Art by Eddie Dehais

Semiannual update begins NOW

ITEM: The webcomic I've been working on with Eddie Dehais is off to a roaring start. It's called Storm and Desire, and you can check out new pages every Monday. The story:

STORM AND DESIRE is an epic sci-fi/fantasy adventure comic about three women whose fates collide: WYNDERIA, a scientist-musician & interdimensional explorer; LORELEI, a cyborg translator & occasional singer; and ANJETTE, an intelligent weapon system & occasional sorcerer. Together they set out to learn the secret history of the multiverse...

We launched in early April and have a very healthy storyline planned. We also publish a weekly newsletter with exclusive original prose, thoughts on comics and social issues, etc. Join today while the rates are low!

ITEM: My play Can't Talk Right Now had a nearly sold out run with Theatre22 in late Feb/early March, and we've been chosen to re-mount the play later this year for Bumbershoot. The show was so successful that we're planning a "sequel" of sorts in early 2017, currently code-named Sings The Hits.

ITEM: I wrote two new plays for the 14/48 Festival in January, This Isn't Happening (an homage to LCD Soundsystem), and Nihilism Blues (an homage to, uh, nihilism).

ITEM: I was invited to do an Ignite talk at this year's South by Southwest Interactive festival in March. Long time viewers of this program may recall that I was the "artist in residence" for a stretch at Ignite Seattle, and this talk was presented in that spirit. I delivered a talk called "Hacking The Apocalypse with Howie Lovecraft," in character as a version of Howie Lovecraft from my play H.P. Lovecraft: Stand-Up Comedian! The talk isn't online yet, unfortunately. But the slides indicated that Howie was a writer for a blog called Things That Cannot Save You, which I went ahead and created to support the talk. It's a Lovecraft-themed comedy blog that is now TOTALLY GOING VIRAL. A little.

ITEM: I'm serializing a new ten-part novella called Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You, a horror story about the glorious world of music bloggers. No really. I created yet another side blog, Undeniable Presence, and incorporated my music blog, Much Preferred Customers, to support the world of the story.

ITEM: H.P. Lovecraft: Stand-Up Comedian! may get another production later this year courtesy of Pacific Play Company. Stay tuned!

ITEM: Season Three of my long-gestating web series The Coffee Table is two episodes away from completing score & audio mixdown. There will be a marathon screening of all three seasons to celebrate its eventual conclusion! The story was designed from the beginning to have three seasons: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Couldn't be more excited to see its culmination!

ITEM: Seattle Public Theater asked me to write a Mozart-themed short play for their students, who were taking classes while the mainstage production of Amadeus was running. My show was called Ways Of The World.

ITEM: I'm in the proto-development stages of a new guerrilla web series with my homies Pilar & Andy, currently code-named You The Mostest. And heavy into research for a new pair of plays called Make It Count and Make It Last, under the potential umbrella title Oasis Code - hopefully this will be kind of a feminist Angels in America. We don't have a target release date for season one of the web series. The first of these two new plays is tentatively scheduled for a production next summer by Pacific Play Company.

ITEM: We just held the 5th non-annual All Holiday Party, at Annex Theatre! This was our third time at Annex (2016, 2012, and 2009); we'd also staged it in 2004 at the CHAC, and of course the epic original event in 2002 at a pair of artist lofts in Pioneer Square. The 2016 edition was equally epic, in a different, more polished, very well produced fashion, featuring guests like the Chaotic Noise Marching Corps, the Libertinis, and Dangerswitch, plus an original play by Scot Augustson and a lot more mayhem. Producing this event feels very much like my swan song at Annex, since I also recently dropped off staff after something like 11 years (first as the inaugural Annex bar manager for a few years, then as web content manager) plus several years prior as a company member. Annex has produced eight out of ten of my major productions so far and I could easily be back down the road, but for now, I'm on walkabout!

5/26/2016