[Tags: Meta, site introduction]
[Yeah, I know the tags aren’t sticky.]
Eyyyy, I see people I don’t know subscribing to my Substack.
First, thank you for being here!
Second, eek.
Background
I started my Substack in December 2022 because I sometimes wrote ephemera on Facebook and some of my friends were like, You should save these and put them online somewhere. I was familiar with Elizabeth Aquino’s and Marcus Ellsworth’s Substacks and thought this might make a good writing home. And yeah, it’s a user-friendly platform where you can find community; 10/10, would recommend for anyone who write things.
Anyhow, for these first five months everyone on here has been a real-life friend or someone I’ve chatted one-to-one with online — no strangers. That meant I didn’t need to do much in the way of explaining what I’m up to. I write weird shit; people I know sometimes like it because they’re weird, too; there you are.
Now with complete strangers subscribing, I feel like I should tell you what kind of labyrinth you’ve entered. In one way or another, these are all ways to grapple with my life here and now, in Southeast Tennessee, U.S.A. in 2022 and forward.
Things You’ll Find in My Substack
I write about things that happen and things that I imagine happening based on what’s happened—playing out the problem as solution, as I think Gayatri Spivak says, or imagining potential courses of action, as FM 34-130 teaches. Also I write about magic. I suppose that puts my stories in the tradition of Southern Gothic.
Here’s what you’ll find.
ESSAYS about things I encounter in my day-to-day world. Mostly dance, sometimes sex, sometimes violence, often just random human encounters. Here’s a nifty one. I’m about to cross-post the dance essays onto their own Substack, so if you subscribed because you’re looking for my dance writing, hang on a hot minute.
STAND-ALONE FICTION. Some stories include magic, some don’t. No, wait. On second, thought, they all include magic. Read and see. Here’s my favorite.
STORY CYCLES. Right now we have:
The New Confederacy. Circa 2025 and onward, set in the imaginary city of Black Bend and the countryside thereabouts. Premise: The U.S. South (not all of it, just the states least able to manage their own business, of course) said, We’re going to leave and you can’t stop us and the U.S. said Good riddance and now the confederates are grappling with being a dysfunctional, impoverished client state of the U.S. We get the POV of two people: Dorrie, a data analyst involved in illegal women’s health work, and Statius, a civil servant who’s struck up a correspondence with Dr. LaGeoffrey Thirston, a professor of African-American studies and the foremost historian of the New Confederacy. Starts here.
The Good Witch. Set in Chattanooga circa 2023 and forward. Beatrix, a disabled, homeless good witch and her cousin Reese, a talkative, weed-smoking vampire, have adventures. Sometimes their paths cross. Other characters include a diabolical preacher (but they’re all diabolical, right?), the god Apollo, the Prince of Chattanooga, and Reese’s imaginary girlfriend. Everything’s magic, but the rules follow surrealism more than standard fantasy — Alice in Wonderland, not Harry Potter, in other words. Here’s the first Good Witch story.
If you’re just looking for one type of writing or story cycle, or if you need to catch up, use the Table of Contents to navigate.
Trigger warnings: I’ve used one once, when an essay described the police videos of a death of a real human, using her real name. Other than that, expect rape, murder, illness, pillage, prejudice, and general violence and mayhem. Apart from that they’re all pretty nice people.
I hope you love everything here. Or even better, you hate it so much you throw your computer at the wall. If you think anyone resembles you or someone you know … unless I use a real name … well, you must be drunk.
Paid Pledges
I don’t have any paid subscriptions turned on yet, but I do have a few paid pledges. Here’s what’s up: I’ll never paywall anything, but when I get the magic number of 13 paid pledges, I’ll turn on paid subscriptions and I’ll write those 13 OG subscribers each a bespoke tiny story or essay — a delicious 500-word bite. Yes, you can request existing characters, you can Mary Sue to your heart’s content, you can have the witch AND the vampire. I appreciate y’all so much!