Sharing my life on YouTube

I've tried a lot of different kinds of content on all the social media platforms, and I keep finding myself unsatisfied with the lightweight creations that their limitations require. I'd spend days making those video poems for Instagram—writing the verse, recording the music, editing the footage—and then watch it play back on a tiny vertical slot smothered by the interface, a short blip jammed between memes to be scrolled past with the sound off and forgotten—and I'd think...this isn't worth it.

These frantic mobile platforms aren't the place for anything substantial, and I'm tired of pouring all that energy into bite-size aesthetic fluff.

One thing I haven’t really explored yet is visual storytelling. For a few years now on Patreon, I’ve been warming up to talking on camera, sharing thoughts and tales about my strange new life in the wilderness, and that’s been gratifying. But Patreon is a walled garden with a very limited audience and almost no opportunity for growth. I love my tiny community, and I love sharing casual stories and private ponderings there, but it never really made sense to produce grand creations for that platform.

I decided I want to try something new: pouring serious effort into long form videos on the only platform that still encourages works of heft and substance. Yes, believe it or not, that’s YouTube.

YouTube is filled with trash like everywhere else, but it has a serious side too. It allows and even encourages long and thoughtful videos, the kind you can put on in the background while you fold your laundry. It’s the ONLY major platform that doesn’t radically alter your content with random cropping and intrusive overlays, the only platform built around horizontal video—the natural orientation of the actual world we live in—and it even plays in full screen, almost as if it wants you to sit down and focus on one video instead of constantly nudging you to keep scrolling.

This fits the vibe I’m pursuing these days. I want to make substantial things, because when you make a substantial thing, it’s satisfying just to complete it and release it, to know it’s in the world even if it doesn’t “succeed.” When I write a short story that gets buried in an anthology and never mentioned again, I feel a little bleak and sad, like it never really happened. When I write a novel that hardly anyone reads, there’s still the satisfaction of knowing I created something that stands on its own, resting patiently on a shelf, proclaiming its existence to whoever might discover it in the future.

So I’ve started making YouTube videos about my experiences out here in the wilderness, living alone in a shed and slowly losing touch with society while I build a home and talk to deer and look at weird bugs. I’m putting real effort into these videos, with real editing and real music that I’m writing and recording for each one. It’s been exhilarating to blend all the art skills I’ve collected over the years—music, writing, photography—into one medium where they can alchemize into something I haven’t done before. And because these videos are about my own life, not fictional characters, I feel a unique warmth in sharing them with you.

I admit, it gets lonely out here. Making these videos is one way for me to keep my seat around the human campfire.

My first poetry collection is out now.

In 2019, I asked my Patreon supporters to send me their “hopes and fears” so I could write poems in response to them. I wanted to see if I might find some new insights inside other people’s lives, and to offer whatever encouragement a poem can carry.

The idea wasn’t to “solve” anyone’s problems. I would never presume to provide “answers” to other people’s complex struggles like some silly poet guru—I am just some guy. All I wanted to do is find some glimmer of hope to point to, maybe a new perspective, or at the very least an acknowledgement of how goddamn hard it all is.

As a writing prompt, this was potent stuff for me. It pushed me down unexpected pathways and into corners of experience far removed from mine. But I was also surprised at the amount of overlap, how many of these anonymous confessions matched up with my own life. I feel like that mixing and merging created a special kind of alchemy that’s unique in my writing so far. So I decided to publish it.

HOPES AND FEARS is a collection of 26 anonymous confessions and 26 poems in response. You’ll recognize some of them from social media posts, but half of them are new and unseen. They probe a wide range of concerns—loss, love, friendship, work, insomnia, anxiety, depression—and draw inspiration from a wide range of sources—animals, babies, weather patterns, outer space, and psychedelic experience. And I illustrated each poem with a weird little drawing!

I’m very much a poetry outsider. I’m unschooled, minimally practiced, flowing on pure instinct—basically I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, I just write words that sound good to me. These poems in particular are intended to be accessible, not arcane, with a conversational style that requires no special knowledge to decode. There was no way a legitimate poetry publisher was going to touch this. So once again I’m going rogue.

