Summer has started summering, whether we are fully on board with it or not. I’ve spent the past couple days in 90 degree plus Chicago tucked in front of the window AC unit working on some poetry critiques and my own writing, in addition to a couple upcoming dgp books. In between, there are frosty coconut-heavy drinks whipped in the blender, iced tea, and summer treats like strawberries and watermelon. I always feel like summer gets away from me. Or more that it seems like it takes forever to get here, but then slides very quickly away, especially once you hit the 4th of July.

This past months creatively have brought final edits on the new collection of poems, as well as putting the finishing touches on the newest play (well the most recently finished longer one—I’ve also been puttering away on two others and finished up a shorty one for a local festival deadline. I do intend to get back to poems, though, especially since I planned to use the bulk of the summer for the latest Greek-inspired project, HERE BE MONSTERS. I am still in gathering mode and may push off the deep dive on the project into August as soon as I work out a good first draft of the two plays in progress. One is about teenage girl angst and diet culture, the other inspired by cicada cycles, both of which feel like very good summer projects. There is also the eco-gothic anthology layout, which is close to sending out author proofs in the next couple week, plus an inbox that already, only one month in, is lush with potential manuscripts for the 26-27 season. I will be digging in next week to begin making the very first decisions.

Until July—

Kristy

MARRY KISS KILL

The final proofs have been approved and the first round of copies ordered. You can make a claim on one of the first signed editions HERE.

Filled with blood-thick poems about early American vampires, Bluebeard’s wife, murderess gothic heroines, winged swamp sirens, and more, this collection spans centuries of domestic and matrimonial horrors both real and imagined.

PLAYS

The newest play script has already been posted up over at the New Play Exchange where you can read it if you’re a member over there. Or, you can get a peak at an electronic version if you subscribe to my Patreon digital tier for only $3/month. It’s a bloody re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth from the point of view of its famous weird sisters, with Lady Macbeth placed at the center of the narrative This project feels more indebted to poetry than prose, a line that I am trying to span with these recent plays, and feels a little more experimental than the the narrative arc of what I am working on currently.

SOMETHING NEW

I was recently talking to an author whose book I am working on (Kate Falvey’s CRONEVILLE) and we were talking about illustrations and artwork possibilities. She suggested I should write a children’s picture book, to which my laughing response was that my style is a little more spooky and adult for kids, but it got me thinking of some fun Gorey-style story lines and collage images I started playing with, so this may be something I would love to work on. I’ve done many poem/image hybrid projects, but never something written in picture book style. I did a couple collages that may lead to something, including the one below, so stay tuned for possibly more on that.

BOOKISH BLIND BOXES

In the shop, I recently swapped out our simple mix-tape with new Bookish Blind Boxes, which include 5 randomly chosen DGP titles along with other fun offerings like mini-prints, postcards, bookmarks, pencils, stickers, and more. This is great way to get a sampling of what we publish and a fun way to support the press if you’re not certain where to start among our shop offerings.

ON THE BLOG THIS MONTH

Notes on mid-career poeting, liminal horror, writing plays vs. poems, and women as monsters.

The cusp of summer always means summer projects, which, despite my not being beholden to academic calendars any longer, still seems like a nice time to try to get some things done, although not with as much fervor and doggedness as that which comes with autumn. This summer, after I finish a couple of play scripts that are in various stages, next up will be my next installment in the Antiquities series. I have only been in research mode of late and made a few collages a couple years back, but I am determined to get at least a good first draft by September on a series of Calypso-inspired poems. Considering one of the first unpublished poems I wrote in my very first year of writing seriously in the late 90s, a poem called “Plentitude” that is probably way too bad to share now, it seems fitting this is where I go next. (BTW, you can still get hold of a bundled deal for both previous projects of this ilk, GRANATA and CLOVEN, for only $20 in the shop if you’d like to see what to expect. )

My other goal for the summer is to start dipping my toe into submitting plays to theaters and contests once I’ve built up something of a body of work to actually show off. Things have been going well, and just this weekend, I was able to put a bow on the final version of my Macbeth witches retelling, as well as get the first act roughly rendered of something else that mixes 90s culture, teen dieting, and demonology that’s turning out to be a lot of fun.

Until June…

BITS & PIECES

Marry | Kiss | Kill

I am just finishing up the final version of my upcoming full-length book, MARRY | KISS | KILL, which is due out in July. It’s a book full of bird girls, NOLA vampires, gothic heroines, and violent fairy tales, all of which makes me extra excited to show it to you. Keep an eye on my socials in June for sneak peeks and when it will be available to order.

New Plays

The latest play release is this little thriller set in a stormy midwest farmhouse haunted by the past and present. There are a few ways to read it, including picking up a physical copy available from Amazon or B&N (or I should have copies in the next week or so for the shop if you want to buy direct from me.) You can also read an electronic version at the New Play Exchange if you’re a member there, or through subscribing to any tier of my Patreon.

DANCING GIRL PRESS & STUDIO

OPEN FOR BOOK SERIES SUBMISSIONS JUNE 1st

Every June, we open for DGP submissions. We’ve been updating the guidelines to give a little bit more context and info on what we love to see in the inbox. We also are accepting longer books than we have previously, since we now have full-length collection capabilities in our new perfect bound formats. Get more info HERE.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

A snippet from THE BONE PALACE:

January 4th: Fourth lesson

I arrived to find a second chair placed in the music room, at some distance from the piano and angled toward it. Miss Lisle was at the instrument. She did not comment on the second chair. I sat in it.

I had not taught from a second chair before. I have always sat beside my students on the bench, to demonstrate, to correct hand position, to point to the score. Sitting at a distance changed what I heard. From the bench, one hears the piano. From the second chair, across a room with a ribbed ceiling and a floor of polished bone, one hears the room hearing the piano.

It is not the same thing.

Miss Lisle played the Schubert through without pause, without error, without any of the small hesitations of someone playing music they are still learning. She has been practicing for three weeks. She is playing as though she has known this piece for years. I have had students who practiced for three years without achieving what she has achieved in three weeks, and I have been trying, since last Tuesday, to formulate a theory of why. The only theory I can formulate is one I am not yet prepared to write in either notebook.

At the end of the third movement she sat quietly for a moment. Then she said it learns quickly too.

I said what does?

She placed her hand flat on the fall board. She said, The house. When I play, it listens. When I stop, it continues. For a little while. As though it is retaining what it heard and going over it.

I asked whether she found this alarming.

She said, I find it interesting. I find most things about this house interesting now. I did not, always. I used to find most things about this house the correct and natural condition of things, which is different from finding them interesting. Interesting means you have acquired some distance. I’m not entirely sure when I acquired the distance.

I did not know what to say to this. I said, shall we try the first movement again from the recapitulation?

She said yes. And sat up straight. And played.

Progress: exceptional. Unprecedented in twelve years of teaching. The word exceptional is not adequate but it is the word I have.

Other notes: on the walk back to the wagon, I turned and looked at the house from the gate. The upper windows were dark. The middle landing window, a tall narrow pane between two white posts, was lit. Miss Lisle was standing in it, looking out. This is not unusual. What was unusual was that she appeared to be listening. Standing very still in the lit window, in the white house, listening to something. I stood at the gate and listened too. I heard nothing. I am almost certain I heard nothing.

April is always a busy month, if not a particularly cruel one. The trees start blooming mid-month and the weather eases (well theoretically, Chicago is still being stubborn.) The days are getting longer, which means I have much more energy, both physical and creative, than earlier parts of the year, despite my love of midnights. It also happens to be my birthday month near the end and National Poetry Month, which means its often busier than other parts of the year. My head is arush with plans for the next couple of months, including another play script based on Macbeth’s witches and getting started on the follow up to GRANATA and CLOVEN, a series of poems and collages about to Calypso called HERE BE MONSTERS. There is also the task of finalizing the manuscript and starting the design process for my next book release, MARRY | KISS | KILL, due out in July. The bonus is that my formatting and layout skills have been improving even more with every perfect-bound chapbook design for the press, so this will take a little less time than previous books.

