Wednesday Investigations Intermission: Where I've been and what I've been up to
A new novel, a crowdfunding campaign, and a risograph machine
Well hello. It’s been a few months. I’ve been recuperating from a long string of ailments, both physical and emotional, that started when I caught a case of COVID back in February. I’ll spare you a full recounting of my woes, but suffice it to say that I’m finally feeling well recuperated. Investigations continue.
But first, some important updates. A few weeks ago, my new novel, Relentless Melt, was released! Check it out:
This is my attempt to write a historical novel (it takes place in 1909) and also my attempt to write a “girl detective” novel, though the protagonist may or may not be a girl. (Over at Writer’s Digest I talk more about what I’m doing with the “girl detective” trope, and more about what I’m doing with gender in the novel more generally.) The novel also contains street crime, magic, avuncular professors, cosmic horror, cover-ups, and all other sorts of good stuff.
Infrastructure nerds (I know some of you read this newsletter) may want to note that Relentless Melt is also, in some ways, an infrastructure novel. Here’s a pic I took at the Cambridge Historical Society back in 2018 that I treated as part of an early “mood board” for the draft:
Early readers seem to be liking the book, which feels great. I probably wouldn’t quote my own reviews at, say, a dinner party, but this is my newsletter so I plan to indulge myself a little bit. Ahem: Boston’s WBUR says that Relentless Melt “is a fun, genre-bending revival of classic cosmic horror and detective fiction with a distinctly modern attitude.” Publisher’s Weekly says that Artie Quick, the book’s protagonist, “is a hugely endearing lead, and the solution to the mystery is likely to surprise even seasoned genre fans. This is an off-kilter delight.” Library Journal says “Bushnell seamlessly blends mystery, urban fantasy, and an exploration of gender identity into the kind of fun and fantastical ride that his readers have come to expect.” Charlie Jane Anders at the Washington Post says “Relentless Melt passes the ultimate test of world-creation: The more you learn, the more you still want to discover.”
What else? Uhhh—for Largehearted Boy’s long-running “Book Notes” feature, I wrote a playlist to accompany the novel, so this is for those of you who read this newsletter to hear about the weird music I dig into:
That was so much fun that I went on to soundtrack four other supernatural novels, for Crimereads:
Anyway! Relentless Melt should be available wherever you buy indie books, or you can get it directly from Melville House, who also released my first two novels. I’ve done a few readings around New England this month—sorry if you missed ‘em. If you live in Chicago I have one coming up there too—July 10—with a who’s who of other weird Chicagoland writers, about whom I may have more to say in a future edition of this newsletter:
The second bit of big news right now is happening over at Kickstarter. The collagist allison anne and I—we work together as Morphic Rooms—are releasing a second deck of the ADDITIONS “collage cards,” and we’re in the final days of a crowdfunding campaign.
Longtime readers of this newsletter may recall that I have written about the ADDITIONS cards once before, back in December. But for the unacquainted: the ADDITIONS deck contains 96 formally elegant, grid-based collages made by allison and myself. While the cards are (in my opinion) beautiful enough to be appreciated as individual works of art, it is important to add that the imagery from the cards is derived entirely from the public domain, so that people can remix them: cut them up, tear them apart, glue them back together, demolish them digitally, etc. (If you want to see the astonishing range of work artists have produced using these cards, check out this zine we put together.)
We produced this deck in late 2021, and we’re almost sold out of it—we have no current plans to reprint it. But we’d always intended to produce a new edition of the deck every few years. And, in fact, we’ve already made all the art for the second deck. We have 96 brand new cards—again using imagery belonging entirely to the public domain—just waiting to get into the hands of artists around the globe.
As of this writing we are [checks] 87% funded; less than $200 shy of our goal with about a week left. If you make mixed media art, if you know someone who does, or if you just want to get a weird deck of cards in the mail this year, consider checking out the campaign. There’s a short video offering a little more context, and it even contains a surprise guest:
One final piece of personal news: as I write this, I have just returned from Bethlehem, NH, where allison and I spent a week together as artists-in-residence at Directangle Press, a letterpress and risograph printmaking studio.
This was… an extremely cool place to have spent a week? I have a long history of making weird art with a photocopier—by my best estimation I’ve been doing it for 2/3rds of my now longish life—but I hadn’t used a risograph before, even though I’ve had my eye on the increasingly interesting work coming out of small risograph studios for a few years now.
allison and I produced a few small editions of collaborative work, which will likely be available soon. Watch this space, but here’s a sneak preview:
While in Bethlehem, I stopped at a charming small-town used bookstore (Legacy Used Books, “well-curated, inexpensive used books in the heart of the White Mountains”) and picked up a copy of John Muir’s Stickeen (published in 1909, the same year in which Relentless Melt is set). Have you guys read Muir? This book is terrific—if the rest of his work is anything like this, I can see why authors of naturalist writing or creative nonfiction speak of him in such venerated terms. I drank it down in two short draughts—it’s funny, wise, thrilling, touching, keenly observed: a tale unerringly told.
The remarkable saxophonist and visual artist Peter Brötzmann died last week. Brötzmann is probably best known for a titanic recording, Machine Gun, recorded by the Brötzmann Octet back in 1968. About this release, critic Joslyn Layne has written: “The sound of Machine Gun is just as aggressive and battering as its namesake, blowing apart all that's timid, immovable, or proper with an unrepentant and furious finality. The years have not managed to temper this fiery furnace blast from hell; it's just as relentless and shocking an assault now as it was then. Even stout-hearted listeners will nearly be sent into hiding -- much like standing outside during a violent storm, withstanding this kind of fierce energy is a primal thrill.” (Shades of Muir here, who in Stickeen advises us that one “should welcome storms for their exhilarating music and motion, and go forth to see God making landscapes.”)
I first came across Machine Gun in 1996—a snippet of it was included in the two-CD set that accompanied David Toop’s Ocean of Sound, a book discussed in this newsletter before).
I was fortunate enough to see Brötzmann play live a few years later as part of Chicago cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Lightbox Orchestra (in a configuration which has been alternately referred to as the “Brötzmann Lightbox” or the “Brötzmann Tentet+2”).
In more recent years I have perhaps gravitated more toward Brötzmann’s collages and assemblages, some of which are quite remarkable—
—but he never stopped being an important musician, continuously growing, changing, deepening his vocabulary. Check out any of the thrillingly strange collaborations he embarked upon (in his late 70s!) with the experimental lap steel performer Heather Leigh (who some of you may know from her stint with the uncannily weird improvisational group Charalambides). Here’s Sparrow Nights (2018), the first Leigh/ Brötzmann studio release.
-JPB, writing from Dedham, MA // June 26, 2023 (revised Wednesday, June 28)