Life has been so busy- I moved into a trailer, failed chemistry, and now, in this short spring break with its unending downpours, I have made a zine. As per your poll responses, I have made the zine thirty percent sex/romance/transition (secret things I feel too shy to blog about) and seventy percent parts of the book I am writing (a reckless decision, seeing as no-one else’s eyes have seen my manuscript, and it is guaranteed to be badly edited). The book is about a teenage girl who runs away from her abusive mother in Alaska and embarks on an epic quest across the wilderness, in search of her father. She has no other family and she thinks that if she can only know her father, it will finally place her, like an insect pinned to velvet, in the swirling kaleidoscope of the universe. On her journey she rides freight trains, catches fish, hitch-hikes, lies spellbound in sunbeams on the forest floor, and becomes hopelessly lost in the woods. She meets/is helped by a series of strange, magical people, and she becomes enmeshed in their dramas, until at last her fate becomes something that she can no longer control.

Do you want to read it?!!

The zine is 50 pages, and it costs ten dollars. I know, that’s a lot of money for a zine! But maybe eventually I’ll finish this book, and I’ll find a publisher who will quietly print some copies that no-one will buy, but then I’ll write another book, and that one will sell like hotcakes, and then I’ll be famous, in the way that writers are famous (which is to say not famous, but able to pay their bills on time), and then maybe this zine will be worth something? I’ll sign them, anyway, for what it’s worth. And, if you buy a zine within the next 24 hours, I’ll be able to pay my rent!

The zine is called IF YOU’RE BREATHING, YOU’RE WINNING, and to “buy” it, just click on the “donation” button on the right sidebar. I am not technically allowed to “sell” things on wordpress, and so I am “giving it away” for a “donation” of “ten dollars”. And if you give me more, like $20 or $30, I’ll know you want two and three zines, respectively. At one point in the paypal labyrinth you will have a chance to edit your mailing address, so make sure you’ve listed the right one! And then I will get an email saying you “donated”, and I will drop a little package off at the post office for you, first class mail. At you can take the zine with you when you go places, and read it when you’re out of cell-phone reception, like on the subway or at the top of Mt. Everest.

The zine is also available in bulk, if you’re interested in hoarding it.

And thanks for taking my poll re: zine content! That was really fun!!