Until May,

Kristy

NEWS & BITS

Wrapping up National Poetry Month

You can still take advantage for a few more days of my National Poetry Month offerings, including free access to my Patreon 10-Minute Poet creative advice posts, usually only available to subscribers, as well as a sale in the shop that gives you 30% off on my book, zine, and artist book projects in April. Just use the code “BIRTHDAYGIRL”. This is a great chance to order a sampling of work or pick up titles you may be missing. While I am winding down on daily poems and stalled out on my NaPoWriMo efforts for a number of reasons (time to write them, time to share them) I still did end up with about 20 poems that are promising and will be taking the drafts and whipping them into shape in the next couple months and then sending them out in submission, so its not a total loss.

The Account

I have two pieces from my WINGED series up in the latest issue of The Account along with a little process note that details the entire project. I plan to make a zine version of the series and will be posting it in the next month or so, so keep an eye out for that.

For the Stage

As you know, I’ve spent the last several months working on more plays than poems. I’ve been putting the finishing touches on three of them, one an adaptation of The Yellow Wallpaper, a short ghosty one-act called Graveyards of Chicago, and a longer thriller called all the best love songs are cheatin’ songs. The final versions can be found at the New Play Exchange and are downloadable if you have a membership, and I am set to start looking for reading/performance/publication opportunities as the year goes on. You can also access free pdfs of of them if you are a Patreon subscriber. I have vague plans for a fun new reading series locally that brings together poetry and drama that may come to fruition if all the details and stars align.

Prose-ish Things

My other daily writing exploits have been cobbling away at the bone palace project, which grow stranger and more twisty and time goes on, building on appropriated and re-imagined texts like diaries, letters, and architectural writings. Think my errata project, but a little more narrative and concrete in its storytelling. This one is a slow project I will be sharing some bits from occasionally as I work on it in the background of other more pressing things, but it is much fun. Progress is much slower on the stalled-out thrifting memoir, but I hope to get more done on that one in the coming months as well.

In the Shop

I have been working on some new shop offerings, including some very awesome DGP tote bags I will be making available soon. Also prints postcards, journals and other paper goodness. You can also get ahold of our latest chapbook series titles, which we are now using Ingram for distro. This means you can find the latest spring titles not only in our shop, but all via other booksellers like Amazon and B&N.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

other kinds of ghosts

For decades, we were afraid to be happy.

Snakes in the garden and razor blades in the cakes.

The endless churn of mornings. The deadlock

of night. When I was most happy, I

worried over plane crashes and food poisoning.

That happiness could be taken away like a toy,

plucked from between my fingers. Death

lingered beneath every teacup in the cabinet.

Dread under every bed.

If you’d asked me a question, I would lie.

Would cry over midnight serenades and splendidly

laid tables of inedible food. All the things that were

made for us that we would never inhabit. Chairs

we were too heavy to sit in. They kept collapsing

under the weight of the past. The candles kept

setting fire to our hair. To the garden full of broken

statues and sharp brambles we kept prying from

our hems. The house already haunted and collapsing

with rot. If we stick our fingers through the holes

in the wall, we can feel the fur of it. The teeth of it.

But could never quite gauge the size of it.

Could only listen, low and steady, to its approach.

Normally, this late in March, I would be writing about spring, though Chicago appears to have other things in mind, with wildly vacillating temperatures from day to day. But still the past month has somehow vanished down the rabbit hole, taking winter (eventually) with it. The longer days are glorious and I find I do not need quite as many early evening naps as I do in the darker season. I have been keeping busy with new press developments (perfect bound chaps!!!), shop orders, and a couple of fun projects I give a sneak peek into below. The playwriting, well, goes— (I would say well, but I’ve barely showed anything to anyone, so its all my delicious little secret at this point.) There are three now, and while this last one, which is a little bit of a thriller, needs a lot of work, I am experiencing the crippling self-doubt when working on them only about 50 percent of the time instead of the 90 I started out with. I’ve started keeping a physical notebook for the shows we see and thoughts they engender for staging and dialogue. My other project this past month is a more prose-oriented series that is bringing in different kinds of texts to tell a story—something a little larger but with a similar feel to errata from all those years ago. Plus, it will include some fun random collages made with the generated images from a couple years back I used as my base inspiration for the project. I will also be starting a new batch of poems for NaPoWriMo exploits..so watch IG for a look at new work.

Until April—-

Kristy

NEWS & NOTES

• One of this past month’s endeavors includes the April Patreon mailing, a little sheaf of prints and letter poems called THE ABATTOIR LETTERS, based around the Bluebeard fairytale. They will be shipping for subscribers next week, but will also be available in a limited number in the shop during April. (I will also be making a e-zine version as well after the first of the month, so keep an eye out for that.)

• I have some pieces from AMERICAN CYCLORAMA in the latest issue of INK NEST, a fun print journal you can find here.

• Since April is my birthday and all, I am offering a 30% discount on all Zines and Book Objects in the shop, which means you can pick up some of my full-length titles and zines/chapbooks for a steal, including special book objects like the project mentioned above.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

from THE BONE PALACE: AN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY

The house was not built so much as it was assembled. This is the distinction that matters. In the autumn of 1743, a man known only as the Collector arrived at the high ground above the village of Alden carrying three wagons of material covered in oilcloth and a compass that pointed consistently southeast regardless of orientation. He offered no explanation for either. He broke ground before anyone thought to ask him not to.

What lay beneath the oilcloth was not discussed publicly until the following spring, when the structure had risen to the height of its second story and the villagers could no longer avoid the color of it. Avery House was the color of old teeth. It caught light strangely. It did not weather. The mortar between its courses was pale and slightly luminous at dusk, like something remembering warmth it no longer had any right to.

[On the Material Question]

The Collector, when pressed, described his building material as architectural calcium—a phrase that satisfied no one. The local mason, a methodical man named Crumb, examined a sample and reported that the blocks were consistent in grain with bovine femur, though sourced from an animal considerably larger than any cow he had encountered in professional or personal life. Crumb submitted his findings to the parish, then moved his family to the coast and declined to elaborate.

“It did not feel cold to the touch, which was the problem. Stone should be cold. This was not.”
— Mr. Collins, in a letter he later requested returned

What is established: the walls of Avery House are load-bearing. The floors are solid. The rafters, which run in long pale arcs across the interior ceiling, have never buckled despite carrying the weight of a third story added without planning and a collection of objects whose combined mass the Collector never disclosed. The house stands. It has always stood. This is, depending on one’s disposition, either a testament to unusual engineering or a cause for concern.

ON THE BLOG

This past month brought posts on the writer according to the dramatists, adaptations and their obligations, and about creating amid sociial turmoil.

Somehow, we are nearing the end of February, which like last month seems to speed and creep in equal measure. To quote T. Swift:

“ All my mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February.”

But things are happening amidst a world in utter chaos and absurdity, a place where I and I imagine other creatives are holding on white-knuckled to artmaking and routines and fighting the urge to run away into the woods forever. I saw someone quoted the other day that it was important to go on making art and devoting time to creativity, that besides the things like protesting, making calls, writing letters, could be one of the most important things you do. Also a documentation for prosperity.

It’s perhaps easier to fall into imagined worlds than chart a course through the real one. And yet, sometimes you can do both. We’ve been watching Westworld, the latter seasons which I had not yet seen, which delves into AI and the ramifications on society. Last night, we saw Good Luck, have Fun, Don’t Die, which painted a similarly grim picture from the future about the dangers of its pervasiveness. These are things I am mulling over, along with other pieces of art and media we’ve seen recently that deal with hive minds and consciousness like Pluribus and The Antiquities we caught on stage last spring.

