On Origin and games in hyperspace

On music and made up galactic card games

Sep 11, 2024

What’s up, Friends? I felt fall this morning.

The combo of the fall chill + coffee + whatever fall smells like in the morning is a total gift moment for me. The kind of moment where your heart sighs and you feel deep belonging. I felt that for two seconds this AM before three children asked me for three different things at the same time.

The summer has been wonderful, just relentless in pace. I’ve been working on a backyard office/studio called The Writing House which has taken nearly all of my free time. Don’t zoom in too close. You’ll see all of my mistakes.

This summer I…

celebrated a marriage, mourned at a funeral.

saw a team, family, sand, and rivers.

Ate one of the best chicken sandwiches I’ve ever had (jerk chicken sandwich with pineapple jalapeno slaw) at a random tiki bar at 10:30 at night with my best friends.

Danced at a reception with my kids. Got a crab out of a condo. Watched Survivor on the beach.

Wrote my book on a high-speed train to Porto. Got motion sick. Got my teeth stained charcoal grey with cuddlefish ink from a delicious Portuguese rice stew. Pulled some twisty curly shellfish out of its shell. Ate it, too. Got food poisoning. Did a kickflip in a parking garage In Lisbon while being food-poisoned.

Got lost in 1600s art and Milwaukee with my wife.

Got a golden hour run on Lake Michigan. Saw Much Ado About Nothing play in a park my family. Ate some of the best morning buns I’ve ever had in a tiny Wisconsin port town where everyone said “oh, there’s nothing there.” Yeah, nothing but the best morning buns I’ve ever put in my face. Get out.

On the book front,

I have what I think is a near-final draft of my middle grade with my agent. I feel REALLY good about it. Feels like the best thing I’ve ever written. I desperately want to get another book into everyone’s hands so I’m hoping this is the one.

I have some music news.

At the beginning of the summer, I was at the funeral of a close friend I wrote a lot of poetry with in high school. I remembered we wrote the lyrics to a Cold War-inspired love song together called 1989, (we had this name first, Taylor) and that, at some point, I recorded it, but you couldn’t listen to it anywhere. It was socked away on an external hard drive where I’ve dumped all my music since middle school.

I wanted to remember that moment with my friend and went into my external hard drive to find it. While I was there, I saw folders and folders of music.

Most of it was music I’d never shared. I don’t know why. Maybe Spotify or digital music distribution wasn’t a huge thing, when I’d made it? I was shocked at how much I had and I just kept asking, “Why is all this just sitting here?”

So, I started to group songs. Rounding them together by years. I wound up with 4 albums and 4 EPs worth of songs I was still proud of, even if some of them were imperfect.

So, this is my announcement that I’ll be releasing a bunch of music over the next year and a half.

My last backlog release will be at the end of 2025. It’ll be the album with all my “newest” old songs.

I’m gonna do a bunch of writing about it. Write about the album, the years, what the songs were about, how they fit into my life at the time, and how I feel about them now. It’ll be free therapy for me, and maybe a memoir of sorts made through music. Thanks to fellow 1989 naming friend Taylor, I want to share not just the music, but my eras. Where I started, where I ended, and where I might go next. Putting it out there even if some of the songs are boring, badly mixed, imperfect, mid, or I cringe at my lyrics (I’m going back into high school with the first album) and disagree with my own words now that I’m older.

As always, I’m inviting y’all to come along for the ride.

I’m releasing the first album, Origin, on Friday, October 4th.

I’ll send out a post about Origin next week and, because you’re my fellow rabbit hole dwellers, you get to see the song list, and even hear a few of the tracks almost three weeks early.

All the music I release will be free, so I’ll ask you some favors in return, my first is tell me one thing you created or made in high school that you would die of embarrassment if leaked to the public?

If you’ve made it this far, you get the galactic card game content.

I’ve been playing Star Wars Outlaws, which has been A PURE JOY AND DELIGHT, and there’s a mini-game on it called Sabaac. I’ve spent so much time playing this. I want to play it in real life. Lucky for me, some is in the process of printing a card deck from the game. I’m 100% gonna buy it and then maybe will start a local Sabaac club. Look, you’ve gotta follow the fun in your life. Let me know if you’re not too ashamed to play with me.

Alright friends, this was a long post. Sorry, but not. Lots to catch you up on!

See you next week with more on Origin. Oh and if you’re visiting from out of town, go ahead and…