Fifteen years ago today I wrote a blog post title “We’re Living in a Cyberpunk Novel,” and it was when I had the dawning realization that so much of our world felt like it was ripped straight out of a William Gibson novel. At the time I was looking at the current headlines and the state of technology, and it was really clear the way the world was going.

Well, uh, it got worse?

Like as we bring 2025 to a close, we see less corporate regulation, the attempted dismantlement of our democracy in favor of oligarchy, the weird, broken state of social networking, and the complete digital chaos of the future of the free and open web. Like elections are affected by social manipulation through digital platforms, and billionaires harvest our data through the control of online spaces. Massive amounts of money are being spent on data centers that poison the environment so you can do “research” (and sext) with a supposed “AI” that makes shit up constantly.

And we all use Amazon Prime.

It’s not great. And while when I wrote that original post fifteen years ago these observations felt novel, today they seem obvious and mundane. Like as we are fully immersed in late stage capitalism, it’s hard not to notice how bad things have gotten. And to be fair, since speculative fiction is far more often an observation of the present than a prediction of the future, it’s pretty obvious we didn’t have to go that far to get here. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Now obviously we need to fix the structural issues in our society and fight back against the pending environmental apocalypse, but, like, you probably already knew that if you’re reading this. The problem I’m having right now is that we’re stuck in a cyberpunk dystopia and some of y’all are still wearing khakis.

Like if I’m going to be stuck living in a pulp story, we should at least get the cool ass aesthetics to go with it. Like I know I’ve clearly embraced this world in my workspace, but we should be going for it in our homes, our fashion, just everything. Like everyone should be going full weirdo, regardless of what age you are. If we’re all carrying devices that let corporations track our location and listen in on our conversations everywhere, we should at the very least be dressing like it.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I wanted a space opera future, not a cyberpunk one, but this is the one we’re living in.

Now where’s my god damn flying car.

Also maybe buy my new book Buried Memories, book four in the Mia Graves Saga. It’s queer urban fantasy and not cyberpunk, but you’ll probably still like it.

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So the day is finally here — Buried Memories, the fourth book in the Mia Graves Saga, is now officially out!

I posted the official blurb on pre-order announcement a few months ago, but the book’s premise is basically “what if you were in a small town where people kept disappearing, but you were the only one who noticed.” This time around, we’re following Sarah instead of Mia, and she is not having a good time.

It’s a fun book, trust me.

Anyways, you can pick the book up a few different ways. It’s available as an eBook via Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and DRM free in my Patreon Shop. If you want it in paperback, you can get it through Amazon, Bookshop.org, Direct Orders, or whatever bookstore you want with the ISBN 9798349560958. I’m really excited for you guys to get your hands on this one, and if you read it and like it please consider rating it and writing a review on Amazon, GoodReads, or Storygraph. It really helps me out if you do.

And, of course, if you haven’t read any of the earlier books, you can still pick them up. I have purchase links to all of them on the official Mia Graves Saga page on my site.

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So I already made a post about this on TikTok/Bluesky/Tumblr/YouTube (because I am, if anything, distributed these days), but I wanted to talk about it here — as it feels more permanent. This last weekend I was at a convention, and like most cons where I table a few people came by to pitch me their own creative projects. Now let me be clear: I genuinely like that people do this. It’s fun to hear people tell me about their passion project. I just really only have one ask if you’re going to do this though.

Talk to me first.

Now, that may seem obvious to most of you, but it apparently isn’t for everyone. And most people, in fact, do this. Like at said con, a guy came up to my table, saw that my banner said I was a podcaster, and talked to me about the fiction podcast he was working on. It was a great conversation, and while I haven’t checked out his show yet, I fully intend to give it a listen some time this week. He started out that interaction gauging my interest though, and letting me know who he was as a person. It was fun, it was nice, and he left me his card. All in all, a positive interaction.

But that’s not what all of these instances are like.

A while later, a different guy comes up to my table. I greet him, but am effectively ignored. Now, that happens, and while it’s a bit rude not to respond at all, nerds can be awkward so I’m used to it. After a few moments of looking at my stuff, he starts picking up my cards and putting them back down one by one. I have several different business cards (one for each comic, one for Nerd & Tie, and one that’s a general “me” card), so I’m not sure why he’s doing this. When he gets to a Peregrine Lake card though, he turns it over and says his first words to me in the two minutes or so he’s been at my table: he asks for a pen.