In creative things, I find myself actually working more in a 19th aesthetic vein, no doubt spurred by similar amusements like the new adaptations of Dracula and Wuthering Heights. If you follow me on socials, I’ve been making daily collages for FEBRULLAGE this month, which have a similar Victorian feel. So I write to you at the crux of old aesthetics and new technology, which is a strange, but fruitful, place to be.

Until March,

Kristy

NEWS & NOTES

NEW PUBLICATIONS:

Some new poems from my AMERICAN CYCLORAMA series recently made their debut in a new issue of Bending Genres. Its the second set from this newest series currently out in submissions, so you may be seeing more if they are picked up by other venues (you can see the first set in Dread Literary Review published a couple months back.)

COVER REVEAL:

My next collection of poems will be coming in late summer (likely August)—which is romp through the horrors of marriage. Well, not my marriage (we are still in the honeymoon stage…lol..) but the book features things like NOLA vampires, Bluebeards wife, Victorian governesses, and more…I will once again be charting the trials and tribulations of self publishing as we get closer on the blog, so keep an eye out for that.

CURRENT PROJECTS:

Lately I have been writing in the real of other genres than poems—both drama scripts and the very, very early draft of a collab novel that I and my husband, have started working on. (While he has written scripts for his old job, and I have written more prosey things, the plays are new for me and the novel new for him, so its interesting to see the variations between genre expectations in terms of narrative and scope. I’ve completed initial drafts for two plays—one, Graveyards of Chicago based loosely on my archer avenue poems all those years ago and an adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which is actually going pretty well.

I did dip my toe back into more poetic pursuits and completed the collage/poem series of Bluebeard poems, which will be coming as an e-zine project soon (as well as a print edition made especially for Patreon subscribers. You can get a little taste below.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

from THE ABBATOIR LETTERS

In the end, I shall wear my death like a wedding gown. Like a drowning doe in the cistern. A fist in my back. The wives before me hung like chandeliers, their ribs just another architecture of rust and time. You said anywhere but here & I thought of Eve, of apples, how hunger is just another name for the same desire. The blood wouldn’t wash off. Wouldn’t forgive. I scrubbed until my hands until I could see right through them. Could feel out the tiny bird bones that littered your beard and tasted like a grave. Everything was so white, the red was alarming. Seeping from my ears and between my legs until it was everywhere. Copper running in veins along the walls.

ON THE BLOG

Some process notes on literary adaptations, love, and monsters, and writing about Bluebeard’s Wife.

Somehow, the new year seems to be both dragging and chugging along. Both brisk and slow, as January is wont to be sometimes. We’ve had quite a bit of snow and cold in Chicago so far, which feels unduly personal when the digital world feels so jagged and depressing. I am trying to stay focused even when the constant barrage of terrible news is unceasing and overwhelming—working more on poems in the SWINE DAUGHTER series (which you can catch in some #workinprogress snippets on IG) as well as some more edits on the second act of the play, on which I vacillate between its genius and its ordinariness (sometimes all in the same hour.) Of course, perhaps at a time when I most need art to function, it fails me sometimes. It occasionally feels like yet another thing we have to continue to do as the ship goes down (playing the violins and making the beds on a Titanic full of water already. ) I don’t have answers on how to navigate it—the decline and disillusionment we all feel. The drag of it on our limbs. I look for moments of lightness: a few sunny and clear but cold days. A slice of lemon pie. Good coffee. Covers to design and collages to make. I’ve also included a few thoughtful prompts for romanticizing your winter down below.

news & bits

CLOVEN, my collection of poems and collages, dropped quietly into the world at the top of the new year. You can pick up a signed copy in the shop, or you can get ahold of both volumes of THE ANTIQUITIES series of which it is the second volume along with 2024’s GRANATA at a discount. Stay tuned for news on the next volume in that series, HERE BE MONSTERS, which i will be sharing more on as I work on it this summer.

I recently started a new collage and poem series based on the Bluebeard fairytale that I plan to be a small zine/artist book for February amid Valentine’s Day festivities. It will likely be an e-zine for the public and a fun little print edition for Patreon subscribers.

Patreon

Over on Patreon, you can still get access to all the digital exclusive content for only $3, as well as join the bookish bundle tier for $13. This months selections include a signed copy of CLOVEN and a mini-easel calendar for your desk featuring collages made in the past year, plus some postcards and other goodies.

@ the blog

This month. I talk a little about female myths and epics in re: to CLOVEN, the dangers of doomscrolling, merging art and writing, desktop publishing across three decades, creative combustion points, and finally getting to see Phantom of the Opera on stage.

some poetry prompts

for romanticizing wintertime….

1. Write about the first snowfall as if it’s a long-awaited letter finally arriving, and what message it brings.

2. Describe the feeling of coming inside from the cold—the shock of warmth, the peeling away of layers, the return of sensation to your fingertips.

3. Capture the specific quality of silence after fresh snow, as if the world is holding its breath.

4. Write about winter light—how it slants low and golden through bare branches, making ordinary things look precious.

5. Describe a warm drink cupped between cold hands as an act of devotion or self-love.

6. Write about frost on a window as a kind of art, temporary and intimate, meant only for you.

7. Capture the romance of early darkness—candles lit at 4pm, the coziness of being tucked away while the world outside grows blue.

8. Describe bare trees not as dead or lonely, but as elegant, honest, stripped down to their essential beauty.

9. Write about the sound and sensation of walking through snow—the crunch, the muffling, the way you leave evidence of where you’ve been.

10. Capture the moment of watching your breath become visible in cold air, as if your inner warmth is made tangible and real.

With the closing of the holiday season, we have no choice but to look forward to the coming year. One which, I hope, will be softer and less sharp around the edges. May it finally bring better things, kinder winds, and much more abundance. I’ve spent this past month making plans for the new year and cobbling away on this years advent calendar (you can find the images all in one swoop here if you missed them individually.) I’ve also been working on a new zine project and a larger series of poems that it spawned (included a peek at one segment below), some videos, new shop offerings, and play revisions, all of which, daily, have me vacillating between elation and frustration, but whose results will bear fruit in the coming year.

Until January,

Kristy

NEWS & NOTES

First, there is release of CLOVEN, my Greek myth / Iphigenia project that serves as a sister work to GRANATA. The author copies arrived yesterday, and while it’s not officially available until January 5th, as Paper Boat subscribers, you can get in on the action a little earlier by picking up a signed copy here. Or, you can get both books in a special Paper Boat bundle for only $10 / each. There will also be some poems from the book coming in Ink Nest.

PATREON

This year’s Patreon re-launch has been lots of fun and made it possible to indulge in a few projects that those funds supply, like the recent Poe Oracle and the special hardcover edition of EXOTICA this fall. There is even more good things coming, including some fun journals, plus poetry/art offerings. Plus exclusive blogs and content. You can subscribe at patreon.com/kristybowen . January’s book bundle will include a signed copy of CLOVEN and some other papery treats.

NEW WORK

This series started as a mini zine I made for an upcoming art show submission. While I am still waiting for news on whether it made the show, here is the resulting poem that actually kicked off a several poem series that will eventually be part of what may be the next book.

WINTER WRITING PROMPTS

With the full onset of winter, I decided to collect a set of wintry season prompts that may get you started and melt the creative ice:

1. Write about the moment when you first notice winter has arrived officially or unofficially. A specific sight, sound, or feeling that marks the transition from autumn.

2. Describe a childhood memory of snow through the lens of how you experience winter now as an adult. What has changed in your perception?

3. Imagine winter as a person who visits your town each year. What is their personality? How do they interact with the landscape and people?

4. Focus on something small that survives or thrives in winter: a bird, an evergreen tree, frost patterns on a window. What can it teach us?

5. Write about the quality of winter light: how it’s different from other seasons, the way it enters a room, reflects off snow, or fades early in the afternoon.

6. Explore the silence of a snow-covered landscape. What does that particular quiet feel or sound like? What does it allow you to hear or think about?

7. Create a poem about winter as an ending or beginning. Tie the season to a personal transition, loss, or renewal in your own life.

8. Write from the perspective of something frozen: a lake, a waterfall, a branch encased in ice. What does it mean to be suspended and waiting?

9. Capture a specific winter ritual or tradition—lighting candles in darkness, making soup, bundling up for a walk. Why does this action matter in this season?

10. Describe the contrast between the cold outside world and a warm interior space. Play with the tension between comfort and harshness, isolation and coziness.

November is historically a month of losses and grief, proven just this week by losing two of our cats to age and illness and spending a part of the holiday at an emergency vets office instead of sitting down to turkey dinner. While November takes a lot each year (things I love, the daylight, the mild weather, and occasionally my own health—lest we forget last November’s bout of tendonitus in my foot that had me hobbling a significant portion of last winter. ) it has, on occasion given good things as well. in the past these included book acceptances and new job opportunities, though this past month, it may just be a sense of order and calm, as well as good progress on something entirely new—a play! that is proving to be an enjoyable writing endeavor given my recent and renewed theatre fervor. While poetry is always my favorite child, stepping away from it has birthed some interesting side projects nevertheless. We are on the cusp of December, which brings a wrapping up and taking stock of the creative year, which I will be sharing in the next few weeks, so keep an eye over on the blog for that. Otherwise, until then, may the darkness not swallow you before the solstice…

Kristy

news & notes

• Progress continues on the finalization and prep for CLOVEN’s release, likely coming mid-January. A missing package plagued my first proof, but another is on the way for final perusal. Once, that is solidified and some copies ordered, I will set to promotional things like graphics and some poem videos (though I already have a couple that I worked on over the summer. )

  

• This month’s Patreon treat is a set of Edgar Allen Poe oracle cards that are super cool. You get a set of 22 cards based loosely on major arcana cards. One can be yours in November if you subscribe to the $13 book bundle tier. You can also pick them up, while supplies last, in the dgp shop.*

• I recently made a mini zine, the swine daughter, for a single poem for possible inclusion in an upcoming gallery exhibit, but thought right now I’d share the results as a digital zine available to all subscribers over Patreon. I’ll also be sharing bits and pieces (and hopefully, it will land a spot in the exhibit I wanted to submit it to, which I will share when available..)

• dgp is taking submissions through mid-January for this fun anthology project, DANGEROUS TERRAIN, which invites submissions across genres for work on exploring the EcoGothic. The deadline is January 15th, with a planned publication April. Copies will be available in the shop and on Amazon.

on the blog

This month you can find meditations on gratitude and Novembers, a discussion on titling your work, the spectre of horror on stage, the joy of gothic landscapes, and notes on editing as curation vs. gatekeeping.

november prompts

In honor of our upcoming anthology, here are a few fun prompts that can get you started thinking about the EcoGothic:

• Write from the perspective of invasive plants like creeping Charlie, kudzu, Japanese knotweed, or another plants slowly consuming an inhabited or abandoned town or neighborhood.

• Describe an abandoned mine or quarry as a wound in the earth that never healed. What does it exhale? What grows in the acid pools? What does the landscape remember?

• Chronicle the incremental horror of a housing development built on filled wetlands as the water begins reclaiming its territory, foundation by foundation.

• Explore a place where trees won’t grow, where nothing takes root. What happened there? Let the absence speak louder than any presence.

• Write about beauty found in toxic landscapes—the iridescent shimmer of oil slicks, the alien geometries of chemical waste sites, the sublime terror of refineries at night. Complicate the reader’s relationship with ruin.

• Give voice to a dying glacier or other natural phenomena. What memories does it release as it melts? What ancient things are emerging from the ice?

• Consider what certain landscapes preserve and what they reveals—bodies, seeds, entire forests compressed beneath the surface. Write about time as a weight, as suffocation, as perfect preservation.

• Trace a road that bisects a landscape, focusing on the animals that try to cross it at night, the way asphalt holds heat like a scar, the flowers that only bloom in median strips.

• Describe a clear or ravaged forest where phantom limbs of trees still ache in the stumps. Where the past is in peril. What sounds does this landscape make? What refuses to be silent?

• Write about a town deliberately flooded to create a manmade lake or reservoir. During drought, when the waters recede, what surfaces? What remains hidden?

With prime spooky season upon us, there has been much afoot in the horror-ish writing vein this month, including progress on what will eventually be a new book of poems set in a strange town in the 1950s/60s. I am trying not to dwell on the evil that pervades the political environment and the toxicity of what passes as news and social media these days, but its hard with abductions on the streets in every neighborhood and ever rising costs (financial and otherwise) as the country falls apart. I am trying to do my part by funneling resources and attentions in better ways, being vigilant and trying to keep calm. But it’s difficult, and will likely prove only moreso in the coming months, especially November, which always brings a dip in my mood for personal reasons, as well as the coming winter, which even in a good year, lasts way too long.

Until November…

NEWS & NOTES

~A snippet from my in-progress mss. AMERICAN CYCLORAMA, landed in the latest Dread Literary Review issue devoted to horror and the mundane. New poems from other assorted series are also forthcoming in Dominique and Milkweed Poetry over the next couple of months.

~#31daysofhalloween continues to happen at the blog, as well as on social media, with a few bonus bits popping up this last week right before the holiday. Even this late, there are still a few tricks and treats coming in the next few days, so stay tuned, including this month’s free e-zine of NOLA vampire poems and a couple surprises coming for Patreon subscribers in the next month.

~I am working on notes for some self-guided workshops that will be available in November and December, the first of which is devoted to ekphrastic poetry, one of my favorite varieties these days and one which, as a visual artist, is very central to my process (both creating art from words and words from art.

~Check out this fun article on junk journaling I wrote last month, which served as a prompt to get me thinking of making more physical work at a time when I feel like most of my artmaking, be it collages or video, is very digital.

CLOVEN

The first set of printed proofs for my next book have been ordered and are in production, so hopefully i will have them in hand next week. I’ve been talking a bit about the self-publishing process over at the blog, including a recent comparison of the process between self-published and traditionally published titles and the design process. If all goes well, it will be a January release…

@ the blog

As mentioned above, I’ve been showcasing older projects as well as writing some short essays on horror and writing, including one on horror and grief that I would love to turn into a book chapter down the line There are also continuing posts on the self-publishing process to follow CLOVEN from manuscript to finished book.

October Prompts

As I was thinking about horror and grief for my recent blog post, as well as facing the spectre of more harrowing Novembers past, I was also thinking of how this topic might be turned into a generative exercise for new poems. Here are a few assembled prompts that may spark something useful.

1. Write from the perspective of someone who keeps seeing their deceased loved one in crowds, but every time they get closer, the person disappears—or transforms into something else.

2. Describe a house that actively mourns its previous occupants. What sounds does it make? What does it do with their abandoned belongings?

3. Explore the moment when grief becomes a physical presence in your body—something with weight, texture, and movement that you can feel crawling beneath your skin.

4. Write about a funeral where the mourners slowly realize the person in the casket is the wrong body, but no one acknowledges it out loud.

5. Create a poem where someone tries to preserve their grief like a specimen in a jar, afraid that letting it go means forgetting the person entirely.

6. Imagine grief as a haunted house you must walk through room by room. What horror waits in each chamber? Which room can you not bring yourself to enter?

7. Write about the last conversation with someone before they died, but each time you remember it, the words change into something increasingly unsettling.