You can buy HOPES AND FEARS right now. You can get the paperback or ebook from Barnes & Noble or Amazon. The ebook is also on Apple. Unlike that time I tried to publish The Living on my own website, this should be easy. Click button. Receive book.

I hope you find some encouragement in these poems, or some solace in being seen, or at the very least a little beauty of sound and image. If you do, I hope you’ll share it with your friends. I priced the book on the low end because this is less about the money and more about the sharing. My collaborators may be anonymous, but this still feels communal. To the contributors and the readers: thank you, and whew…good luck to us.

Your friend,

Isaac

P.S I’ve posted about this elsewhere, but THE OVERNOISE is currently out to market and I’m just waiting to hear back from publishers. Cross your fingers with me…

The Overnoise goes to market

Three years ago, having finally caught my breath, I started my first new novel outside of the Warm Bodies series. There aren’t any zombies in this one, but I won’t say it’s not apocalyptic. THE OVERNOISE is about a more subtle end of the world, an end of quiet things, of solitude and intimacy, of soft beauty and deep human experiences, surrendered with a shrug for what’s easy, safe, and cheap.

More literally, it’s about a global drone that keeps getting louder, and a musician searching for her new place in the world as the overnoise relentlessly reshapes it.

The book is done. After three years of writing and rewriting while my own world collapsed around me, loss after loss, I find myself living in a snowbound shed on what feels like the outer rim of reality, preparing to send the final draft to my agent. This is the one he’ll take out to find me a new publisher and hopefully a new chapter of life. Maybe one where I don’t have to shit in a bucket.

It’s been a long time since I had something tangible to show for my days on earth. Five years since I had a new book to proclaim. I am very intertwined with my work—perhaps unhealthily so—and if I don’t have something to offer to justify my existence, I tend to lie low until I do. Living alone in the wilderness is my choice, not my punishment, and I don’t plan on recanting any time soon, but when I emerge from the hermitage to start pushing this book…it will be nice to see you all again.

THE LIVING is out of print

As of today, the final book of the Warm Bodies series, THE LIVING, is officially out of print.

Funny to say that, since I’m the one who’s been printing it, but after two print runs and about three years of selling it on my website like a shady trenchcoat book dealer, I think it’s time to call it a job well done. All the copies in the warehouse are sold, and I will not be undertaking any more printings. If you bought one during these last three years, I thank you. If you’re just now discovering its existence, I apologize. There is always the ebook, if you can swing that way.

Normally, the hardcover is just the first stage in the life cycle of a book, and then it’s reborn as a paperback. That is still my hope for The Living, but for the moment, I’m letting it rest. In the very near future, I will be charging back into the publishing industry waving a new book and hopefully building a new career. I dream of a situation where I bring The Living with me and my new publisher takes pity on that bedraggled feral kitten, cleans it up, and gives it a home in bookstores. If that doesn’t happen, we can talk about the grim alternatives, like dumping it into the Amazon print-on-demand meat grinder. But for now, I’ll keep hoping.

So, if you’re coming to this post in shock that you missed your chance to finish R’s story, I’m sorry. Pushing awareness of this book’s existence through the fog was an incredible challenge. Again, the ebook is still available wherever fine ebooks are sold. Kindle, Apple, whathaveyou, it’s there, so if you REALLY want to finish the story, you still can. Also, I am currently gearing up to record an audiobook. More on that later.

For now, I leave you with some bittersweet photos from my very bittersweet journey through indie authoring. Here’s to never doing it again.

new year update

It’s the first morning of 2022, I’m having the first coffee and thinking about skin shedding and grave rising and other rebirthy concepts, and I thought I would write a New Year Post that will answer the following questions that you may have been carrying if you are interested in my writing or other things that I do.

1. Where the hell have I been?

2. Am I even doing anything?
   
   

Before I left Seattle, I was always on the go, walking around the city, cruising the country in my camper van, or traveling the world on book tours and random adventures. All that external action provided an endless supply of content for social media. I had photos of all the little curiosities I discovered in my wanderings. I had jokes and observations. And I always had some book-related promotion as I continued to flog the Warm Bodies series. I was Extremely Online.

