Weird Love and the Afterlife

I’m always working on many projects at once, and trying to do my best to keep plugging away at them around my day job and hectic life. Usually one or more projects get put on the backburner because I just can’t find the time for them.

These projects usually include my fiction writing, my nonfiction writing that doesn’t serve an immediate purpose on one of my sites, and my personal art projects.

It’s hard to set aside ideas that feel like they are burning and consuming my mind.

They demand to be created, to be exorcised.

One idea begets another, and another, and soon I’m overwhelmed by my own brain.

It’s been a struggle for decades now, at this point.

Analog Afterlife

This year I’ve set a goal that’s incredibly small, but feels impossible: Finish 4-6 Analog Afterlife songs and release them on an extremely limited edition cassette run on the autumn equinox of 2026.

But first, in order to justify spending the money on cassette duplication, I have to build a fanbase for a music project no one knows about.

I’m a digital strategist. I know how to do that. But doing it successfully in our algorithm-driven world is a full-time job on it’s own, which doesn’t leave much time for finishing the music when I have approximately 10 minutes a month to myself to work on personal projects.

It seems like the dumbest possible time to be making art of any kind – when the world is burning, AI slop is devaluing human creativity, and every day seems more bleak than the last. But art has always been my survival mechanism, and it’s the only thing keeping me tethered at the moment.

I have a strategy and a timeline that goes from February 13th to release day, and I’m going to try staying focused on just doing what I can find time for while also trying to finish writing, recording, mixing and mastering the EP.

The plan begins on Friday, February 13th with a video I created for a 12-second clip of a new song called “Anatomical Venus.” It’s fitting to push it out into the world for Valentine’s Day, because it’s about as close to a “love song” as I’ll ever write.

This is an experiment, so we’ll see how it goes.

Watch for it on Youtube, Instagram, and Tiktok.

Latest Projects

Wisconsin Frights

Speaking of love, I just sent out the annual Valentine’s Day Wisconsin Frights newsletter, in which I share tips for the perfect date night or romantic getaway the only way I know how:

You and I, we’re in this for the allure of the unusual, the tragic, and the dark. The otherworldly excitement of the uncanny and the surreal. The bloody passion of unrequited love. The moist earth and rotted wood smell of lonesome exhumation. The thrill of the sticky ectoplasmic aftermath of a ghostly encounter.

Read it here: Love, But Make It Spooky

I’m also slowly piecing together issue #2 of the Patreon-exclusive Wisconsin Frights zine, which I’m hoping to have done and off to the printer before the end of Q1. That’s an unreasonable goal though, since I’m waiting until spring to embark on an expedition to what is probably the strangest Wisconsin town for research and photos.

Sonic Seedpod

I just finished editing the new episode of Sonic Seedpod for VOYD Studios featuring what may be my favorite Milwaukee band, Zeal. The episode premieres Saturday, February 7th.

Watch it here: Zeal progressive metalcore live session on Sonic Seedpod

Latest Distractions

It’s been a deep freeze here in Wisconsin the last few weeks, so I’ve been hibernating as much as possible, knocking out as much work as I can, and hanging out with my cats. I got them a water fountain for Christmas. They’ve been slow adopters. One of them just stares at it, like he’s carefully observing a science experiment. Every once in a while he tries to fight it. But we’re making progress.

My Christmas gift to myself:

I needed The Substance shirt with every cell in my being. I don’t have anything new to add to the conversation about The Substance that hasn’t already been said. I’m just happy that body horror can still be unique, surprising, and grotesque. It’s been entwined in my DNA since I obsessively watched Cronenberg’s The Fly over and over in my childhood.

Then, I had an itch to watch Gummo and couldn’t find it streaming anywhere. I have an older copy of it, but digging through the DVD closet was too daunting.

I recently watched Black Phone 2. It’s a solid sequel to a story that seemed like it had nowhere else to go by the end of the first film. It was the perfect cozy winter watch on a 30 below night in the dead of January. The Pink Floyd needle drop during the blizzard driving scene was the highlight for me.

Another one of my 2026 goals is make time to read recreationally every day, something I rarely find time for by the time for lately. Last year I only finished just two novels: The Cipher by Kathe Koja and Off Season by Jack Ketchum.

So far this year I’ve knocked out several great short stories by Stephen Graham Jones, one from Jeff VanderMeer, started some essential J.G. Ballard I’ve been meaning to get to (Crash and The Drowned World), and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.

The latter has lead to the unfortunate circumstance of the Yon Yonson song being stuck in my head.

That’s all for now. Another 2026 goal is to take the Christmas tree down before February, so I have to get on that.

Get future posts by email: