Day 274: In the distance, distance

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Living ships are an old idea - even before scifi, from assigning a ship a name and personality to traveling in the belly of a whale, the idea of a ship being alive has some traction.

In my story, Escape Pod (no relation to the wonderful podcast) I take that idea of a living ship a bit further, and make a baby ship.

Spring and summer in the city are a time when you see a lot of infants being pushed around in strollers, or clinging to their parents necks. With friends both pregnant and hoping to soon be pregnant, I have infants on the brain. Any anything on my mind gets molded, one way or another, into a story.

Escape Pod: http://www.365tomorrows.com/08/14/escape-pod/

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I have been hanging out with the most glorious people recently. It is awesome and intimidating all at once.



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Costuming on this shoot was put together by Jared Axelrod. I think that any who know him can see his influence here is obvious.


The majority of my self portraits are not autobiographical. At least, not directly. There are lots of amazing artists who use their self portraits to, in part, explore their emotional state and their experiences. Frieda Khalo did this, as did Van Gogh.

I use my portraits to explore fictions, to create characters and stories. In my 365days project, even though the photographs are of me, the purpose isn’t self examination; it’s to create multiple characters out of one person. That’s why I bought a beard and a fat-suit, why I change my hair, why I wear a lot of makeup and masks in my photos.

Often when people meet me they tell me that I don’t look like my portraits. When I hear this, I know I’ve been successful.

My 365 Tomorrows story, Glad, went live today: http://www.365tomorrows.com/07/30/glad/

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There’s always been a person in my life who is cruel to other people, vicious even, but kind to me. I know I’m not exceptional in this regard, there are people who have been cruel to me, but compassionate to the people they care about. This puts the person in the middle in a strange position – address the cruelty of one friend to another, or ignore the behavior. How long can the behavior be ignored and how far does it have to go till you react?

This isn’t speaking to any particular drama in my life right now, but the idea of this drama; the person who can be cruel, the unseen victim, the person in the middle.

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Last weekend, at Dexcon, I was able to present my game "Shelter In Place" to a roundtable of game designers for critique. It was an extrodinary experience. They asked great questions, poked some holes and offerend praise and critque in equal measure. I came away feeling even more confident than I went in, bolstered by the support of a really top notch group of people.

They pointed out what was strong about the game and what might go wrong during gameplay. It's difficult to measure how much fun a game is before it's played, but they gave me some excellent suggestions in case what I do does go wrong. They had suggestions about length, degree of difficulty, setting the scene and game mechanics. I'm more excited than ever to test it out.

When I left the room, several people approached me and said that if I ever made a book of this game, they would buy it. When I first came up with the idea, it was just for fun, as a lark. However, the more support I get for this idea, the more I'm inspired to make it available to everyone who wants it. It's already written, so really, all it needs is to be played, edited, tarted up pretty-like and popped onto Lulu.

I'm running game one in August and game two in September. If that gameplay goes well and no one loses an eye, it's on to lulu and the hands of people who love fun. And horror. And having a night out with friends.

Day 252: Out

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The parking garage at Dexcon is a weird place, there are signs in odd places, turns that seem nonsensical and payment for parking that seems to take place at the whims of some fey court, demanding payment at different rates when they can remember to be around to demand it.

Needless to say, I had fun.*


Day 251: The Point

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*At Dexcon and the Parking Garage