🛸3d printing a book cover is total chaos + other updates
instead of doing my day job today, i’m writing to you from my kitchen table, where my cat is curled up on my lap. my day job has things they want me to do, but i’m very lucky in that i can ignore my day job for a moment. my day job will not implode if i don’t get to the email. my day job will not implode if i don’t put the graphic in portrait mode. simmer down, day job.
book stuff
one or several deserts is a collection of 7 short stories that use body horror and surrealism to explore gender, fetishism, pain, geo-erotics, insanity, surveillance, and liberation. you know, the light topics. here are some ways you can support me:
buy a copy for yourself & your friend! maybe your mom, too — she’ll either totally fucking hate it or feel weirdly galvanized to explore some new feelings :o
request one or several deserts at your library/favorite bookstore! the isbn # is 9781948687607 (also on the 11:11 press website)
repost, like, & save my posts about one or several deserts on the cursed media hellscapes! here are links to my posts for instagram, twitter, & facebook (ignore the birth name, lol, or enjoy knowing that i once was named for a saint who prayed to be ugly so she could hang out with animals in the woods)
follow me on all the social media thingys! i’m @creekbedcarter everywhere <3
it’s been two weeks since the preorder link for my first book went live and it feels WILD, my guys. nov 17-dec 26 is always a weird time for me, anyway: both my estranged parents have birthdays during that time, and holidays were always a really fraught (often explosive) time for my family, so i’m now in this annoying window of time where i think about them more than usual. having a book coming out — which is a real “assertion of identity,” as my therapist says — is intense, and having it happen in this window of parent feelings means my body is jacked up in new and interesting ways every day.
luckily, i have a very nice girlfriend who rechristened thanksgiving as “ranksgiving.” we invited our friend over, made ridiculously good food, and ranked stuff for hours: what breakfast foods are the best? what region of the united states is the most desirable to live in? what are the best parts about playing “zelda: breath of the wild?” etc etc
antics are a very good way to get yourself out of a parent-feelings hole, let me tell you.
something i have been DYING to tell y’all about is designing the cover of one or several deserts, mostly because making it was also an absolute and utter gay antic that ended in something completely unique, disgusting, and beautiful.
first, i begged asher ford — founder and designer of 3d printed home decor studio object lover, chronically busy capricorn, and also my giiiiiirlfriend — to design 7 “charms” that represent each of the stories in my collection. she rendered the objects in a program called blender and we spent a few hours looking them over together, me hovering over her shoulder saying helpful things like “what if that charm felt more like the idea of absence” and “can we give this one the feeling of smelling purple?” as she patiently tweaked and adjusted anchor points. then, she printed all the shapes out in various color combinations so i could see how each one felt against the others.
next came slime time.
slimes involved in the making of this book cover include:
pepto bismol
molasses
teriyaki sauce
extremely rancid coconut milk
something yellow from the back of our pantry that had no label
tonkatsu sauce
tire sealant
it was 90 degrees in our weird, carpeted garage, and quickly the room stank of armpit sweat and cherry pepto bismol. molasses got onto everything. how does coconut milk go rancid??? what was that yellow stuff, and did it come with the house? who knew tire sealant could be so beautiful and green? i slathered and squirted slimes into a plastic bin, asher photographed each small addition with her iphone, and our cats yowled at the door, begging to come in and investigate whatever that foul smell was.
by the time we ran out of slimes, we had a pretty chaotic looking object. in the end, though, the the simplicity of the pepto bismol really hit for me. i’m so thrilled with how this cover turned out: it’s exactly as elegantly, carefully, compellingly disgusting as i hope my book feels to read.
other stuff
this winter is givin me a run for my money, but damn am i grateful!
i’ll be over at ramble creek studio next week laying down tracks with austin music heroes little mazarn, beth chrisman, and summer rose wood for my NEW ALBUM
on dec 10, i’ll be up in fayetteville playing a set for gar hole records and their annual holiday bash — i heard jud brothers, willi carlisle, nick shoulders, two runner, the lostines, and a bunch of other absolute legends of outlaw country will be there :o
i’ve been hard at work on final edits of my geo-erotic novel with my agent, living human angel rach crawford (wolf literary), and we’re getting ready to send it out to editors in january!!!!!!
somehow the company i’ve been a contractor for on and off this year wants to fly me to amsterdam this january?????????????? so i guess i’ll be flying on a plane to europe soon?????? to talk about business things???? do i even own a collared shirt that isn’t a cutoff anymore????????? are they gonna be weird about it if i wear my cowboy boots???? should i dye my mustache for the occasion?????
i watched orson welles’s the stranger for the first time this week and i can’t stop thinking about the rotating angel figure on top of the clock tower with the sword that haunts every frame of the last scene in the movie. like LOOK AT THIS:
tip jar
in addition to your direct aid practice, check out home street music and send them some financial support this month! it’s a nonprofit some pals i know co-founded that brings music and songwriting to folks in the unhoused community. recently they helped an unhoused musician record her first album, which is MAJOR.
ok i’ll head out now! i love y’all, take care of yourselves, and say hey if you feel like it!
xoxo, carter