YOU GOTTA KNOW WHEN TO HOLD EM

or WHY I'M KILLING A BOOK

On Saturday I received my copy of ARCHIVES OF ANGER. While I’m incredibly happy with how it turned out I can’t shake a feeling that something is a bit… off. Something felt off the moment I ordered it but it wasn’t a solid impression until I was holding the book in my hands.

I shut down Outlet Press a couple years ago. Part of the reason was that I had gotten pretty lost in the sauce of publishing books. I may have been more than a little addicted to putting my name in print so I would release anything and everything I made without regard for audience or sales. 

I kept telling myself that I was just using the scattershot method of finding an audience, putting out a huge volume of incredibly disparate work and hoping that some of it would find fans and advocates. A grand total of twenty five or so books, over roughly seven years, were released with only one of them actually succeeding at finding a larger group of people who enjoyed it. The rest languished in obscurity for the most part but that is pretty consistent with my particular little corner of the art world anyways.

This is all just the long way around for me to say that there actually won't be a volume four of No Gods But My Own. Archives of Anger feels like it’s either a bit of backsliding or a full blown relapse to habits that became toxic to me, my mental health, and my artistic practice as a whole.

For reasons I don't entirely understand this made me think of Kenny Rogers and his immortal earworm of a song, The Gambler:

You gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run.

Now I'm not saying that the material that would've featured in Archives of Anger won't be published (they very much will) and I'm not saying I'm unhappy with what I've created. What I AM saying is that I got sucked back into an urge that I've been trying hard to fight back against for the last couple years and felt like I'd mostly been succeeding until now.

I loathe the idea of content creation for the sake of remaining relevant or staying in some sort of spotlight. Hell, I hate the term CONTENT when what I'm trying to do is just create. I used to post art prolifically, sharing every doodle and sketch before the ink even dried, until it burned me out and the lack of audience interaction made me resent people that enjoyed what I was doing passively and without any desire to give feedback.

It's toxic but that's kind of the curse of social media and sharing creative works online. I CRAVED the likes, the hearts, the little comments of praise. I HUNGERED for them. I wanted it so much that it made me feel the need to churn out more and more and more and more, without stopping to discern whether or not I was doing it all for my own enjoyment or if I was just addicted.

If you want to know why Outlet Press put out so many books it was entirely because I wanted that same attention in a more physical space. I wanted that love and attention and affection in the real space. I convinced myself that I wasn't making content for the clicks and likes. I was doing something more legitimate, more real. I was creating BOOKS, dammit!

I'm incredibly proud of most of what I made when I was in the throes of that mindset. There are some releases from that time that are better left out of print, though, and it took time and introspection to see that.

When I ended Outlet Press I hadn't planned on making any more books for quite some time. NGBMO was only planned to be a newsletter before it mutated into the physical collections. Each chapter was planned to stand alone without regard to the larger work and this was pretty effective for the first two volumes.

The intention behind volume three was a culmination of what had come before in the form of a single piece that was made up of many smaller parts. It is easily my favorite book of the bunch. But something about that process seems to have triggered that good old feeling, the fuzzy and warm feeling of pumping out a book to just pump out a book. 

The itch was back. 

I had to make another one.

Nothing felt more important and that is exactly why I shouldn't.

Would I have been proud of Archives of Anger? Definitely, for a time. Then I would've looked back at it and wondered why I felt the need to continue a series that had ended with a pretty decent conclusion or I would've wondered why I didn't spend more time with the contents to fill them out better and, finally, I would've wondered why I put out a book that was less than a hundred pages long. It wouldn't have taken long for the pride I feel for the pieces to be eclipsed by my own dislike of how I released it.

All of that brings me back to Kenny Rogers and his iconic Gambler. I have to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run.

At this point I'm folding on Archives of Anger and walking away from further volumes of No Gods But My Own. The third volume was already the right finale for the overarching themes of the series and I'm incredibly proud of the work as a whole.

Where does that leave all these things? Where does it leave The Feck-Up Manifusto? Or Operators Code Redux? Or even the inevitable print appearance of Lips and Assholes, All The Way Down?

Well, I had an idea for that. It's not a new one and it's certainly not novel or interesting in form or function. It's actually what I had originally planned on doing with Outlet Press before I decided to shutter it but with a new intention behind it.

On December 31st, 2023 I will begin work on a book titled BY THESE HUMAN HANDS!!!, Volume 1. This will contain every stitch of work I create in 2023. Every drawing, every essay, every story, every comic. 

Absolutely EVERYTHING.

I put forth a challenge, of sorts, in Lips and Assholes, All The Way Down . I said that people should go out and make stuff for themselves instead of relying on AIs to make quick, flashy industrial bullshit. BY THESE HUMAN HANDS!!! will be my way of showing that my mouth isn't writing checks my drawing hand can't cash. 

Now, I'm not going to just sit on everything until the book comes out. I still plan to release everything here and over at We the Hallowed periodically. In fact, The Operators Code pages will soon be replacing Flight Interpretations as a weekly feature over at We the Hallowed.

Returning to Kenny and the first verse of the aforementioned song because I must have contracted some sort brain parasite that makes me continue to reference the schmaltzy lyrics of a country song/movie franchise from the 80's:

He said, "Son, I've made a life

Out of readin' people's faces

And knowin' what the cards were

By the way they held their eyes.

So if you don't mind my sayin'

I can see you're out of aces

If I'm to be completely honest here I've been a bit at sea lately. The days have been pretty quiet since my son started kindergarten, my family has settled into our house, and I've run out of home improvement projects to keep me otherwise occupied. Even my father, who had spent the last year pretty ill, has finally stabilized and is doing better than expected. 

It's odd to bemoan things getting better but it's somehow harder for me to find momentum during moments without wind or current to carry me along. I start to grope around for purpose until I find a firm grasp on something. I'm really hoping that BY THESE HUMAN HANDS!!! is the handhold I'm looking for.

Or as Kenny would say:

And somewhere in the darkness

The gambler he broke even

And in his final words

I found an ace that I could keep

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