8. Describe the belongings of someone who’s gone—their clothes, their phone, their half-finished projects—as if these objects are slowly forgetting their owner and becoming sinister strangers.

9. Explore the experience of laughing for the first time after a devastating loss, and the guilt that follows like a shadow with teeth.

10. Write about inheriting a family member’s recurring nightmare after they die, experiencing their fears from the inside.

Now that we have officially rounded that corner into fall, there are many, many good things coming this season, both in work and play, despite the horrors that play out regularly in the news and look to continue without ceasing. Nevertheless, I am trying to keep both sprits and resolve up by focusing on one day at a time and the smallest pleasures, like coffee and writing and cats. Fall is happening when we are ready for the subsequent stretch of winter or not. I’ve already had the first apple cider donut and watched my yearly viewing of Practical Magic. I am ready.

Art and writing these days feels like a strange disassociation from the world of screens spewing horrors that grow more ridiculous every day. I am not sure how to reconcile what happens in my head with the world outside it. And there are many good things coming, from new dgp chaps and shop offerings to cool stuff I am cooking up for Patreon in the coming months (including things like Edgar Allen Poe tarot cards and a designing a daily planner that should be available by the time November rolls around if not sooner.) I am knee-deep in a promising new series of poems set in the mid-century, which borrows its tones and inspiration from things like The Twilight Zone and Welcome to Nightvale.

I am looking for the spaces inside these poems to work out my feelings, here in the 21st century, but its slow going. As someone who considers my overall genre to be horror, its a strange place to be making spooky things when the outside world is more disturbing than fiction.

Until October,

Kristy

BOOKISH THINGS

Keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks for a new free little e-zine that I will be making available called ALL ALONG THE BALLYHOO, which has some fun little sideshow themed poems and artwork. These, like EXOTICA, can be seen as sibling pieces to the poems that originally appeared in GIRL SHOW, my fourth book published back in 2014 (see below for some great news on that particular project. )

PATREON

You can still get in on the action for just a few bucks a month, which includes digital content you won’t see elsewhere as well as, for a little more, paper and book bundles mailed monthly. This month brings the Patreon-exclusive deluxe edition of EXOTICA and access to the e-book second edition of GIRL SHOW (which has been technically unavailable since it went out of print at Black Lawrence last year. It has a new cover and the bonus of some other pieces from the same series the original cover was plucked from. The mailed bundle will also include postcards, prints, and maybe even some fun little paper creations. You can also subscribe for free to get access to some newer work fragments I’ve been posting over there from a prose-ish project, THE MIDNIGHT GARDEN. And, of course, THE 10 MINUTE POET, with advice on things both craft and po-biz related. Learn more @ patreon.com/kristybowen

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

from AMERICAN CYCLORAMA

Every day at 3pm, the town stopped.

Abandoned crops and sales jobs

and the Lady’s League tea. Placed

their hands in their laps and turned eyes

to the sky. So much was held breath,

the tension in the wires that ran

the back alleys, rabid with raccoons

and busted recliners. The air heavy

with wisteria and twisted with vines.

We were so still, they’d grow

out of our lips and eyes. Unfurl tendrils

in the heart. The sun raising a frequency

in our blood. A hum in the molars

that signaled doom, weighty as a rock

through the window. Glass fragments

in our hair and in our tea. We’d smile

while our gums bled. While our tongues

probed the holes we didn’t quite believe were real.

Ever since I moved away from academia where I had spent my entire life in some way (first my own schooling, college, grad school, then jobs in school and college libraries for over two decades) I always have a certain aimlessness in August, when normally I would be preparing for the onslaught of the semester. It is both strange and freeing these past three years when I have been left more to my own yearly rhythms, which still feel tied to that school calendar pattern. That approach of fall still feels like the cusp of something new, and with it new projects, new endeavors, and maybe some new habits. But now, the days are still a little long and winding and perfect for summery daytime dreaming and slowness. Fall has many things afoot, or potentially afoot. I’ve recently finished a big book project, the Iphigenia poems, and will be turning an eye toward making it into a book. I also have assorted treats and tricks planned for spooky season and #30DAYSOFHALLOWEEN , some luxuriously creepy Patreon offerings, and some other bits of fun I am trying to make happen.

So until September…

BOOKISH THINGS

You can still pick up a signed copy of my latest collection WILD(ISH) released in the spring and get some bonus postcards featuring the cover art and related images. Or, subscribe to PATREON to get all that and more in the form of monthly bundles mailed your way containing special editions, zines, copies of all full-length books, paper goods, mini prints, stickers, and more. September’s mailing will contain my Patreon exclusive hardcover edition of EXOTICA, which is a very limited edition only available to subscribers at the moment. You also get all the bonus digital content like new poems, peeks of things in progress, the 10 Minute Poet blogs, and video/audio exclusives.

NEWS & BITS

~Several new poems have been cropping up in journals of late including work from my prose project THE MIDNIGHT GARDEN in Burning House’s Art & Annihilation Issue. You can also find some bits from WINGED in the recent issues of The Fantastic Other and Collidescope, as well poems from a new sea-washed series in The Solitude Diaries’ Tide-Driven Issue.

~A new video poem just dropped on YouTube from the WINGED series.

~I recently put the finishing touches on CLOVEN, my next longer book that will be coming around the new year based on the Greek myth of Iphigenia, killed by her father in exchange for fair winds for battle. during the Trojan War. I’ve been offering peeks on socials and will be charting the road to publication on the blog from manuscript to finished book for those who might be interested in self-publishing their work (it may be esp. useful if you use images in your design as I am doing.)

ON THE BLOG

This past month has brought the new self-publishing series, a love letter to research and process when writing, as well as a revisit of some older zines like THE SCIENCE OF IMPOSSIBLE OBJECTS. If you subscribe to Patreon, you can also find some blogs there more geared toward poetry advice in the 10 Minute Poets series I am writing weekly.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

from ALL ALONG THE BALLYHOO

The lions, after all, were harmless,

their bodies made of clay.

Their manes, shredded tissue paper.

They would no sooner bite you

than nuzzle your fingers.

Creep their way into your bed and sleep,

poster paint shedding from their fur.

What the audience thought was spectacle,

was, instead, the best we could do

with illusion. The bears we made

from newsprint and old fur coats.

The small mechanical dogs we kept in cages.

Get them wet and they’d just fall over.

If the crowds begged for more,

bring out the snake swallower.

The eel boy. The bearded bride.

Five pennies for a peek,

but for ten she’ll let you touch her.

Let you stroke the fur that lines her belly.

Let you bury your face between her breasts.

Three Things

(a miscellany of heres and theres that are influencing my work and thoughts this month…)

1. Weapons, an eerie and strangely funny film about missing children in a small town complete with lots of slow building dread, fractured p-o-v’s. and an undercurrent of humor from the same folks who brought you the brilliant Barbarian from a couple years back. We loved it so much we saw it twice in theaters.

2. Florence & The Machines new single “Everybody Scream” that feels like the kind of song you dance to in a spooky firelit clearing on a full-moon night.

3. This great article on the fashion and style of the classic Picnic at Hanging Rock in Vogue Australia.

We’ve reached that strange mid-point of summer when I start to long for fall. It’s usually around the time the heat and the humidity gets untenable and inhospitable to being outside much at all. I start to long for rainy afternoons, chilly air, and hot beverages all day long (not just coffee in the AM.) Start to long for pastries and dishes involving apples and pumpkins and cranberries. Fall makes me long for various serious projects and very serious poeting after dallying much of the summer, even if this summer has been productive for getting poems on the page. I am rounding a corner on the CLOVEN series of Iphigenia/myth inspired poems and nearing the end, I can feel it. Possibly before September if I keep at it. There is still traces of summer left to grasp, however, so I intend to enjoy the cool of the A/C at my back in front of the window while I write, icy afternoon cocktails courtesy of the wedding gift blender, and occasional outings into the heat.