I hand it over, assuming he wants to note something about my stuff on a card, which has happened before. I mean, the card he’s picked is one for a website where there isn’t anything for sale on the table right now, so I just assumed it was the one thing up his alley. I’m under the impression that he’s going to jot something down and walk away with the card.

That is, in fact, not what happened.

Instead he writes out quite a bit more than I’m expecting him to, and Crysta and I are just sitting there in silence. Then, when he’s done, he hands me my own card. What he’s written down is a URL and some social media accounts, and he tells me he’s starting a creator collective of independent writers. He mentions having talked to some of the other authors at the con (there were a couple). I politely took the information, and told him I would check it out, and he walked away.

But here’s the thing, if he’d bothered to speak a word to me when he arrived, he might have asked me what my thoughts on a creator collective are. That’s when he’d learn I’m already a part of one. Like one of the cards he picked up and ignored was literally for it.

And we could talk about how he should probably have brought some sort of card or flier if his goal was to network, or how it’s difficult to convince me that you’d be a good advocate for my work when our interaction is this awkward, but that’s not the point. If he had started with a conversation, he would have learned my background in that space. And while I have no interest in changing affiliations, we could have talked about working together or I could have given advice on how to grow and promote.

It just would have required a god damn conversation.

I just want to feel like you see me as a human being, really. Take some time to find out my interest, figure out my vibe, and importantly let me figure out yours. It will be a better experience for both of us, trust me.

Also, remember, you can pre-order Buried Memories, the fourth book in my contemporary fantasy series the Mia Graves Saga, out December 15th 2025.

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On December 8th 2009 the first strip of UnCONventional went online. UnCONventional wasn’t the first webcomic I ever attempted (the first was “Room 825” which ran for a few months back in the year 2000), but it’s the first one that stuck round. The comic ran for almost exactly ten years, with the final strip going up December 5th 2019.

I’ve included the first and last comics here for comparison.

UnCONventional is the first time I really focused down on what I needed to write and finish a story. Updating that every week helped me find the discipline to really chart out arcs, understand my limitations, and how to use those limitations to my advantage. It’s such an inside-baseball comic, where I know it’s not really accessible to folks who are outside of the convention scene, but it’s the reason why the more broadly appealing stuff I do works at all.

I learned all of those lessons while writing that weird, incredibly niche comic.

These days I’m writing novels, a new comic, and GMing actual play shows — but my ability to tell a story over a long term arc was honed and perfected in that silly little semi-autobiographical comic about nerds running a convention in a college town. It’s nice to remember what it was. Even when it was bad, it made me better at what I’m doing now.

And I think that’s neat.

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Well the world is dark and cold, which means it’s time to do something fun — and in this case that something fun is go do a convention.

This Saturday, December 6th, I’m going to be at UWEC GEEKcon at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Davies center. I’ll have print copies of UnCONventional and the Mia Graves books (including book four, Buried Memories, which doesn’t officially come out until the 15th). It’s a fun con, and If you’re a student, entry is free with showing your ID. If you’re not there’s a suggested donation of either $3 or 2 non-perishable food items.

Also this time around there will be some familiar faces also vending there. My Peregrine Lake collaborator Ethan Flanagan is also tabling at the con, and Nerd & Tie‘s Gen Prock also will be there.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, little cons like this are some of my favorite shows. It’s just a fun vibe driven by something other than commercial interests. People come to these shows for the joy of it, and it’s just a good time.

Hopefully I’ll see some of you there.

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Right now I’m sitting in my favorite chair in my living room, safely home after having spent Thanksgiving with most of my family in Milwaukee. Normally I’d still be there, and wouldn’t have come home until tomorrow night — but the forecast has a massive winter storm coming through tonight through tomorrow afternoon.

So, being a rational human being who doesn’t want to drive through six to ten inches of snow, Crysta and I cut our visit short and drove home today.

It was still a good visit. Thanksgiving was at my parent’s house, and altogether there were thirteen of us for dinner. Then, earlier today I guess since it’s still before midnight, I helped my dad put up the outdoor Christmas lights (which I’ve been doing with him the day after Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember). I would have taken a photo, except as a rule I don’t take photographs of the exteriors of loved ones’ homes and post them online because I don’t want to accidentally dox them.