My days are very different now. The pandemic dropped an anvil that crushed my life pretty flat. I spent 2020 in lockdown like the rest of us. Then my dad died. Then I had a mental/financial breakdown and decided to sell my house and buy land in the eastern Washington wilderness and develop an off-grid homestead from which to watch the world burn. That development process turned out to be a LOT slower than I expected (something-something covid-19 mumble-mumble unprecedented times) so I spent most of 2021 trapped in limbo, living in the guest shed at my mom’s house in my hometown while doing the job of a General Contractor and also trying to finish a novel.

My external environment is not my own right now. It’s borrowed, it’s transitional, and it doesn’t inspire me to document or share. So I’ve been quiet. There may be more to it than that, perhaps a more profound departure from the concept of online presence, but I won’t know until this gray limbo ends and my “real life” resumes out in the bracing starkness of the desert. Which should happen—absolutely must happen—this spring.

Despite the shattering of my family, the unraveling of my social fabric, and the ongoing smothering of my exploratory impulses (something-something Delta mumble-mumble Omicron) I have not stopped writing. I completed a new novel in September. It’s called THE OVERNOISE. It’s about a singer and her band struggling to adapt as a new communications technology buries the world in noise. It’s about the devaluation of art, the loneliness of infinite connection, and our unchecked plunge into dehumanizing progress.

I sent it to my agent/editor having no idea if I’d created anything of value. I thought it was entirely possible that I’d just vomited a year and a half of grief and dread into a story no one would ever want to read. I had never offered him a manuscript with less confidence, and I’ve never gotten such a glowing response in return. Apparently, according to at least one person who knows a thing or two about books, I’ve actually got something here.

Of course he also had notes, ideas on how to make it bigger and better, how to develop the themes and deepen the characters, and as always, they were gold. I’m currently nearing the end of the first major revision and I’m more excited about it than I was at any point during the initial creation. Writing a first draft is a lonely and terrifying experience, spending a year with your face buried in this highly personal creation with no idea what it looks like from outside. Diving back into it with a wider perspective—and some assurance that it’s worth the struggle—is exhilarating.

So. Very soon I’ll wrap up this draft and send it back to my agent. And then….we’ll see. I won’t provoke the universe by proclaiming any high hopes for this year. Big publishing comeback? Functional house to live in? No no no. Just gonna keep my head down and keep working and expect nothing. But you may catch a few secretive smiles.

New book

Hello, it’s me, that author you used to like until he disappeared from the world.

I released the conclusion of the Warm Bodies series in 2018. Since then, I have written some *cough* Instagram poetry, sometimes with little videos and music. I shared a very long song that I made with my friends in a band that was most likely a one-off. But mostly, I’ve been quiet. I lost my grandma. Then my dad. Then my grandpa. The family that has been the foundation of my life changed shape abruptly and radically. I sold my cabin and moved even further from civilization, to a bare patch of land in the eastern Washington desert, which someday soon might have a house on it. Also, civilization kinda collapsed? Life has been weird, the world has been weird, and I haven’t had much to say to it.

But throughout all of that, I have been writing. I really can’t seem to stop, even as it feels more and more like an obsolete craft moving to the fringes of a society that no longer knows how to sit still.

In some ways, this book is about that. It’s about a musician clinging to the art she loves while society devalues and discards it. It’s about a sensitive bundle of anxiety stumbling through a world where everyone is literally shouting. It’s about a young couple trying to hold onto each other while the culture around them mutates faster than they can adapt. It’s about a new internet technology that connects the world and transforms the economy with the unfortunate side effect of constant, inescapable, steadily rising noise. It’s about the terrifying relentlessness of progress, and finding a way to survive it.

It’s called:

干ℍℰ Ø√€尺ℵΘᎥ$ε

Yes, that’s the title, and if you find that fragmented jumble of unrelated unicode symbols a little overwhelming, you’ve already entered the story.

I finished this book last week. By which I mean, I wrote the last scene of the first draft of many drafts to come. A novel isn’t “finished” until it’s published and you’re reading it in your bed with toast crumbs in the sheets. But the story is now there, messy but complete. Next comes the editing and the waiting, the search for a new publisher, the glacial grind of getting a book into the world. But the story is there. And I’m pleased.

I’ve never written anything like it before and I probably never will again. It’s not quite realism, not quite sci-fi. It’s an urgent expression of an overwhelming feeling that is very very NOW.

I’m happy to have purged it. You may relate and find solace in it. You may think I’m wrong and regressive and throw it against the wall. Either way, maybe you’ll pause and think for a few seconds. That’s all I can ask anymore. 

Many updates to come as I get closer to bringing this to reality. All the biggest ones will come to you here in emails. The richer backstory will continue to be on Patreon. And anything aesthetically pleasing will find its way onto Instagram.

I’m glad you’re still here to read this. I’m glad I’m still here to write it. I hope we’re both still here when this book stumbles out into the world.

Your friend,

Isaac

Music. And a video.

Back in 2016, my friends Jared and Colin had a quirky little cello/guitar duo. They created long, complex compositions in a classical vein and played a few small shows. I once did a reading with them as my backing band. They also provided the ambiance for my release party for The Living. They were awesome, and eventually, they left me no choice but join them.

Sometime in 2017, my friend Noel and I jumped in there, literally DOUBLING the size of the band! Noel played Wurlitzer, a vintage electric piano. I played Therevox, a string-operated synthesizer that sounds a bit like a violin. We called ourselves Thing Quartet.

Colin and Jared had a lot of material already composed, and we put a lot of effort into adapting it to the newly expanded lineup. These were long, complicated songs with many different sections and little in the way of landmarks—no verse/chorus structure, no vocals, no drums. I for one found myself getting lost in them, and it took many, many practices to figure out everyone’s roles. Which was a problem when practice time was so scarce due to careers, families, etc.

Kids, do your band shit when you’re young and free. It does not pair well with responsibility.

We spent so long tinkering with these jams, it started to feel like a joke. Years went by and none of our friends had heard a single note. Was this whole thing some kind of prank? A front for a money laundering operation? A terrorist cell? What’s he building in there?

I moved three hours away. Colin built a house and had another kid. The fabric stretched further and further until we decided we just needed to FINISH something. RELEASE something. Prove that we really existed. The world is unraveling, the music industry is collapsing, it’s no time to be precious.

So we picked this one song, recorded it, and released it. Here it is. We exist. And to be fair, calling it a “song” might be underselling it. It’s 8.5 minutes long and contains roughly six distinct movements.

We actually released it a few weeks ago, but only on Bandcamp, the last bastion of “supporting artists” in a world of parasitic streamers that are actively dismantling the significance of music in our culture. It was a feeble little gesture of protest. But in addition to protesting, we also want people to hear our music. And we understand—reluctantly—how things are now.

So, here ya go. We’re now on all the streamers. Enjoy our tunes today via the parasite of your choice.

Lastly, hey, check this out—I made a “music video.” Kind of. In the ramshackle spirit of this whole endeavor, I cobbled together a collage of low-res cell phone clips that I took over the last ten years. It’s by no means the production I believe this music deserves, but it is a thing. Which is better than no thing. Please enjoy these things from Thing Quartet.

Moving on to Patreon

I don't know if I can continue as an author.

I know that sounds dramatic, but this is a very real question facing me right now. Will I always “be a writer,” in the sense that I’ll continue to write? Yes. Writing is part of who I am and I will always find time for it somewhere. But that’s a very different thing than being a full-time author whose whole life is dedicated to creating the next story.

That’s what it took for me to write the Warm Bodies series. And that’s what I’m about to lose.

For a gallows-humor rundown of my situation, enjoy this goofy video I made. Or keep reading below.

I had a big break once. A lot of people bought my book and liked it. (4.5 stars on Amazon) But after a perfect storm of bad decisions, bad treatment, and bad luck, only 1% of those people found their way back to rest of the series.

I stretched that big break into 10 years of writing, but I've finally reached the bottom. And as I take an honest look at my career path and the current state of publishing, I'm not seeing a future where book sales pay the bills.

But before I give up on the dream and push my writing back to hobby status to make room for a random day job, there's one more thing I want to try.

