunno, Holmes. I’m working for the weekend (which is when I intend to get some writing done). I did the 180. I got a hell of a good job at the time I needed it most. Much as writing (silly as that might be) is crucial to my survival (even if all I ever do is “give it away” free to read)? I gotta buy bread and pay a landlord. That, and I take my craftsmanship seriously. I’m a weirdo, I have to take that seriously and demonstrate competence as a worker (only way a weirdo like me might be seen as a serious person. Side note, why is that desirable?). In any case, the thing that pays my bills (hopefully?) is the thing that I have to lead with so I can keep writing. Tillie Olsen? Tell Me a Riddle. She’s worth a read. She’s a clinic on pacing and on the details that matter/don’t. She’s a worker writer. That doesn’t usually mean prolific. I want to leave more than three novellas (there’s a book after Dolores and Foundry). So I’m going to fight and scrap to function, to keep the debt SoD(Sword of Damocles) from falling, and to take decent enough care of myself to do more than simply survive. I’ll write no matter what. There won’t be shit in it worth reading if I can’t maintain brain. Godspeed, and sorry for rant.
27-JUL-2023: Foundry(4) is up. Woo. More to come. We’re half way there. We are not living on a prayer. The rest of the novella that is the prequel to Dolores will come at (hopefully) regular intervals that allow me to balance work and life. We’ll see what looks like, eh?
27-JUL-2023: Got a job. Working on Chapter 4 of foundry. Have a ton of notes and re-drafts to sort. Prequels are a nightmare, but here we are “no takebacksies.” (if I post it, it’s canon). Dolores, Jack? It’s her book, and she deserves something decent (and she is a fellow A-series mortal, we gotta stick together in this soul-sick multiverse). So yeah, real world good news: gainful employment. Jack, Jane Eyre and her golem friend and the fed-who-is-not-a-fed and their Kilgore Trout trainwreck adventure will continue. When? I’m workin on it.
18-JUL-2023: Chapter 4 delayed again. Apologies. I’m closing in on a job, but I have to lock it down. Keep it. Get paid. I’ve got provisions to limp to a paycheck. I’m not on “half rations” and won’t have to be, but a full day’s work and writing afterward burns a lot of calories, and I don’t know that I’m gonna be able to eat enough. Not to be bleak, but that’s where I’m at. I’m hand writing, editing, trying to make myself get my living outline on paper. I hope it makes a better book. So while I go and dog-sit my writing assistant this evening, I’ll try to keep the book moving forward.
15-JUL-2023: Chapter 4 of Foundry is half done, and I’m really exhausted. I have about 1 week to land a job, or there’s not way I even white knuckle it another month. This site is paid up and mine through Spring. And I’d like to say that living under a bridge I’d find a way to write and put it up here, but I don’t know. I have people in my life, I don’t have anyone with the capacity to honestly help. If you can help keep a roof over one or both of my cats’ heads? Please find me on the internet (my twitter is on this site).
2-JUL-2023: Chapter 3 of Foundry is done. I wish “updates every Sunday” was viable with my life right now, but I have to get gainful employment. Now. Or I’m effed. “Why not monetize…” the experimental text that a handful of people have read? Would love to in a way that’s not shitty to my audience (if I ever get a larger one) and not shitty to the work or myself. I’ve written about a lot of miracles, mundane and monumental, and I could use one or more to continue living and writing. I have more practical things, and if “I shouldn’t waste time on making shit when I need to focus on survival.” Survival’s not a thing worth doing if the food you eat turns to ash in your mouth, and if you’re at a job that’s designed to starve you to death or drive you mad by paying you only-ever-almost-enough to live.
24-JUN: Chapter 2 of Foundry is live, the thing’s outlined and coming together. And I would really like to get a job or find a pile of money somewhere so I don’t starve to death before finishing it. Things are getting bleak in ‘pay bills so you can live’ terms and barring a miracle, I’m not gonna finish this stuff so. I hope somebody somewhere, somewhen enjoys it. I’m trying to write Foundry in the evening to keep myself sane and mentally alive enough to find a job in the day.
18-JUN: The first chunk of Foundry is up. Whatever else this novella does, it brackets Dolores (probably heavier on the pre- than the post). It’s going to be free to read and no-takebacksies like Dolores. Life makes demands, and I gotta get a job so I don’t starve, so it’s going to take as long as it takes. Hope you like it, even if it’s a hate-read (especially if it’s a hate read).
