What survives the draft

stay right on me

The clean way is to pretend I am above money, above tiers, above the small humiliations of asking to be paid. It is a labor of love, but my landlord requires vemno.

Starving artists die.But the newsletter is free!

Subscribe because I am fascinating, and whatever you love or need, whatever parts of you are soft when you wish they were hard or sharp when you want them to be smooth, I’m here for it.

I don’t really believe in clean lines. I don’t believe in taming a story. I prefer my writing feral. Like me. Like what I love.

I’ll also use this space to point you toward work that isn’t mine, but I wish were or that I just love. If you’ve made it this far, you probably already know that these are a few of my favorite things: indy press, debut writers, motorsports but especially short and dirt track racing, glam metal, professional wrestling then and now (the Attitude era wasn’t my favorite, but I’m open to discussion), the dirt under its nails real roots of Americana, John Waters, Max’s Kansas City, Baltimore, Detroit, the 1992 Phoenix Suns, elderly dogs, disability advocacy, Huey P Newton, Angela Davis, Delores Huerta, class solidarity, all cheese but cottage, Nicholas Cage, the 1989 cinematic masterpiece Road House, punk rock queen Poly Styrene, the Highwaymen, Loretta, Dale Sr, old cemeteries, chosen family, Orville Peck, comic books, diners, anything open 24-7; truck stops with arcade games, Halloween candy, dive bars especially the Lions Lair in Denver CO and Frank and Hanks in Korea-town LA, good sheets, midday baths, Lenny Bruce & Richard Pryor...this is not an exhaustive list.

I have fallen in love with more things than a lot of people would ever want to encounter.

That’s the newsletter-you get newsletters; you know what those are. Bi-monthly unless I get lost or excited.

Some of it’s behind a subscription paywall. I promise it will at least try to earn its keep.

The weirder essays. The deeper dives. The reporting that takes longer than it should. The drafts that almost didn’t make it out. Some behind-the-scenes process stuff, because I’ve spent enough time inside institutions to know people are curious how any of this actually gets made. I’m not promising volume. I am promising that I won’t phone it in.