Welcome to today’s bucket of eels. I’m Rose. Let’s pull out some eels, shall we?
Today’s eel: Every edition of this newsletter is named after an eel. Today's eel was found inside the body of a man in 1639. A “cardiac serpent” as some have called it.
If you’re feeling like probably this was not really an eel living in a man’s heart, you’re right. But this is today’s eel because it’s the namesake of my ✨newly rebranded membership program✨.
The tl;dr here is that I spent all of my savings on Tested and I’d love it if folks who like my stuff would consider becoming members of my membership program (Cardiac Serpent) to help fund my future work. If you’re sold on that without further explanation, you can skip ahead and become a member here.
If you want the full, very long explanation of how I’m thinking about this whole thing and where the name Cardiac Serpent even came from, you can read that here.
What follows is a condensed version of that, along with some other small updates on stuff I’ve been up to since I last emailed you all.
Ever since Tested came out (you’ve listened to it, right? please listen to it! PLEASE! I have no chill about this please listen to my podcast) I’ve been getting the same question over and over: what’s next for you?
It’s a well meaning question, and/but it also makes me full body cringe each time. I don’t know what’s next. I just finished the biggest, hardest project of my life. I would like to take a nap? But of course, much like there is no crying in baseball, there is no napping in freelance.
A few years ago I started a membership program centered around Flash Forward called Flash Forward Presents. The idea at the time was to build out a studio full of shows and projects explicitly about the future and modeled in the Flash Forward mold. That membership program is now the only income I have to speak of, and while I’m incredibly grateful to those who have been a part of it, it’s also not enough to cover my living expenses.
I’m no longer really making a studio around Flash Forward (again you can read more about that in depth here) but I still am trying to make work.
A few weeks after Tested finished, I reopened some documents and projects that I had been working before I sold Tested and it felt like that scene in a sci-fi show where they come across a town that had clearly been abandoned in a rush. Pots still on the stove, clothing strewn around the place, phones off the hook. Some of the ideas still speak to me. Some of them don’t. All of them will take time to develop — to research and report out and make calls and read books and figure out what has legs and what doesn’t. Some of them I might be able to sell. Some of them I won’t. I won’t know until I try.
In the past I’ve been able to weather these in betweens because I had saved up money from other jobs.
But I spent all of that on Tested. This time, I don’t have that safety net to fall back on.
So I’m rebranding my membership program to be a bit more aligned with what I’m working on these days:
Cardiac Serpent // stories // sculptures // surprises
This work includes:
A novel about science, obsession, and mental health.
A non-fiction book about futurism.
A novella about AI and faith.
Short stories about climate change, genetic engineering, farming, and more.
Continued work on Tested via the newsletter and a database of policies I’m building to track how different sports are handling this issue.
Narrative features about surprising and under-covered moments of sports history.
Sculptures that explore ideas around storytelling, time, narrative, and sense of self.
Art projects that try to meet the current moment of surveillance and repression.
Members of Cardiac Serpent will get monthly newsletters with updates on all of this stuff, looks at my process (like this), behind the scenes stuff on the art (like this), early access to fiction (like this), participation in our book club, and in some special cases surprises in the mail. Plus, the knowledge that you’re supporting someone’s work that you like. (It’s me, I’m that someone.)
So that’s my pitch! Become a member if you like, and I’ll be forever in your debt. If you’d rather just get these missives ~4 times a year with just the top line stuff, you can stick around here.
What else have I been doing since Tested, you ask? (You didn’t probably but this is my newsletter so I get to pretend.)
I’ve started learning to weld. I’ve made a few more sculptures. I’ve squatted 220 pounds. I sold a short story to an anthology. I’ve gone tide pooling. I’ve traveled to Kazakhstan and Quebec City. I’ve gotten reengaged in my union. I’ve battled a scale infection on my house plants. I’ve finally started reading and listening to things again. I’ve learned how to use a sewing machine.
2025 is going to be a new year with new goals. I’ll be sending out an email all about my plans in detain in (you guessed it) the membership newsletter.
Thanks all, and I hope you are all having a lovely end of the year despite The Horrors.
Rose