Hi all! It's been a while since I caught a minute for a blog update here, and there's a lot to catch up on. First and foremost, in light of the recent election, the queer community in the US is bracing for the worst. I am fortunate to already live in a blue state. But as an out nonbinary queer in all my extant writings, my work depends on being able to share openly online. I'm not self-censoring unless or until forced to, and I'll keep this site up as long as I can, but I may not be able to keep Interrobang Tarot online in the event of federal anti-queer or anti-trans censorship laws.
Now I've been hustling like mad to complete long-form life's work over the last couple years, in case of this event. I wanted to wrap up as many big projects as I could that I'd already sunk years into. Because of the political urgency, and the risk of losing so much work already in progress, I haven't spared much time in that crunch for public blogging or self promotion. I'm happy to report that I have completed a significant volume of top-quality work just in time: two tarot decks, one chunky tarot guidebook, two fully illustrated volumes of lyrical poetry, an album of piano nocturnes to go with the poetry books, aaaaand I just wrapped recording on a vocal-intensive trad folk album that I'll be mixing and releasing on a rolling basis through the winter.
I am troubled by the potential time left to distribute these good things! I do hope for a successful resistance and many years of free expression left to come. I am absolutely not banking or acting on that hope. I'd encourage you all to copy and print out whatever writings and spreads from the blog or patreon you'd like to hang onto for your personal use at home between now and then. And please do share these resources on social with your friends. Sharing with attribution and links back is always much appreciated! Start backing up your witchy, queer blogosphere resources while the backing up is good, buddies. Our tarot spreads directory lives here.
We'll have a few sales coming up this holiday season and The Fortune's Inkwell ebook is 50% off in my home shop from now until the inauguration. I'll also be releasing as much free video content as possible in the interim. Which brings us to...
Now I've been hustling like mad to complete long-form life's work over the last couple years, in case of this event. I wanted to wrap up as many big projects as I could that I'd already sunk years into. Because of the political urgency, and the risk of losing so much work already in progress, I haven't spared much time in that crunch for public blogging or self promotion. I'm happy to report that I have completed a significant volume of top-quality work just in time: two tarot decks, one chunky tarot guidebook, two fully illustrated volumes of lyrical poetry, an album of piano nocturnes to go with the poetry books, aaaaand I just wrapped recording on a vocal-intensive trad folk album that I'll be mixing and releasing on a rolling basis through the winter.
I am troubled by the potential time left to distribute these good things! I do hope for a successful resistance and many years of free expression left to come. I am absolutely not banking or acting on that hope. I'd encourage you all to copy and print out whatever writings and spreads from the blog or patreon you'd like to hang onto for your personal use at home between now and then. And please do share these resources on social with your friends. Sharing with attribution and links back is always much appreciated! Start backing up your witchy, queer blogosphere resources while the backing up is good, buddies. Our tarot spreads directory lives here.
We'll have a few sales coming up this holiday season and The Fortune's Inkwell ebook is 50% off in my home shop from now until the inauguration. I'll also be releasing as much free video content as possible in the interim. Which brings us to...
YouTube Tarot AMAs
I'd set up a YouTube channel just to host the deck walk through vids for Kickstarter. Now that I've got most of the active long-form projects done, I finally have time to delve into it. I'm kicking off with some AMAs from our Discord community. Today's topic is on spread-craft and troubleshooting tarot spreads. What do you do when all your placements in a spread make sense except for one off-the-wall card you can't figure out yet?
You can use the chapters and playback speed to skim around.
00:00 Introduction
01:20 Confusing Spread Placements
01:38 Wildcards & Jumper Cards
03:58 Layering Symbols in Story Context
07:00 Consulting Text as Bibliomancy
09:59 Follow-Up Cards
10:30 Poetic Logic & Folk Esoterica Methods
13:12 Prophesy Babble
14:37 Folk Esoterica Sample Reading
19:13 Time & Patience
22:24 Summary
26:14 Contradictions = Nuance
29:03 Spread Craft
33:27 End Notes & AMAs
The video covers these points in detail, but here's the TL/DR. You can...
1. Prevent this to some degree in the first place by writing wildcard placements into your spreads, or minding jumper cards.
2. Zoom out to review the bigger picture story of the reading. Then cycle through the different potential meanings associated with your outlier card and ask what best fits the story at hand. How might the context of the other cards on the table change that card's meaning?
3. Turn to the guidebook that comes with your deck, and treat the author's words like a bibliomancy reading, even if you have your own card meanings memorized.
4. Draw one follow-up card to narrow the message down.
5. Kick it over to poetic or dream logic, and try to generate an abstract or poetic, stream-of-consciousness one-liner to ruminate on.
