First, Tha NEWS.

The universe conspires against queer Xennial theater kids yet again.

Yesterday I sat down to start this newsletter only to open up Bluesky and discover Dolly Parton died. Then I sat down today to try again, and opened up Discord to find out fucking Tim Curry died. What's a gal gotta do to get the right 80-year-olds off this mortal coil?

I said the following about Dolly on bsky:

I don't have a personal Dolly Parton story in a "this is a specific thing about her that was important or a way she particularly inspired me" the way that I did when Sam Neill died.

Dolly was always just... there. Just an inextricable part of my cultural DNA. Music, smarts, kindness, playfulness. Someone who was genuinely concerned with other people. A wonderful light has gone out, but she made sure we all have a bit of it in ourselves.

Tim Curry, though. Tim hurts real bad, like his Red October costar Sam Neill. He made mad scientists fuckable. He made butlers fuckable. He made Russian doctors fuckable. He made Satan fuckable. He made sentient oil slicks fuckable. You see where this is going. The man oozed charisma and gave every role exactly what it deserved. And possibly his greatest line reading of all time.

Even as his health was failing after a stroke in 2012, dealing with mobility issues and a diminished ability to work to his previous levels, he was a fixture on social media for his wit and his candid talk about the industry. I really feel like he's one of those guys that would have the "do what you love and never work a day in you life" outlook. The man is basically responsible for coulrophobia (that's the fear of clowns, natch) but also was also originated the role of King Arthur in Spamalot (I mean, inasmuch as one can originate a role that technically already existed.) What a lucky, hardworking, wonderfully queer guy.

With the weight of the world out of the way, let's talk a bit about work! That's why we're all here, right? For my stuff?

As I mentioned in the last newsletter, I'm planning on taking part in the contributors' reading for After Hours issue 52, which will be September 9 at 7pm, a few nights before Printer's Row Lit Fest proper. The location is Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro, which is some kind of pub or something. Poet Life, I guess. To be honest, I've never actually read somewhere where alcohol is served, which seems weird, but most of my stuff has been a coffee shops, something I've been thinking about for a while. Anyway, looking at the photos on Maps, I don't think I can actually afford to eat there. I'm sure they'll be scandalized by my trans ass.

The next issue of Sobotka is slithering along, too. They announced the cover for issue 11, though there's still no release date, to my knowledge. Again, planning on reading for that, whenever that ends up being.

Unrelated to either of the above, I've been thinking a bit about how I'm doing outside of quote-unquote "traditional" small-press publishing, and how I am, according to the IRS, anyway, a Professional Writer. Beyond the ol' contributors' copies, though, it's hard to find paying work in this poetry biz. One of the things I did earlier this year was convert this here newsletter to Buttondown's paid tier. There are a couple reasons for this, but there are two big ones: comments (you can comment/reply to this email now!) and the ability to open up subscriptions for readers. I'm still planning on keeping this thing free and complete for everyone, but if anyone wants to chip in, $2 a month can do a lot! Beyond that, I might start looking into freelance work more. I probably wouldn’t mind teaching, but not actually having the experience from grad school (I took the theory class, just never did the teaching) is probably a mark against me, since I have zero experience. I’m also going to be completely out of commission this spring for reasons and as such even just an adjunct position is unlikely.

Anyway, uh, if you have any leads beyond, like, Fiverr or whatever, let me know. I'm very good at getting extremely into entirely irrelevant tangents, so if you have some kind of weird technical gig like Interociter instructions, lemme know.

Second, INTERLUDE.

Third, CONSUMPTION.

• Picked up Ghost's Prequelle and Skeleta on vinyl. I've always been a sucker for the goofy '70s Album-Oriented Rock shit Tobias and his crew of not-so-Nameless Ghouls are up to, and I've been behind for a while. They both happened to be in the New Arrivals bin at Reckless for pretty cheap, so I grabbed 'em. Was saying to a friend that "they just sorta sound Like That," and I happen to like what That is.

• Been playing a buttload of Magic: the Gathering Arena, and got my rank up to Mythic, which would be an achievement if it weren't mostly a function of playing a lot and not actually being good at the game. But for a playing who hasn't put more than about a hundred bucks into the game in the entire time I've been playing it, it's some degree of achievement.

• Downloaded a boatload of vintage drum machine samples. I'll never be as good as this guy at figuring stuff out (totally not a Rick Roll I promise), but having a stable of legendary sounds at my disposal is gonna be helpful for Future Ricki.

• Somewhat related to the previous, I got ahold of my favorite Sam Neill (horror) movies: Possession, In the Mouth of Madness, and Event Horizon. I have audio-related plans for these.

• One of the benefits of the ADHD medication is that I can read a goddamn book now. I'm still picking away at Jerusalem, but last week I accidentally read a book called The Phoenix Project (which somehow took three entire humans to write), and it's... okay, so like, imagine if someone told you that their revolutionary idea for business was calendar. But this somehow took a novel to tell, and every character within it was one of the worst stereotype Bad Boss/Bad Coworker folks you'd ever heard about, but then the plucky hero just tells them the Transformative Magic of IT (after he quits and they beg him to come back on account of his big brain and all because won’t they be sorry) and suddenly they Get It and everything moves swimmingly from then on. I ended up reading it so the spouse didn't end up taking psychic damage, but man, do NOT read that book. Just get a shared calendar.

• If you haven't seen any trailers for Camp Miasma, do that. I haven't seen Gillian Anderson on a big screen in any capacity in years, and in an openly queer movie playing her Streetcar southern accent for camp? From the writer/director of I Saw the TV Glow? HMMM. It's playing at the newly-reopened neighborhood indie theater, too. HMMMMMM.

Fourth, HUSTLE.

Books available:

• THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT - a serial poem influenced by 20th century sci-fi and cyberpunk, dealing with love in the age of mechanical reproduction. Novelist KB Wagers called it “a delightful electrical tangle of words and feelings.” A Kindle version is available.

• confessions from a drainage ditch - a collection focusing on growing up rural and how those experiences carry forward, both helpful and harmful. A Kindle Version is available.

• A Void and Cloudless Sky - A chapbook akin to an EP, short and experimental, and containing some of my favorite work. Musician and editor Mer Yayanos says it’s “packed with highbrow references and lofi phrases that beg to be verbalized, to be invoked.” [Note: this is my only “traditionally published” work, and I get no money from it until I hit like ten sales a year. But you get a pdf for free, just for being subscribed to this newsletter! Grab it here! It’s a beautiful object, if you’d rather have a physical copy, though.]

If you're liking this whole project and want to support it directly, here is my Patreon. All paying subscribers receive access to all content I post there, for as little as $1.

Finally, THE OUTRO.

You may have noticed at the beginning there that I was talking about Tuesday and Wednesday as if they were yesterday and today. And that's because I wrote all the preceding yesterday, but between some admin things and Proton going down so I couldn't verify some details, I couldn't get this out at a reasonable time. I know I'm a seat-of-the-pants sort of newsletter person, but I'm not going to send you a newsletter at three in the morning. Not intentionally, anyway.

Like I said starting out, the universe is just conspiring. It does not want this email to find you. And yet, here I am, spitting into the wind, flying in the face of fate itself, and bringing you a little bit of my life, because that's what you signed up for. But you know what? No one ever tells me how they're doing. Drop a comment and let me know what you've been up to lately. Let's turn up the house lights so we can let everyone have a nice look at who they're here with. If we have anything, we have each other.

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