4-JUN-2023: Project Foundry is a prequel/sequel to Dolores. It’s going to bracket the novella I’m proud of. I’m struggling to write and to do a lot of things. Imagining this book is an effort to persevere, and if I get to write it? That will be a life affirming thing. And if the mess of accident and Deus ex Machina’s I’ve written has been useful to anybody? That’s just the bee’s knees. I wish more than anything that I had the money and time to just write and give it away for free. In any case, I’m gonna crawl toward the pre-sequel to Dolores. It’s called Foundry. It’s coming, hopefully.
23-MAY-2023: Project Foundry begins. I’m broke. I’m struggling. I don’t know if I can or will finish it or anything else. But there’s something after Dolores: Project Foundry. We wander after our absent god. Where are you author?
15-MAY-2023: The site no longer looks like a Pip-boy. This bums me out, but hear tell it’s good for readability. There are other books, ones where worlds do not necessarily burn, books where the A-series demi-mortals do things useful, where people find peace in a very chaotic multiverse. There’s a book where the sacred geometry begins to reveal itself. But I have to find a job here right quick so I don’t starve. While I fail to do that, I’m going to update the glossary lexicon section over the coming days maybe. Hey. Thanks for reading. And you should go holler about the writers strike. They’re trying to feed themselves with words, and they’re workers. You should see yourself as a worker, not a boss, if I may be so bold, dear reader. Solidarity forever, eh?
14-MAY-2023: I think Dolores is lovely and I’m proud of it. If anyone ends up liking it, you are of my tribe (and take care of yourself, we need extra self-maintenance). Also, do me a favor. My name is Adam Mitchell. If I’m gone, and anyone ends up liking it? Do not let them put their name on it or steal it. This is mine, my work, and I wrote every motherfucking awful/beautiful word. Thanks, though no one has finished reading the book. It’s a shame I think you’d really like it (in a this is deliciously bad, sort of way).
11-MAY-2023: Dolores is finished. Chapters 9 and the Epilogue. Free to read. Maybe I’ll do something more with it some day if anyone ends up wanting it. In the meantime, thanks for reading it, even if (especially if) it was a “hate read.”
8-MAY-2023: Chapter 8 of Dolores is up and ready to read. Ok seriously I have to do other things now. The text was at a point where if I stopped I’d lose the thread. The ending’s already a shape in my head and it’s coming. Two maybe three more chapter chunks. More to come when I get a steady job.
7-MAY-2023: Chapter 7 of Dolores is up and free to read. Solidarity with the people who get paid to write striking for a living wage and some decent conditions/bennies. Really, solidarity with anyone fighting for their dignity and a living. Speaking of which (making living not dignity, I have limited goals). I have to find a job urgently. Cats to feed. The pace of of this episodic romp will likely slow. Enjoy 7 though, the plot is really getting nice and thick, and we’re learning who a few of these people are. Really a smashing chapter with some lovely pacing.
1-MAY-2023: Chapter 6 of Dolores is up and readable. Happy May Day. The chapter will get even more readable as I fish out the typos I thought I caught. Onward to Peoria. Onward to destiny.
29-APR-2023: Chapter 5 of Dolores is up and ready to read. More to come. Don’t you dare eyeball my whimsy.
27-APR-2023: Chapter 4 of Dolores is up and ready to read. More to come.
25-APR-2035: Chapter 3 of Dolores was released on this day in 2023. Thanks for the handful of readers who ever followed the story to its end.
22-APR-2032/23: Chapter 2 of Dolores is up. It’s been a weird few weeks. More to come.
18-APR-2023: Dolores is here. The Exile trilogy was a self-bet one-draft-go project where the exercise ws to just keep it going (to write into a corner and then escape–or at least write all the way into that corner and live there). Dolores is something a little different. This is another novella in the same multiverse with an ending I already know. How we shall arrive? I have no freaking clue except to say that we will get there episodically–Dolores, Jonah, the narrator and a planet full of signifying mud. Destiny is calling emo farm lady, pick up the phone.
20-MAR-2023: Chapter 6 of Cassius and the Witch is done and up. Job hunting and insomnia. Maybe 1-2 more chapters in this thing. And if the job hunt doesn’t materialize? This site might go away, but I’ll repost this and whatever comes next elsewhere.
17-MAR-2023: Chapter 5 of Cassius and the Witch done and up. Still job hunting. Book and trilogy coming to a close. If job hunt doesn’t bear fruit, I’m going to have to move all of exile elsewhere soon (to a free platform). Will try to give lead time on here in the updates section, and will definitely post the new platform at my twitter (see bottom of page). Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy it. Looking forward to seeing how the book ends (and to doing other things in this universe). I really want to give my characters a “you’ve earned some rest” ending (at least the ones I love).
7-MAR-2023: Chapter 4 of Cassius and the Witch is done. I like where it’s going. More to come. Job hunting. Likely to slow me down.