6. Give it some extra time and thought to gel, or come back with fresh eyes the next day or next week. Your reading may be skewing predictive, and unclear because you don't have all the info yet in your personal life. Your reading may be skewing messy because your life is, and you've got multiple moving parts in play.
7. Pay extra attention to apparent contradictions and confusions as areas that highlight nuance, subtle distinctions, and fine details.
You can use the chapters and playback speed to skim around.
00:00 Introduction
01:20 Confusing Spread Placements
01:38 Wildcards & Jumper Cards
03:58 Layering Symbols in Story Context
07:00 Consulting Text as Bibliomancy
09:59 Follow-Up Cards
10:30 Poetic Logic & Folk Esoterica Methods
13:12 Prophesy Babble
14:37 Folk Esoterica Sample Reading
19:13 Time & Patience
22:24 Summary
26:14 Contradictions = Nuance
29:03 Spread Craft
33:27 End Notes & AMAs
The video covers these points in detail, but here's the TL/DR. You can...
1. Prevent this to some degree in the first place by writing wildcard placements into your spreads, or minding jumper cards.
2. Zoom out to review the bigger picture story of the reading. Then cycle through the different potential meanings associated with your outlier card and ask what best fits the story at hand. How might the context of the other cards on the table change that card's meaning?
3. Turn to the guidebook that comes with your deck, and treat the author's words like a bibliomancy reading, even if you have your own card meanings memorized.
4. Draw one follow-up card to narrow the message down.
5. Kick it over to poetic or dream logic, and try to generate an abstract or poetic, stream-of-consciousness one-liner to ruminate on.
6. Give it some extra time and thought to gel, or come back with fresh eyes the next day or next week. Your reading may be skewing predictive, and unclear because you don't have all the info yet in your personal life. Your reading may be skewing messy because your life is, and you've got multiple moving parts in play.
7. Pay extra attention to apparent contradictions and confusions as areas that highlight nuance, subtle distinctions, and fine details.
The State of The Projects
Our tarot deck kickstarter is fulfilled and the decks are now in stock in the shop.
Here's the scoop on the poetry volumes that just dropped! I've been writing sneaky, secret poetry foreverrrr. While I've historically been shy about it, lyrics are where I'm most fluid and at-home as a writer. I ran outta fucks to keep a lid on it as things got, you know, increasingly doomier, so I decided to shape up what could be shared publicly with some nifty illustrations. The results bring lush, haunted sketchbook vibes to the doom jamboree & last-minute queer art potluck.
Both these collections include witchy, folkloric subtext and a smattering each of tarot symbolism tucked throughout for Easter eggs. The links below will take you to the paperbacks. For the ebooks, I recommend the fixed format EPUB editions in my home shop. For one thing the illustrations are larger and higher quality in the EPUBs than the kindles. For another, there's no risk of losing ebooks downloaded from my own site if Amazon ever winds up censoring queer authors.
Both these collections include witchy, folkloric subtext and a smattering each of tarot symbolism tucked throughout for Easter eggs. The links below will take you to the paperbacks. For the ebooks, I recommend the fixed format EPUB editions in my home shop. For one thing the illustrations are larger and higher quality in the EPUBs than the kindles. For another, there's no risk of losing ebooks downloaded from my own site if Amazon ever winds up censoring queer authors.
 |  |
Tidal Locks
& Other Tales You Told So Long You Can't Tell What They Mean
Tidal Locks is a salty, playfully anachronistic glimpse into the private diaries of an irreverent contemplative and amiable recluse. An illustrated blend of fiction and confession, Marin’s poetry remixes the hallucinatory symbolism of folklore, natural history, occultism, and dream to explore the deep surrealism, haunted beauty, queer urgency, and mundane heartaches of waking life in a decaying world.
Tidal Locks blends melancholic brinewifery with gleeful, modern hipster trash in an attic’s stash of verse, written in secret over the course of fourteen years, published for the apocalypse.
We built this gate and kept it locked.
We tethered up and linked the knots
Until our knuckles polished down to bone.
We named the battened outfit Reassurance,
And we rested reassured we were alone . . .
Vanitas & Other Sticky Kitsch
Once upon the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Dutch elites commissioned master artists to paint lavish still lives of their riches, arranged nicely with human skulls, snuffed candles, rotting fruit, and other memento mori symbols. All this to recall that earthly life is ashen and senseless compared to the afterlife, so we’d best not get too precious about these fleeting, pretty things (preserved for all posterity in gilded frames above the banquet table.) The paintings were opulent, grim, Baroque, high-brow campy, and goth as Hell. So pious, it burns….
Vanitas & Other Sticky Kitsch rummages through the curio cupboards of haunted memory and macabre history. Let’s throw ourselves doomed searches for meaning in artifice, hedonism, and play-pretend psychometry. Let’s bum around with ghosts and call it research. Let’s find saucier ways to parade our confusion as we trace how we got here. