The Bloggess

Every once in awhile I share the weekly letter I send out from my drawing substack because not everyone understands how to sign up (hi mom!) and so they can read it here. This is one of those days:

Dear friend.

This week I was feeling a combination of helpless and full of rage and so I drew something terrifying because for some reason drawing dark horror and phantoms and the existential monsters I see in my dreams is cathartic, and part of me wants to share those images because I think many of you could relate, but I also don’t want people to be like…wait…did I ask for drawings of wolves prowling inside your house and eyeless women screaming blindly into the raging wind?  And no, of course you didn’t because no one would sign up for that. But the lovely thing is that after I get all of my angst and fear out on the paper I feel calmer and remember that the bad guys want you to feel helpless and terrified, and that most of the world is actually good and kind and loving and protective…they just don’t get as much press. And so then I can take a deep breath and start again, drawing something just as true and cathartic…but with the hope and care that I want to put out into the world and feel myself.

So that’s where this doodle came from. We all have to live together and each of us has our struggles and loves and fears. We are each unique but we are all together. And the only way we get through the hard times is remembering that we are far from alone. Be brave. Be strong. But don’t allow the world strip you of your gentleness and your kindness. Love wins. Hope can be a quiet revolution. In other words:

“Hey. We all have to live together. So try not to be a dick.”

I ran out of time before I finished because cross-hatching is hard but I sort of like it unfinished and a little raw and imperfect…just like us.

In fact, here’s a picture from before I started shading in case you want to print it out and work your own magic on it yourself. After all, humanity is a group project. (And we all know how fucking hard those can be.)

I super crazy love you,

Jenny

Ps. You can subscribe to my substack for free. Some of the posts are just for paid subscribers because they keep me in pens and paper and make me meet my deadlines (thank you!) but the vast majority of my readers are free and the majority of my emails go to everyone. I feel a little bad that my paid readers don’t get as much exclusive emails as some other creators parse out, but I also suspect that anyone who contributes to my substack would not begrudge others the joy (and confusion) of getting my emails. I’m so lucky to have you all.

This isn’t a real post…it’s just a little celebration because I haven’t had enough of those lately. Yesterday I got a copy of Furiously Happy translated into Indonesian and it feels so surreal. I just went through my bookshelf and in the last 12 years my books have been translated into Italian, German, Portuguese, Czechoslovakian, Turkish, Estonian, Simplified Chinese, Complex Chinese, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, Bulgarian, Hungarian, French, Persian, Romanian and Arabic…which means that 19 different translators have had to find a way to write about George Washington’s dildo, getting attacked by wild turkeys, armadillo races, giant metal chickens, crushing mental illness and training wild raccoons to steal change from car washes. (I’M SO SORRY, SWEET TRANSLATORS.) The world is weird as hell, y’all.

But to celebrate how incredibly weird and lovely this is, today I’m giving away some signed copies of my books. Whoop! Just let me know in the comments which one of my books you’d most want a signed copy of (Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Furiously Happy, You are Here or Broken) and I’ll pick 5 people randomly to send books to.

And wherever you are in the world, I’m so grateful you’re here.

January is finally over (and only lasted 3 decades) and this means it’s time to for my February book club picks. Whoop!

If you join the Fantastic Strangelings Book Club you’ll be getting Life Hacks from a Little Alien by Alice Franklin.

This novel is smart, funny, strange and wonderful. The narrator’s journey is informed by the author’s own experiences with autism and it’s written in such a fascinating way that I think so many neurodivergent readers will vibe with and neurotypical readers can learn from. THE WAY I DEVOURED IT, Y’ALL.

Also, it has nothing to do with goats but I couldn’t get any of the cats to pose with the book so Totes McGoats was the next best thing, probably.

And if you join the Nightmares from Nowhere bookclub you’ll be getting  Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito. It is so darkly good that it’s already being made into a movie starring Margaret Qualley (from The Substance…did you see it…ooh, so fantastic). Like if Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and Nanny McPhee had a baby steeped in female rage in the Victorian era.

And if you need more than two books to get you through the month, here are a few February releases that I loved:
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett– This is the third Emily Wilde book and is one of my favorite series. GO READ THEM ALL.

But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo – The Shape of Water meets Mexican Gothic in this sapphic monster romance novella wrapped in gothic fantasy trappings. This is so good and also very small if you want something you can finish in an afternoon.

Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowynn Ivey – A dark fairytale set against the landscapes of Alaska.

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks – A beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of  Horse

The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict –   The story of five of the greatest women writers of the Golden Age of Mystery and their bid to solve a real-life mystery.

The Edge of Water by Olufunke Grace Bankole – A mother and daughter story about a Nigerian family navigating life that explores the idea of love and sacrifice.

A few weeks ago I was in California and I still have to write about it but I haven’t yet because I came back and fell into a depression followed by the flu (GO GET YOUR FLU SHOT). But when I was in California my friend Jenny sent me a dm to see if I wanted her to give me an insider hookup since she’d worked in Monterey for a decade. And I didn’t see that message at all because I suck at checking messages and then a week later I saw it and responded, “I am literally just seeing this now. Jesus. wtf, me?” and I expected to her to say, “Well, my friend, you suck, obviously.” But she didn’t because turns out she’d just gone into hospice for the cancer she’s been fighting. But Jenny is a bad-ass who has been fighting cancer for 8 years. She almost died three times last year and always came back like a fucking champ so I sent her another message telling her how much I love her.