Until August….

Kristy

BOOKISH THINGS

You can still pick up a signed copy of WILD(ISH) in the shop, which ship with some fun postcards featuring the Moss Dolly fauxtograph series from which the cover was designed.

PATREON

The Patreon relaunch has been a success so far, with so many goodies set to come the way of subscribers over the next few months, including prints, postcards, exclusive artist books, print zines, and more. That’s in addition to digital content like bonus poems, sneak peeks, exclusive videos, and more available in the lower-priced tier. I will also be blogging weekly with the 10-Minute Poet series of writerly advice. You can still get in on the action at patreon.com/kristybowen…

ON THE BLOG

This past month has brought blogs on beauty and the macabre, poetry and past selves, the eco-gothic, poetry and science, and a throwback to the process of compiling and editing my first book two decades ago.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

from CLOVEN

For years, you harbored letters beneath your bed,

death in your rafters. When called, you came,

drunk on wine and covered in flowers.

It was a wedding or a massacre.

You could never be sure which.

Stumbling up the beach, stupid with desire.

The bodies were always bloody,

from birthing or murder, who could tell?

The wells filled with red either way.

Either way, the skein of time slack and tangled

in itself. Either way, the hourglass filled and emptied.

It had nothing to do with you, little deer.

Little olive, little love.

Years before, your father would lift you

facing the sea and you’d spread your arms out

so wide. You couldn’t see the other side.

The ships filled with corpses, how they rotted on the rock.

Spread open their chests and bared their hearts

to seabirds and sirens.

And since it’s summer officially now, that only means that spooky season, the high holy months of September-November, are right around the corner. which I have many delights planned in the form of New Orleans vampire brides and dystopian robot women. But there is still some spooky left for summer in the form of cursed coastal towns and sideshow horrors in some upcoming e-zine action, so watch for those…

until July….

Kristy

WILDISH

I still have signed available copes of the latest full-length book in the shop HERE. Thanks to all who have picked up a copy and indulged me in my strange little collection that covers a lot of ground between witchy cottages, feral girls wandering the forest, and Alice down under. If you order in the next month, I will also include some bonus postcards from a new set I am working on for the shop.

NEWS & BITS

POEMS ONLINE

I have recently been very good about actually submitting all these brand new poems to journals, which have led to some acceptances for work coming out over the next couple months, the first of which dropped this morning in COLLIDESCOPE. It’s a couple fragments from a brand spanking new series of about swamp bird women. You can read the first couple here, with more to come later this summer over at FANTASTIC OTHER and hopefully some other places.

PATREON

After a couple years languishing, I am relaunching the Patreon, which I’ve simplified considerably from its original version into two tiers…one lower priced option for purely online and digital content and another to get bookish and paper things mailed out on the regular, including some really cool artist book projects. They include a hardcover edition of EXOTICA, which I initially published as an e-zine over the winter, but which was so pretty it needed to be in print (you can get a peek over at IG). I got the proof/prototype last week and will be getting it ready for August for subscribers to that higher-priced tier, which is available for only $11/month. They are a limited, numbered edition, so whether or not some end up in the shop eventually is TBD, so you might want to subscribe to secure one for sure. There are many other things down the pipeline, including some tarot cards and some stereograph prints I’m plotting, plus little papery baubles like prints, postcards, and mini-zines…Also, both tiers come with discounts on shop goods like journals, paper goods, and dgp chapbook series offerings. The lower-priced tier for digital content also has a 7-Day Free Trial opportunity. In addition to sharing work and projects, I am also planning on doing weekly blogs about creating amid chaos called THE TEN-MINUTE POET, with planned articles for July on creative spaces, submitting your work, and advise for young poets.

ON THE BLOG

This past month has bought posts about the in-progress swamp bird women poems , my first experiences reading my work in public, about Greek mythology and horror, and about the 5th anniversary of SEX & VIOLENCE’s release. There will be more coming this month from the memoir project, other kinds of haunting, so keep an eye out for another segment from that.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

from ALL ALONG THE BALLYHOO*

Picture a diorama in a snow globe,

but instead of snow, a million bits

of glitter. The flutter of moths

above our heads, greasepaint sticky

on our faces and hands. The way

the stage lights caught the shadows

at the corners of the tent. The things

which moved there, frightful.

The things which bred there,

unruly and many-limbed.

The thing with two heads mewled

for days before we bashed in its skulls.

The disembodied hand.

The woman with a shovel for an arm.

The way the dark would call out

and harbor us in hay that smelled

like horse dung and soaked with blood.

(*these are some odds and ends of some more sideshow-themed poems that have been rattling around and are part of the above mentioned stereograph project that is coming towards the end of the year. )

DESIGN, DECOR, & DIY WRITING

The Unique Home Accent Everyone's Overlooking On Broken Furniture

Give Your Broken Mirror New Life With A Forest-Inspired Upcycle Project

How To Maintain Patina Without Damaging Your Antiques

Corduroy May Be The Trending Fabric That Gives '70s Aesthetic In A Modern And Cozy Way

The Best Way To Display Vintage Lace Scarves As Home Decor

Why You Should Be Thrifting Art Deco Gems This Year

Transform A Vintage Sheet Into The Perfect 'Wallpaper' For Your Accent Wall

The Most Coveted Spice Jar Sets Collectors Are Always Searching For

The Genius Thrifted Lamp DIY That Only Requires Paper & Glue

DIY Your Own Faux Hydrangea Bouquets For Year Round Blooms

How To Upcycle A Thrifted VHS Storage Cabinet Into A Unique Storage Piece

Sometime in the last month, spring has crept steadily in, opening windows and doors and the boughs of flowering trees. While the news is persistently horrible with the evil-doings of rich men, I am trying to live softly amid the jaggedness. To savor this season and my favorite month of the year despite the dread that hangs the rafters. Many writers I talk to feel like being a poet during these times is like trying to dig yourself out of a hole with a tiny spoon, with tiny bits of words and connective tissue that have no impact on the greater suffering. But I also think that, like birds, we sing in the morning to announce we have survived the night. That all creative output is a testament to existence. Despite this. That we sing in spite of the terrible things. We may sing specifically of them or because of them. We may not sing of them at all. But still, we show up.

Until June…….

WILD(ISH)

The latest full-length book has landed in the world with a bounce. You can get your own copy in the shop of this strange little jaunt into where the natural and supernatural worlds meet. It’s a book I’ve been writing for the past three years and revels in its own feral energy. In it, you will find poems about villainy, about Alice in Wonderland, about witchy cottages and wayward girls.

WHAT I AM WORKING ON

CLOVEN

I recently finished up a series of poems meant to go with some collages about the Greek myth of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. It’s always fun to be able to revisit and work with these stories again, which I do quite often., the last and best example being a whole book of Persephone poems with GRANATA. These stories feel like stones you can return to again and again and notice new crags in the surface, new veins of story. I’ve been sharing a few on IG, so keep an eye out there for more and a possible zine later this summer.

OTHER KINDS OF HAUNTING

A couple years back, I decided to write a book that combined my love of thrift stores with writing and how those two things connect through languages of objects and artifact. It’s slower going since I am only working on it intermittently and not regularly like the poems, but it’s shaping up nevertheless. You can read a segment over on the blog today with more to come.