12-FEB-2023: Chapter 3 of Cassius and the Witch is up. Found the story and will to write again, so this thing continues. More to come in the next month or so. I’m off to commune with a heating pad.
9-JAN-2023: I lied, the third book wasn’t up, but it is now. Two chapters. The first two. More to come. It’s the new cosmology and the end of exile. Cassius and the Witch. Don’t tell a friend. Life is demanding more time, aiming for a chapter every month or two. Draft. Play. Post. No take-backsies. Enjoy the trainwreck, and to the handful who have, thank you for getting caught in the strange for a while.
6-DEC-2022: Thus begins the one true Third Arc. Book 3: Cassius and the Witch. The first chapter is up. It’s 4 in the morning and I have a car with no headlights to tend to. And I have jobs to apply to. I also have a book to continue writing. I hope somebody digs this thing. More to come. Probably the end of these characters primary story. But there’s a ton that happened off stage thus far, and there are a lot of stories left to tell in this setting.
3-NOV-2022: Made the site less aggressively awful for screen readers. There’s a third book, less about Locusts and more about the new cosmology. It’s probably going to come a little slower, but until a thing called Exile (The whole project) is done? The 1 draft raw rule stands: I draft it one time and post it, if an ide gets a sentence it lives in the world (endless editing passes for stupid typos I thought I caught. Welcome to the typo factory, reader). If you read this, thank you. Share it with other weirdos. Spread the gospel of the church ethereal.
29-OCT-2022: Part 6 of Sisyphus and Prometheus is done and up. Thus ends the true second arc. That’s all for the main story folks. But if you noticed, some luminous beings are still alive, and they need a purpose outside of time (less they sublimate into ash). Going to step back and get real life in order (or try). The plan is to find some way to see these words in print, because I want to. Off chance you’d like that, drop me a line on Twitter if you’re a stranger (elsewhere if you know me). The hope is to have a much expanded lexicon/glossary and some not-shitty (so like not done by me) illustrations (if I can find someone willing).
10-OCT-2022: Part 5 of Sisyphus and Prometheus is up (yeah that’s what S&P means, sweet Easter Egg). The true second arc is almost done. When that sixth part is coming? Not sure, pretty tired from the recursive loop shorts.
8-OCT-2022: Part 4 of the second novella is up. You might have noticed that it’s shorter. Three and 4 are one text broken in half because life just made hard to get a higher volume text up in one piece. I’m trying to get what I can done and written and up while I can still write. I have the same soul sickness as my protagonist, and I am very tired. And I work full time at a job that doesn’t pay enough to live. I don’t know what I wanted to say when I began this post any more than I know what I want to say in the book(s) (that’s a lie). I guess I wanted to contemplate grief and life in the aftermath. To show the work of grieving (though it will be damn near indecipherable). If you’ve ready any of this mess and enjoyed it? Thank you. Even if you read it and hated it. Thank you. It is my love letter to a video game from 1995, the thing that made me a reader, and all the other books I found and read with hunger and a ruthlessness after. I can’t sit still long enough to engage with much these days. I can recall all the glorious stories I have read and produce a collage, a pastiche reflection of what was best in them (to me). I pray two things: that I live long enough (and that I keep a roof over my head). To finish the third book, and that it does something and anything good for anyone who reads it. Amen.
5-OCT-2022: Part 3 of the second novella is up. It’s short, but dipping into the past after part 3 for too long felt lazy.
22-SEP-2022: The first part of the second novella is up. I don’t know who is supposed to be Sisyphus and who is Prometheus, but it’s up and as Kilgore Trout semi-coherent as ever. Amen. More to come. Aiming for a chapter per month (ha!).
19-SEP-2022: The first part/episode of the second novella is about done being written/transmitted/transmuted/transliterated/translated (amen). It’s coming. Hopefully this weekend.
16-AUG-2022: Ok. Exile, 1-8 is a thing. A novella length thing. And there’s more, but I care about it enough now to take my time with it. There’s more of the Parson re-writing the Bible and A(84) is still trapped in a custodial closet in that Pittsburgh bus station. And I’m taking my sweet time with the translation and transliteration. Amen.
12-JULY-2022: Holy shit. It’s been since May. Ok look, I got in an argument with Flannel Man over a (mis)translation of the Parson’s portion of Exile Pt. 9 (long story…). I’m also getting sued by a POS landlord. Oh and I found a kitten out on the road (All good, she’s in my house, not on the road). Exile part 9 and maybe 10 are coming. I promise. I guess Flannel Man was right: I don’t want it to end.
30-MAY-2022; 30-MAY-2002: Exile Pt. 8 done and up. I already know part 9, but there’s that whole work and sleep stuff one has to do on occasion. In a couple of weeks?