Thursday! Between the Zines: A Warning or an Enticement

V4, I8

Isn’t it odd how your creative side works when you give it room to roam?

I ask because my creative side has been digging in some awfully weird ground lately. It’s hard to say what will come of it all, except to say I’m not unhappy with any of it. Just perplexed. Let me tell you.

As you know, I’ve had a fictional world in my head¹ for a while now and though I can’t describe it clearly enough to tell bigger stories in it, I do occasionally pull out bits of legend and lore, pieces of rhyme, stuff like that. Cultural detritus — the sort of stuff that washes up on the shore of memories and reminds of the past we had mostly forgotten. I shared a little bit of that a couple of zines ago. My hope was to share more of that sort of thing with you in future zines. That hope isn’t dead, but it’s taken a bit of a detour.

Last month, I sketched a few haiku that turned out pretty dark and more creepy than my usual creepy stuff. That’s not entirely unusual. I’ve read a lot of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Graham Masterson, and Robert McKammon. I know my way around raw creepy stories and that sometimes bubbles out when I’m playing with story and poetry ideas. I don’t like to work too far into the darkness because, quite honestly, it isn’t healthy for me to spend a lot of time there. I spent a lot of evenings in my 20s dealing with anxiety and panic attacks, some of which were caused by the feelings of despair and evil in some of the stories I read². Still, the ideas do show up and when they do, I’ll haul them into the light and give them a look-over to see if they’re suitable for my work. These haiku were definitely worth the time, so I put some work into them. In the end, I wrote five or six that all work together.

My working title, which will probably change tomorrow, is “Five Haiku About the Abandoned House that Stands Alone on the Pass-By”. In my head, at least, these haiku were written by a poet who lives in that world, who has seen this house — a place gone as malignant as the Overlook Hotel or Hill House — and tried to describe it in short, sharp poetic images. I give you this explanation as a bit of a warning. They may not be for you. None of them are explicit but they contain a certain atmosphere that clings a bit. The clinging might not be your thing and it’s okay if it isn’t. I put clickable links in each zine so you don’t have to scroll over them on the way to the next piece in the newsletter.

On the other hand, they might be your kind of thing. I hope they are. I hope you find them as interesting as I did while I wrote them. We shall see, huh?

Until then, how about an audio story?

You know, it’d help me quite a lot if you let me know what you do and don’t like about the recordings as well. I try hard to make them good, though I don’t have a ton of time to produce them. Keeping that in mind, what do you think? Want more? Want less? Want poems over stories or vice-versa? Think doing a special one or two regularly would be a nice paid subscriber gift? Drop me notes, please!

Now. Story.

Disappearing Days

One last thing. Would you lend a hand and either share Thursday! around or consider a paid subscription? I'd be grateful!

1. That is such an odd expression. I have a whole world in my head? I have a whole world I can’t even explain nor adequately describe in my head? I have a whole world plus a bunch of people who live there in my head? How is it possible that one mind can hold a whole world that exists only in that mind? God did some pretty amazing work when He made us, for sure.

2. That’s not to say you shouldn’t read them. Some folks handle that better than others. I don’t handle it well, I learned.