Sent. Not read.

And today she is gone.

I took this picture of her 16 years ago at a Blogher Convention. That was the night we discovered Chambord and we poured it into every drink we had. We called it “Unicorn Period” because it seemed magical and also because the name made others queasy and so no one asked us to share it. Jenny was the kind of person who would give you the shirt off her back, but mostly to show you the enormous Wear the Wild Things Are tattoo across her entire back. She sent me a Christmas card with her beautiful family on it every year (including this one) even though she knew that I never sent cards or even had the energy to put up a tree some years. Some people would really hate a memorium like this, filled with tattoos and hoarded unicorn menstruation, but not Jenny. And that’s why I loved her and why I will miss her and why I will forever wish that I’d told her all this earlier…even though I know that she knew it.

But maybe you are reading here and you don’t know it, so I will tell you now. I love you. If I have met you in real life, I love you. If we were close but then drifted a little because I’m afraid to leave the house or use the phone, I love you. If we’ve never met but you are here, I love you. If I blocked you on facebook because you wrote some crazy-ass shit, I love you. If you’re reading this, I love you.

I’m sorry. I should have said it sooner.

*********

If you want to support Jenny’s family this is the best place to do it.

I was sending an email when a little magic wand popped up that said “Polish” and I thought that was weird because why would I want to translate my email into Polish?

I tried to click on it to make it go away but instead it changed the entire email because apparently it was saying that it needed to “polish” my email because I guess I’m too unsophisticated to use words:

There is no way in hell anyone who knows me would get that email and not think I’d been abducted so I deleted the suggested rewrite and updated my email:

But after I added the update gmail was like, “YOU’RE STILL DOING IT WRONG, IDIOT?” and the polish thing came up again and I was like, “Are you trying to AI fix a paragraph where I say how much I don’t want AI to fix shit?” And turns out, yeah, that exactly what it meant because it gave me this:

Jesus. Y’all, if you get an email from me it will be signed with HUGS, LOVE, FIGHT THE PATRIARCHY, DOWN WITH POWDERED GRAVY or SORRY I SUCK SO MUCH. It will be filled with typos and rambling parentheticals and apologies for answering several months too late. This is how you know it’s me and not a robot. My only hope is that my constant declining of the suggestions will make the AI learn from me and spread my terrible etiquette throughout the world.

Also, I just realized when I tried to insert these pictures into this blog about how much I hate AI my blog was suddenly like, “HEY I KNOW YOU JUST CLICKED A BUTTOM SAYING YOU WANT TO ADD A SPECIFIC PICTURE BUT HOW ABOUT WE JUST MAKE AI IMAGES FOR YOU INSTEAD?” AM I ON CANDID CAMERA? It’s like my whole computer is a toddler screaming “LET ME DO IT!” every time I try to create something.

And as much as I hate AI, I had to see what the program thought it could do so much better than me so I gave it the prompt “please stop giving me AI” and…all apologies. Clearly I did need help because…fucking wow. Nailed it:

Anyway…this sucks.

Worst regards,

Jenny

Every so often I write something on my newsletter about art that I think you might want to read even if art is not for you. Today may be one of those so I’m sharing it here just in case:

It’s a hard time to be an empath out here, y’all. 

I suspect many of you are also feeling too much of the darkness of the world, which can be especially dangerous for those who already stand too close to the edge of the abyss. It can be easy to burn with anger at hypocrisy and hate and chaos, but here is what I have learned…and what I keep telling myself:

You can use that heat as fuel to create change, to promote kindness, to protect yourself and those who are most vulnerable…to keep you warm when the world seems too cold. But, that burning anger can also be dangerous. It can exhaust you. It can pull the oxygen from the room. It can cause you to lash out in fear at those who want to help. The smoke obscures how much good and joy is out there. And those who thrive on turmoil and hate are so happy to see you lost in it…to see your precious energy drained putting out the fires they scatter about just to keep you too busy to live.

Don’t let the world burn you to ashes. 

Protecting your fragile heart can be an act of rebellion. Don’t be afraid to love and laugh and find joy and silliness even in the hard times. 

Especially in the hard times. 

Don’t underestimate the beautiful works of love and kindness and help that you put out into the world. You may do them loudly or you may do them quietly, but they are invaluable in ways you may never see.

Today’s doodle is inspired by one of my favorite Czech artists, Alphonse Mucha, who came from the same land that my father’s family immigrated from.

“NOT. GIVING. UP.”

Most people know Mucha from his flowy art-nouveau posters and cigarette ads but my favorites of his came at the end of his life, when he used his art to explore both the pain and the beauty of life. This one, Woman With a Burning Candle, stays with me:

It was painted during the rise of Nazism…a slavic woman tending to a candle…keeping the light in the dark going, but watching as it slowly burns down…unsure as to what would come next but still focused on the glowing illumination. He painted about enlightenment, love and knowledge in a time when all that seemed to be threatened and was an act of revolution. The day after Prague was stormed by Nazi’s, Mucha was arrested and while in custody he contracted the pneumonia that would kill him. He never lived to see the victory over the darkness, but even in that darkness and uncertainty he created light that we can still see today. He still found beauty and joy. He found a way to celebrate life and enlightenment and humanity in his own way. 

He didn’t give up. 

I’m not going to either.

I super-crazy love you.

~ Jenny

PS. If you ever want to feel bad about your doodles you should follow one up with a painting by an actual master because…wow. Lesson learned.