SNEAK PEAK

from CLOVEN

DECOR & DESIGN WRITING

This past month’s pieces on vintage and thrifting:

Upcycle A Vintage Teapot Into A Vase & Flower Frog

Thrift Unique Plant Pots To Make Eye Catching Lamps For Your Home

What Number To Look For On Mason Jars For A More Valuable Thrift Haul

The Sought-After Antique Home Items People Are Snatching Up Fast When Thrifting

The Retro Hat-Inspired Floor Lamp That Deserves A Comeback

Reuse A Thrifted Teacup To Create Stunning Decor To Instantly Elevate Your Home

Get Luxe Frames For Cheaper With This Crafty Thrift Store Strategy

How A Thrifted Corner Hutch Cabinet Can Add Rustic Charm To Your Kitchen

This month feels like a rebirth of so many things held both tenuous and tight the past couple months. The news is still terrible and contains new horrors every moment, but at the very least springtime is creeping in with slightly milder and longer days signaling up an upturn in mental health. Progress on a new series of poems that are still kind of all over the place, but glorious fun. Upcoming wedding plans as we crest the 100 day mark countdown and preparations for a new book due out in summer (see the cover reveal below.) The days lately feel like minefields, in which general work productivity is torpedoed every time I check social media. One vague idea for a future book project, non-fiction, is a guidebook on how to be creative, how to live a creative life amidst, well, regular life things like jobs and bills and family obligations. I now have to add the downfall of democracy and descent into fascism and I’m not sure I know how to write about that just yet and still be encouraging (or if I even can be.)

MONTHLY ZINE

February’s zine projects, coming in just under the wire, was EXOTICA, which feels like a sister or companion book to GIRL SHOW. As if you picked up the women in parts of that book and set them down elsewhere. There are a good two decades between those two manuscripts and yet there are definitely ways they speak through and to each other. You can read the whole zine, with its attendant fauxtograph series that shaped it, HERE.

DECOR & DESIGN WRITING

This past month’s pieces on vintage and thrifting:

Breathe New Life Into A Worn Out Office Chair With A Simple & Stylish DIY Upcycle

How Erin Napier Turns A Common Thrift Store Find Into A Unique Statement Decor Piece

Swap Out Standard Kitchen Drawers For Vintage Crates To Hold Produce

DIY A Gorgeous Kitchen Decor Piece Out Of A Repurposed Thrifted Cookie Tin

The Vintage Ceiling Decor Trend That's Made A Serious Comeback

The One Piece Of Decor You Should Never Overlook In A Thrift Store (And How To Style It)

DIY A Beautiful Decorative Gallery Wall Using Old Clipboards And Jewelry

Don't Toss Broken Coffee Mugs - Use Them To Create A Unique Statement Decor Piece

ON THE BLOG

While the blog has been quieter this past month due to other kinds of writing taking precedence, there are still a couple posts of note, including a discussion on imposter syndrome and rock and roll legends and one on the glories of self-publishing…

SNEAK PEEK

As I begin to compile the poems formally into the next full-length book, I am (as I often am) already putting thoughts toward the cover. This one won’t likely drop to July or August since the early part of my summer will be kind of crazy with wedding and life stuff, but it’s coming nevertheless…while the last book felt so serious and grief swollen, this one is a little more mischievous with witches, changelings, and wraiths, villainous origin stories, and adventures underground.

HOW TO CONNECT

The best way to follow my obsessions and work is to join me on BLUESKY, where I post regular updates on what I’m working on, what I’m reading and listening to, and what inspires me. I am also still posting daily visual posts on INSTAGRAM.

NEWS & NOTES

NEW PLACES

Since I am scaling back time and attention in Meta spaces, I’ve set up a new campsite over on Bluesky I am hoping can kind of blend the sorts of posts and content that I’ve been sharing on both FB and IG over the years in one place. Since I never quite warmed to Twitter, this may be a spectacular failure, but I’m willing to give it a try.

NEW LOOK

I’ve spent the last month or so giving ye old blog a brand new look and combining the original blog with my personal website, which used to be separate. This is where you can access longer content, new art, writing and art related discussions, and more diary-like entries. I keep remembering that the blog also turns 20 years old in the next month or so look for a fun giveaway to celebrate.

NEW ZINE

I am back on the business of releasing monthly free e-zines of new work in both text and image. This month’s offering is a zine created from December’s advent project, that just seemed to need some poems to go with the original collages. The result was a spooky romp through the deep woods and ghost towns.

You can read it here: tinyurl.com/thewoodszine .

DESIGN & DIY WRITING

Since its the start to a new year, what better way to begin it is with a super organized and productive workspace. Here’s some great trips for studios and craft rooms I’ve written that may be helpful.

Organize Craft Room Strings And Ribbons With A Nifty Mason Jar Hack

12 Unique Ways To Repurpose Tiered Trays For Extra Storage And Organization

DIY A Charming Note And Photo Board With A Dollar Tree Frame

Breathe New Life Into An Old Door With A Creative DIY Storage Idea

The Easy DIY That Turns Mason Jars Into The Cutest Craft Room Storage Solution

That DIY Ribbon Roll Organizer That's Perfect For Craft Rooms & Enthusiasts

Keep Your Craft Room Spick And Span With These Decluttering Tips

Make A Cute Custom DIY Paper Organizer From A Wooden Shutter

How A Used Egg Carton Can Bring Extreme Organization To Craft & Sewing Supplies

21 Must-Haves To Update Your Home Arts And Crafts Studio

ON THE BLOG

-musings on early poeting adventures

-Some discussion of Louisa Mae Alcott, Little Women, and writerly finances.

-Finding your way back to the selves you have shed.

-meditations on fragmentation and memoir writing

And a big THANK YOU!

Much appreciation to anyone who picked up a copy of RUINPORN, which is one of the best ways to support my work in a tangible way. If you haven’t ordered yet, you can get a 30% discount just by using “PAPERBOAT” as a discount code through the end of February.

I mostly put up a lot of free poems, zines, and art online, but it’s always nice to make some funds from creative things. There are also paper goods, postcards, and journals available in THE SHOP, as well as various baubles, bits, and chaps from dancing girl press authors.

December and the darkest days (both dreadful and delightful) of the year are underway. I find myself switching on lamps and lighting candles earlier and earlier as the solstice approaches. While most of us are feeling anything other than festive this time of year, due to the business of the world in general, I am nevertheless making do with cups of mint hot cocoa and my fun little advent project of collages (some animated, some not.) You can find them over on Instagram all this month through the holidays in their weird and creepy tradition of spooky Victorian ghost stories I enjoy every year.

NEWS & NOTES

New Work

This month finds some pieces from my PRETTY DEAD THINGS project (aka the casket girls series) in a fun new zine I stumbled across, THE MORGUE MAG, which has some of the coolest design happening among its print and electronic pages. Read them here or pick up a copy of the print edition on Amazon.

Latest Book

RUINPORN has made its way finally into the world and can be found in the dgp shop. Use the code “DECEMBER2024” to get a discount on a signed copy, as well as anything else in the shop through the end of December. This book is about post-pandemic society, grief, loss, hauntings, and the perils of technology and is quite chonky at around 150 pages, longer than any of my previous collections.

Patreon Relaunch

In January, I will be relaunching my Patreon with a new look, new membership perks, a more streamlined subscription structure, and all sorts of Patreon bonus content, both electronic and physical, including monthly paper bundles that feature postcards, mini prints, zines, any full-length projects, and more. After the beginning of the year, I will be sending details on how to join and what it entails. While I love making most of my creative output and experiments available for free, I realize there are some things I would love to do if I had a little more financial activity coming in from creative things than most months, so the subscription prices will help me with supplies and materials to make those things happen. You will also get lots of Patreon-exclusive electronic content like bonus video poems, self-guided workshops on various poetry and art things, and more…

DESIGN & DIY WRITING

This month has been particularly heavy with holiday assignments for fun upcycling and projects, as well as holiday entertaining:

Reuse Dead Mums To Create Cheery Outdoor Christmas Decor

The Glamorous Christmas Candlestick Holders You Can DIY With Dollar Tree Items

Save Your Old Tea Cups And Saucers To DIY The Most Unique Christmas Tree Decor

Turn A Dollar Tree Hula Hoop Into Twinkling Holiday Decor With A Stunning DIY

Create The Cutest Decorative Jar Covers To Spruce Up Your Home For The Holidays

The DIY That Turns A Dollar Tree Find Into Sparkling Table Decor With String Lights

These DIY Rosemary Wreaths Smell Amazing And Look Stunning In Any Home

Quick Guide on How to Host the Best Cookie Exchange Party in 2024

23 Beautiful Christmas Day Table Setting Ideas for 2024

A Complete Party Checklist For Throwing The Best Event of The Season!

