Returning to Substack After a Fruitful Winter

Dear friend,

It’s been a while since my last missive. The world is full of curious free spirits and small-minded egotists alike, and with unlimited access to their endless opinions about everything happening under the sun—with all of these podcasts and newsletters, it’s almost as if people forget about all the books—I haven’t felt the call to newsletter arms of late.

Winter, for me, is about hibernation and countryside quiet. I’ve been busy with songwriting, novel writing, and wondrous adventures in life-living.

My band, Slim and The Beast, is working on a new album. We’re recording much of it live, harking back to the live recording sessions of the 1960s. Below is a photo of the beautiful piano I played in the recording studio + a brief rehearsal-recording preview of one of our new songs, “Dear Brother” (headphones recommended).

I’ve also finished my first Solo EP—4 tracks of piano, vocals, harmonica—thanks to the work and collaboration of my dear friend, NY/Paris producer Colton Brown. The masters are almost ready. Below is a photo of us on Day 3 + an audio preview.

Most importantly, because writing novels is where I find most peace, I’m exactly one-month late on a foolishly self-imposed deadline of April 1 for a polished draft of Book I of a new trilogy. For a while I thought I was writing a big novel with three distinct sections, but sometime in November, the truth finally clicked: I’ve been writing three different books with a throughline that is my own personal folklore, an attempt—and it is only ever an attempt, isn’t it?—to understand my own mythology, folklore, and optimistic if absurdist relationship to what the metamodernists call poetic faith.

It’s all happening, and springtime is finally here, and my cerebral devotion to The Next Novel is making way for shorter prose and new melodies.

Which brings me to nika burnett’s lovely Los Angeles porch. I arrived here last night because this weekend Augusta Sagnelli and I are attending the inaugural Santa Barbara Literary Festival.

We’re honored to be invited as representatives for SOUVENIR Magazine, the Paris-based arts & literature magazine for which I’m fiction editor (Eleanor Anstruther & Yara Zgheib have incredible pieces in the upcoming issue), courtesy of Augusta Sagnelli & Kyle Berlin. We’ll also be representing Kingdom Anywhere, our humble little independent publisher that is now official in Paris. Starting this autumn, we have modest plans to uplift uncommon English language voices in the City of Light by focusing on equitable publishing, quality over quantity (i.e. limited 1st editions), and connecting with a thriving Paris-based community that simply keeps on writing.

We’ve updated our website to give folks a better idea of our hopes and dreams, but for now, all this to say it’s been a fruitful winter, and I’m motivated to return to Substack now that my brain has officially almost reached its limits of wrangling the next novel into a polished draft (tomorrow, and old Spanish proverb goes, is the busiest day of the week).

Next week, I’ll be returning to my Dispatches from Lalaland series for Part IV, which recounts the tale of an Uber Driver named Genesis and her air-bending friend. In the meantime, you can catch up on past Lalaland adventures, because just because something isn’t new doesn’t mean it’s not worth visiting.

• Part I: Being Tossed into the Basin

• Part II: Riding with Jesus

• Part III: Strangers in Glendale

• Part IV: Aliens & Air Benders (next week)

The smell of damp mould like a soggy carpet engulfs your senses as you take your seat on the aisle. The two American women to your left are discussing Delta Airline’s discriminatory practices. One of them has a nose-ring, identical to those inserted into the nasal septum of unpredictable bulls. The other is dressed like a character from The Matrix.

The Matrix woman says she was stopped twice for a random pre-boarding flight screening a few weeks apart—by the same Delta agent, no less, at the same exact gate.

“That’s definitely discriminatory,” the bullish one says. “First you need to log it. Then we have to contact Delta, because that’s definitely discriminatory. We’ll talk to someone on the ground when we land.”

“Yeah, I’m just so annoyed. Like, I’m trying not to let it affect my flight. Because, like, I have no problems ever getting stopped back home.”

“Oh no definitely. It’s discriminatory for sure. We’ll make a complaint. I think you should say that you want to be pre-checked, because you don’t feel comfortable with that specific agent at Gate 46. You have to do it. You should ask to be accompanied because you don’t feel comfortable. Totally. It’s not acceptable. We have to make a complaint.”

The Matrix woman reaches beneath the seat in front of her to place her carry-on backpack atop her lap. The overwhelming stench of wet dogstink returns. Her bag is soaking wet, or otherwise has something dank and soaking within it—perhaps festering—a potential clue, perhaps, for why the agent had a few extra questions at the border.

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