In the last twenty years, I've written and published nine books.1 I've finished more, but have shared nine with the public. I'm currently writing a tenth.2
I like round numbers. They feel neat and comforting. The number 10 implies a complete series, an ambition realized, an edifice. I don't think of my writing this way, but I hope to use this number as a prompt for a summative project.
I plan to collect much of my writing—those ten books, plus stories and poetry and small things inbetween—in one volume. It will feature a very inventive title: Collected Works: 2005 – 2025.
I don't know if or how I'll print and distribute this book.3 But I want to make it a place wherein I can reflect on my past work (with short contextualizing notes before each piece) and assess it all with questions in mind, like What do I think now of this varied labor? When has art been worth the effort, and when hasn't it? What do I want to do next?
I want, too, for this book to be like a river whose waters I can't cross twice. I mean that I want it to inspire me with a sense of permission—a feeling of courage, appetite, and ease—so that I may grow deeply strange.4 If I keep writing, I want to only make art that is free, weird, and evasive to tags, categories, and algorithms. To better respond to our excesses of shallow stimuli and scarcities of sustained focus, I want to slow the fuck down. I want to make myself a new and needed freak.
Or: maybe ten books and change will feel like enough! Maybe I'll feel sated.
If not, this artifact of two decades could be a precursor to the unnameable.
I intend to gather it all and see.
Through a publishing company called Sator Press, I have published many more. Not to conflate quantity with quality in the year 2025.
It's called The Christian: A Comedy.
I should probably be mindful of various contracts, despite my DIY compulsions.