What if being a storyteller meant more than selling books? What if this were a broader occupation spread across multiple creative outlets, inviting readers into a closer relationship with my work and my life?

This is the idea that got me excited about Patreon.

Patreon is crowdfunding, but it's much more than a charity tip jar. I'm using it as my primary platform for connecting with readers, a private club where I can freely share all the stuff that I never felt comfortable putting on public social media:

• Weekly livestream readings of the entire Warm Bodies series, with each chapter followed by a live Q&A
  
  

• My private collection of behind-the-scenes photos and stories from my experience on the Warm Bodies movie set
  
  

• My old, unpublished stories, including the epic fantasy saga that kicked off my writing life at age 14!
  
  

• Access to a private blog and video feed containing work updates, sneak peaks, and intimate personal thoughts about my life in this remote forest cabin
  
  

• Personalized content like encouraging poems and a unique apocalyptic backstory for each new patron that makes you a character in the Warm Bodies universe

We''re in the second week now and it's been so much fun so far. Each subscription gets me a little closer to the stability I need to stop hustling and finally dive into the next book. But more than that, I'm just enjoying hanging out with this growing group of people who are fully engaged with what I'm doing. There's nothing more encouraging than someone literally investing in my future as a writer. It gives me hope that I might be able to keep doing this even without a big publisher or a broad audience.

All that being said...you know I hate doing this. No one likes to talk about money let alone ask for it, and I resisted Patreon for years, thinking I'd somehow find a way on my own...but in these apocalyptic times, with culture as we know it collapsing all around us, it feels like a time to reach out.

I know a lot of my readers are struggling even more than I am, and I don't want anyone to endanger their own stability for my sake. But if you can afford it, your support would mean so much to me, and I'd be so happy to welcome you into the Flammarion Club. See you in next week's chat...?

Stay Living,

Isaac

IT'S ALMOST OVER

Hello friends. I have these books to sell you:

739 hardcovers of THE LIVING  — $25

664 hardcovers of THE BURNING WORLD — $7

And that’s it. End of production. I’m going to keep promoting these until they’re all gone, and then that will be the end of my time in the world of Warm Bodies. I will put away my megaphone and recede into the forest to begin the next era. And yes, I MIGHT find a way to offer a crappy print-on-demand paperback for THE LIVING in a year or so…or it might spend its afterlife as an ebook ghost. But if you want to make sure you get a chance to hold the end of R’s story in your hands, now is the time to make your move.

FINALLY DO IT

Return of THE LIVING

Hello friends. I’ve been quiet for a while, for two major reasons:

1. My house got flooded and I’ve been drifting from hotel to hotel in a daze, unable to work or think as I try to catch the falling pieces of my collapsing life

2. THE LIVING was out of stock

ONE of those problems has now been solved: the second printing of THE LIVING has arrived.

For those of you who already ordered it, your books shipped out yesterday. But there’s a small catch. In the midst of all my personal chaos, I was not able to make a trip to New York to sign the new stock…so these editions are going out unsigned.

I realize this is not fair since you bought this book advertised as a signed copy, so I’m doing my best to fix it. Everyone who ordered before today will be getting a letter from me with a PERSONALIZED signature on a bookplate—basically an archival quality “sticker” that you stick inside the book. I know this isn’t the same as a true signed copy, but hopefully the personalization will make up for it, since that wouldn’t have been possible if we were shipping from boxes of signed stock. (If you bought it as a gift, please contact me and let me know what name I should put on the bookplate.)

I now have roughly 1000 copies of THE LIVING that I paid for out of my own pocket. To be honest, this was a big gamble. Even with an eager fandom frothing from years of anticipation, it took a while to sell the first printing of 1500 copies. I have no books in stores, no books on Amazon, and no marketing whatsoever. It’s just me, out here plugging away on the internet. So it’s going be a big challenge to get rid of these last 1000 copies. And I NEED to sell them, before I sink even deeper into this money hole. (It’s too dark in here to write!)

So…if there’s anything you can do to help spread the word about the conclusion of a series that A LOT of people still don’t know is a series…now would be a great time!

Thank you for your continued support and presence through all these books and years. Stay Living.

Isaac