53 Fun Christmas Drawing Ideas for the Festive Season in 2024

27 Ugly Christmas Sweater Ideas For a Festive 2024 Party

57 Fun & Festive Christmas Door Decorating Ideas in 2024

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

from THE MIDNIGHT GARDEN

In the graveyard, all the ladies line up tidy in rows. Babies and boat accidents and bad

husbands. Braid each others hair in the grave, where their fingers turn black with mold and the mice play in the space between their ribs. Root through the skull looking for memories or dreams or stormy portents. She was too pretty to be dead, but too dead to be pretty. Hands folded over the lace they wrapped her soundly in and sent her to bed. Wed her to monsters and moldering flesh. Tethered her limbs to the coffin like they were wrapping a Christmas goose. All her teeth loosening in her jaw, mouth sewn up, and blood in her eye. Hyacinths in her hair, in her hands, pinned to her lapel.

The banker burrowed his face against her throat. Opened her body like a trinket box and jangled. Wrangled and robbed with the best of them, a pistol in his pant leg. A fistful of cash. The gash he left on her forehead an omen. The broken arm, the bruised thigh. All an opening into dark that she followed like a rope, the terrible singing of dish rims and boiling water she’d plunge her hands into each night and watch her skin turn pink.

When they buried her, the banker cried and thrashed against the bed. Crawled beneath it feeling out the dark with his fingers. The monsters there ravenous with wind and cloven hooves. Their fur matted and woven with blossoms and blood.

THE BLOG

This month has featured some comments on poetry and AI fears, writing as time capsule, writing in a hostile world, and some introductory notes on RUINPORN.

IN THE SHOP

New chapbooks in the dgp series from Renee Ehle, Mary Gilliland, and Maria Terrone…

The new month has rolled in a windy day that has shook all the trees of their leaves and delivered GHOST BOX, a very fun book art project that includes poems, fauxtographs, illustrations and more in its strange little box. You can find it in the shop as one of only 25 in the limited edition while they last, or take advantage of the free e-zine version available HERE.

COMING NOVEMBER 30th

The proofing process is underway for this little missive to be delivered into the world by the end of the month with all of its shattered decrepitude. Post-pandemic society, grief, loss, and the perils of technology all play a role in this collection set amid the wreckage of the world we once believed we lived in. Keep an eye on social media and next month’s Paper Boat for more details and sneak peeks.

DESIGN & DIY WRITING

Lots of fun with vintage and thrifted items this past month:

How to Know if Your Ginger Jar is Valuable (And if it’s Truly Authentic)

The Eclectic Curtain Look That Gives Your Home An Instant Boho Feel

Breathe New Life Into An Old Door With A Creative DIY Storage Idea

The Best Place To Use A Curio Cabinet In Your Home (& How To Style It Like A Designer)

Upcycle Old Glass Bottles Into A Unique And Charming Garden Fence

Upcycle An Old License Plate Into A Unique Storage Shelf That Makes A Statement

Repurpose A Thrift Store Blanket Into A Stunning Piece Of Wall Art

NEW WORK

from THE MIDNIGHT GARDEN:

fair evangeline

Every night, she buried him. Dug through roots and rotted leaves, fingers seeking out each tiny node and pebble. Trouble in her veins, the low treble of his wheeze. She’d dig him up,  then roll him up and down the stairs. He was lighter in the summer, less prone to raging. His pockets stuffed full of photographs and aging starlets, but he’d swallow enough gin to drown himself. Down the hatch and up to bed, where he’d bruise her thighs with dirty fingers. First, she took his bones, one by one, then his heart. Replaced it with a bloody dove. A glove filled with sand. By fall,  his eyes sprouted belladonna and bloomed mad like irises. His lips producing exquisitely crooked pearls.

Her mother was the first to see the fingers. Wriggling up from the ground. The midnight garden wild with night blooms and the scent thick as molasses. Grass and mud on her heels each night as she donned the shovel and took to digging. The rigging of the body growing used to movement, to the labor she’d finish by dawn. In town, she bought sweets she’d pop into her mouth, dirty and exhausted and sleeping past afternoon. Flirted with men in the apothecary who climbed the magnolia tree and peered over the gate.

The children collected dead things, the skulls of sparrows, the hide of a rabbit tanned in the sun. What fun they had with a set of antlers caught in a storm drain.  Would place them atop their heads and race up the stairs. Would drape themselves in rotting leaves and nightshade, breath held tight in their beds.

@ THE BLOG

I give a rundown on my favorites this year on the big screen in a 2024 horror film roundup and talk a bit about the impetus behind the title and ideas that form the structure of my upcoming full-length book, RUINPORN, with the houses we haunt.

IN THE SHOP

Look for a host of new installments in the dgp chapbook series, including books from Lindsay Schaffer, Susen James, Elizabeth Devlin, Angela Acosta, and more…visit www.dancinggirlpress.com

MONTHLY ZINE

I am kicking off the month with the first zine of the month, MORNING IN THE WITCH HOUSE, a collection of prose poems and collages written in the darkening days of last October. You can read the e-version here. Since its high unholy month, I will also be dropping a couple projects just for October’s shenanigans do keep an eye on IG for those.

MY UPCOMING BOOK

My latest full-length project RUINPORN’s release is nigh come late November. It’s a book about destruction and rebuilding in so many ways, including grief, desire, writing life. There are plenty of hauntings, both people and places. Watch for more details in the next PAPER BOAT on when you can expect it to slide into the world, including a sale code for subscribers. Meanwhile a peek at the cover design…

DESIGN & DIY BITS

I have been writing a slew of content this fall for spooky season. Here are a few of my recent favorites:

Turn Laundry Pod Containers Into Spooky DIY Jack-O'-Lanterns For Halloween Fun

Create The Cutest Ghost Pillow On A Budget With TikTok's Creative DIY

37 Best Halloween Decoration Ideas for a Spooky 2024

53 Epic Halloween Makeup Ideas for 2024

NEW WORK

(I have been obsessed of late with New Orleans “casket girls,” young women and girls who were brought over on ships in the early days of the city and may or may not have been vampires. I ‘ve mostly been doing research, but the first piece came this week, with many more following. Here is an early glance at the project:

from PRETTY DEAD THINGS

The stairs climb and climb., the servants

moving like mice in the walls.

Petticoats and niceties stuffed in their mouths.

Here, clever girls learn to keep quiet. Learn to produce

a length of rope to hang themselves when needed.

Bang into breakfronts and ottomans in the middle of the day,

so thirsty and fevered you couldn’t see in the light anymore,

only in the dark. Would swelter under parasols in the garden

while the flies festered out your middle. The riddle

in the way the sun was so bright, you could see god,

red and wavery at the edges. Could see the magnolias

dropping, one by one, into a river filled with blood.

AT THE BLOG

This past month, I’ve given a run down on some amazing horror movies, new projects, and how books evoke different seasons of the year (and of our lives.)

IN THE SHOP

This is the very best month to stop into the shop, where you will find lots of new titles dropping from dancing girl press series poets, zines and books, journals, and various paper goodness… visit www.dancinggirlpress.com

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