Last night, I slept with the window open and the fan on, instead choosing to burrow deeper under my comforter rather than get up to turn it off. The weather in general seems not sure if it wants to be warm or cool, and we've had a string of mild, but weirdly humid days. It seems warm for this far into October, but the trees have in most cases taken on a tinge of yellow at the very least (even the tenacious one outside my window) and already some are losing their leaves. In a week, we'll be mid-month, and Octobers are always a little crazy for me. This week brings hanging a physical exhibit, building another online one for faculty work, and presenting a session on zines and DEI at the end of it. Though for the past two years, I am always grateful I am not at the same time trying to move the studio as I was in 2019, or that my mother was not slowly dying (as it was in 2017) so I'm good. By November and the holidays things seem to settle down at least in the library exhibits/event arena.
In press and art news, things are getting underway in layouts of 2020 holdovers and the final releases for this year. I''ve also made it through the first round of reading submissions, so am giving what I haven't passed on and may accept another round of reading. I'm hoping to finish by the end of the month so I can spend November entirely on orders and releases, since there is usually a slight holiday uptick--not so much in books, but other shop things. My experiment in outsourcing the printing on some of the cover printing is going well. I haven't yet transitioned completely, but will get there, at least on new releases. It has saved me much printer angst, especially on the more color-intensive ones. (ir huge swathes of dark colors and black that like to streak and get lines on my printer.) The quality on them is equal to my Lexmark I used to have in the studio, though that was the most ridiculously expensive toner to keep up. The price differential is minimal (about a $1 more) and the quality is really nice. I also have some new shop offerings I have supplies for and am finally getting to in the next couple of weeks.
After winding up the spell poems (and you will be seeing those sooner than you think in zine form *spoiler*) I actually did something last week I had not done in over 20 years, which was finish a piece of fiction--horror fiction at that. It still needs some work, but it isn't half bad. I also started another story. This week was filled with early and late starts, so my daily writing schedule went to shit, but I'm going to work a bit on them in the mornings in the time I usually devote to poems and we'll see what happens. I still feel like i am ill-suited for the genre as I ever was, but maybe it's not terminal. The sort of world-building that one gets to do in fiction is very pleasurable for me, so it's something. Also, what month is more appropriate for writing ghost stories than October?
On a visual front, I did finish the final version of my black-velvet pieces (they are really faux velvet, created with vintage images on paper and some very tricky flocking). I'll be exhibiting them in the Bad Art exhibit debuting at the end of the week. I also want to make some Halloween collages for patreon again, as well as finish up some shorter poem/film things on the burner. My latest addiction is making spooky instagram reels, for both my instagram and the Library's, which lately feels like a form of self-care I badly need, so definitely watch for more of those--some artful and some just pure silliness.
