"The forest is weird and we are gay"
I’ve been wanting to write more zines lately. Novels are long projects, at least for me. Even without the special circumstances that stretched Dead Girls into a five years and too many drafts (grad school, pandemic, depression), they’re a multi-year undertaking. I started Every Room a Hunger in the summer of 2023, and will probably finish copy edits in early fall. And I’ll be damned if I don’t want something with a little more immediate gratification.
I can’t think of anything more immediately gratifying than zines. I made them regularly in my dirtbag teenage years, back when you could still steal copies from Kinko’s, a stapled-together mix of bad poetry, rants, and collage that I called Shits and Giggles. If there was ever a time to get back on this particular bit of my unhinged teenage bullshit, it’s now.
I started off with a couple of flash-fiction stories, throwing them together in Canva. (Is Canva built for that? Absolutely not. But with enough patience and a Dragon Age: Origins playthrough on in the background, all things are possible.) It’s a different form of creativity than I’m used to: lots of fiddling with margins and character spacing and different fonts. I’ve only been re-using older stories at the moment, conserving my creative energy for a solicited short story.
But a couple weeks ago, I landed on what I want to write more extensively about.
[side note: if you are interested in receiving or buying zines from me, would you fill out this form? it’ll help me figure out pricing/logistics.]
At the bookshop where I work, anyone can put together a display. I made one called “Favorite micro-genres” on a whim, and we’ve all had a bit fun with it: “Surreal workplace horror-comedies” and “Detective ladies of a certain age” and “We’re stuck in a time loop and should kiss our way out of it” — the kind of stuff where you’re like, “If I had a nickel for every time I’ve read this kind of book, I’d have $.15 cents, but it’s weird that it’s happened thrice.”
With “the forest is weird and we are gay,” I would have had at least a quarter. Even leaving aside the book that I myself wrote, there’s been an interesting push of queer folk horror, especially in YA. The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson, Don’t Let the Forest In by CG Drews, The River Has Teeth by Erica Waters, and of course, Lee Mandelo’s excellent The Woods All Black.
I’ve been starting to brainstorm all the different ways forests are havens to gay weirdos. The queer anarchist camp I went to in 2008, where I cried after a stranger gave me the butchest haircut I’d ever gotten; the swimming holes that I grew up frequenting, which doubled as gay cruising spots after dark; the homo-romanticism of smoking in the woods with your clique after school; all the urban legends that take place at ubiquitous “Lovers’ Lane” type locations. I’m not sure if this has always been a thing, or if more of us are longing to reincarnate as Weird Eldritch Deer who don’t have to worry about losing their civil rights.
Anyway. Let me know if there are gay/weird/forest topics that you’re DYING to hear me take on, yeah?
Other stuff:
If you’re an American, please call or otherwise make noise about the current Republican-led budget proposal. It’s heinous for literally everyone except the rich!
If you’re also in NYC, please educate yourself on the upcoming city elections and (speaking of heinous) remember: don’t rank Andrew Cuomo’s stupid ass in the mayoral primaries.
Fellow writer Vida Cruz is currently fundraising for medical care. Please give her a few dollars if you can!
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