It’s far too easy to figure that stuff out if you know what you’re doing.

Afterwards my brother came over to watch the Bears game, and when it wrapped up? Crysta and I hit the road and drove home. It’s weird to be home this early on Thanksgiving weekend, but, again, the roads are going to be terrible tomorrow, while tonight they were clear and safe.

I don’t know if there was much of a point to this entry besides just updating y’all on my mundane life. But, like, it’s a good mundane life. I think that it’s important to remember the simple joys of spending time with the people you love, and it’s nice to have a highlight to pull me out of the darkness this time of year.

So that’s what happened.

Also, remember, you can pre-order Buried Memories, the fourth book in my contemporary fantasy series the Mia Graves Saga, out December 15th 2025.

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This has been a strange week for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is deeply ironic. If you recall I wrote a whole blog entry about how I don’t care about having a large audience — instead preferring a smaller, intentional one. In that post I mentioned how I had a decent TikTok following, and how it was probably the least fulfilling part of my online presence.

Don’t get me wrong, I like using TikTok and posting to that platform, and I wouldn’t use it at all if I didn’t. Like, there’s a reason my Instagram is an abandoned mess, and my Facebook pages are largely automated. I just choose not to prioritize the pursuit of an audience there, y’know?

Well, that audience just got me a movie screener.

Like, literally the same day I wrote that post I got an email from a PR company offering me an advanced screener for the upcoming Bryan Fuller directed Dust Bunny. Why did I get this offer? My modest TikTok following, that’s why.

Now, normally I would have ignored that. I’m used to getting review requests I ignore, it’s just usually from some publisher of esoteric books trying to get me to review their author’s work on BS-Free Witchcraft. But, y’see, Crysta apparently had been following the production of this movie for quite a while, and my saying yes let us watch it weeks before it would hit theaters.

So I said yes.

I mean, I was just agreeing to review the movie, so what did I have to lose? I was going to see this thing eventually anyway. So on Saturday we watched it, I recorded my review Sunday night, and on Monday I posted it to TikTok.

Now here’s the thing, I don’t think this video is going to do that well for me. TikTok tends to hate any video I make that isn’t Witchcraft related or related to very specific BookTok drama. The algorithm driven engine behind that site doesn’t show my videos to the audiences that might want to see this review. It’s the whole reason I pitch my Internet Cockroach Theory to begin with. There’s a real chance I never get sent another opportunity like this again because, honestly, I don’t know if anyone’s going to really see this thing.

So, uh, maybe go watch this and share it if you want me to have future chances to see free movies ahead of time. ?

It’s funny, offers like this never really came when I used to regularly review movies for Nerd & Tie. Now that I’ve seemingly stepped out of pop culture commentary though, stuff just seems to come in on its own. Life is weird, and who knows what’s going to happen next.

I certainly don’t.

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As a person who makes creative projects and publishes them on the internet, there’s a push to find the largest audience possible. Modern social media focuses on follower count and reaching as many folks as possible, but the more I think about it — the more I see this kind of pursuit as unfulfilling. This isn’t a criticism of people who want that audience, and I definitely wouldn’t say no to it if it showed up at my doorstep, but these days I find myself wanting to focus on something else: developing a smaller, more intimate community.

I’ve eluded to it in some of my TikTok posts, but I honestly think at this point in my existence of “person who makes shit and puts it online” I get much more satisfaction communicating with a handful of folks who really like what I’m doing. Like UnCONventional never had more than, like, four hundred regular readers, but that audience actively engaged with what I was making. They fought in the comments over character motivations, and genuinely cared about the outcome. BS-Free Witchcraft has a regular listenership of a few thousand, but I love the feedback I get from the small group that gathers on the Nerd & Tie Discord.

In theory, with almost twenty-three thousand followers on my TikTok, I have the potential to reach so many more people there than I do anywhere else, and it’s not that large a following in the grand scheme of the social web. But reaching that audience seems less fulfilling than the three digit numbers currently reading Peregrine Lake.

Intentional small audiences with a sense of community feel much more connected, and I think that’s probably the more emotionally healthy pursuit for me right now. It’s definitely a more sustainable one, and one hundred percent a more achievable one… because I have achieved it. But the thing is, these communities are two way streets. Like there are tons of people making stuff and putting it out to small communities like mine, and the only reason they’re sustainable is that the audience interacts back.

