News, News, News

Much has happened since I last updated.  I’ve become more and more interested in comedy writing, and I took several improv and writing courses at Second City.  An excellent satire class with the brilliant Caitlin Kunkel led to a few publications.  I wrote about new Halloween traditions at The Belladonna, and speculated on how a Twitter bot might be greeted in a fiction workshop at The Offing. Darrell Nicholson and I are also collaborating on a new serialized fictional podcast, which was also developed in a Caitlin Kunkel-led Second City course.  It’s called the Garbage Dispatch and it’s a fantastical comedy about a curse, a schooner, two strangers, and 300,000 square miles of trash swirling in the Pacific Ocean.  We performed an early version of the pilot at The Florida Review/Willow Springs offsite AWP reading.   I’ve also had a few other events lately.  I had a wonderful time interviewing Richard Ford at the Michigan Night for Notables— the evening was beyond delightful. My uber-talented friend/poet/performer/filmmaker/musician Patricia Killelea and I gave a talk together about the advantages of working in multiple genres and mediums at the UntitledTown Book Fest,  And speaking of multiple disciplines….my biggest news of all is that I’ve discovered a new and seemingly bottomless passion for drawing and animation.  I’ve been drawing nonstop for a few months, and some of my small collages are currently on display at the Parklane International Miniature Show.   I’m so excited about making art and adding visuals to the stories I want to tell.

It’s especially gratifying to find this interest at this point in my life.  My visual issues (strabismus) has made writing and working on a computer harder over time.  Looking at a wall of prose is straining.   But drawing is different.  My unusual vision may actually be an advantage (for once!), since being stereoblind makes it easier to translate images to a 2-D surface.  There’s research that shows that many famous artists probably had an eye turn.   Either way, it’s refreshed my thoughts about storytelling to work in a visual medium, and I have a picture book in the works.  I’m eager to share that project when it’s further along.  In the meantime, you can find my art here and on Instagram.  That’s all for now.  I’ll try to update more often!

my first animation