If you’re reading fics on AO3, leave a comment. If you like the YouTube video of a small creator, tell them how much you appreciated it. If you’re reading a comic, let the creator know how much you’re enjoying it. Every single person who makes stuff wants to know you’re out there, and that interaction is what makes making stuff feel worth it. Participate — because that’s how you build community.

I don’t know if there was really a point to this past my climbing up my own asshole about the nature of internet fame and audiences, but I kind of had the need to write it anyways. Who knows why the hell I do anything.

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November 17th 1984 is the canonical birthdate of Lynn Guadalupe Baxter, one of the main characters of Full Circle (2006), UnCONventional (2009-2019), and Peregrine Lake (2024-current). That makes today her official 41st birthday.

So, uh, happy birthday to a fake person who mostly just lives in my head I guess?

Out of all the characters I’ve ever written, Lynn is arguably one of the most important ones in my heart. I’ve definitely written more about her than any other character in my life, but that’s just largely due to how long UnCONventional ran. I first came up with her way back in 2003 for a project I never ended up doing called “Re-entry.” I’ve posted the original art I drew of her before when I was coming up with that, but I didn’t end up introducing her to the world until the (now offline) short lived Full Circle interactive fiction project I did with some friends in 2006. That didn’t last that long, but I dug her back up when I was launching UnCONventional in 2009… and she’s managed to stick around ever since.

One of the reasons Lynn is so important to me is that in her creation, I deliberately put into the character a lot of the things I don’t like about myself. I took a lot of my anger, sadness, and worst impulses and put them into her. I think I felt like that if I could make a character with those traits and love her, I could maybe learn to accept them as a part of myself.

What I never expected was for so many other people to love her too.

Now let’s be clear, Lynn is not an author avatar — she’s dealing with a lot of things I’ve never had to. I’ve had support she didn’t, and didn’t ever have to face some of the challenges she has. But in many ways she’s been a means to accept things about myself I sometimes have had a hard time doing so otherwise. She’s important to me in ways none of my other characters are, and it’s been a joy to write her for so long. Lynn Baxter is my favorite fake-person, and to her I guess I say happy fake-birthday.

I look forward to telling more of your story.

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You need to start writing a blog. Yes, you — the person who is reading this right now, either on my blog or a syndicated version on one of the websites I distribute this to. You need to go out, find some web space or a blog host, and start writing a blog.

And you need to do it now.

I talked about this back in March in my post about being an internet cockroach, but we’re siloing our internet into these social media black holes. Like I literally made a video about this today, and if you don’t follow me on the specific platforms here I post those, you’d have no idea that I said anything about this. We’re putting too much content into these black holes that cannot be archived, cannot be searched, and cannot be found years later. One of the reasons the web has, frankly, become worse is that we’re feeding everything into these centralized platforms that hide from the light of day.

One of the things that used to make the internet so useful was that people posted their random thoughts to blogs on the public web — be it on their own sites, LiveJournal, Blogger, etc. Your friends would either just visit your blog or subscribe to your site’s RSS feed (here’s mine!).

This made it easy to find information, let the sites get archived by services like Archive.org, and kept our platforms diversified — in case one site went down.

Blogging is the easiest thing to do out of any of these things too. You just post whatever you’re thinking the same way a lot of folks use platforms like BlueSky. Just… do that thing on a blog like this one.

You can self host like I do if you have the money, or use a dedicated blog platform. There are a bunch still out there. Heck, if you have an old TRHOnline account, you could even do it here (but maybe don’t, my software is terrible). Between services like Blogger, WordPress.com, Pillowfort.social, and a bunch more I’ve never heard of… there’s a place you can put it.

Importantly the first steps in building a better online experience for everyone has to come from us. We need to refracture into the smaller communities the internet used to be driven by instead of the outrage and algorithm driven centralized platforms we have today. And the easiest way to do that… is to start a blog.

And it can be about anything. Whatever you’re thinking. Just do it.

And tell me about it when you do.

Also, remember, you can pre-order Buried Memories, the fourth book in my contemporary fantasy series the Mia Graves Saga, out December 15th 2025.

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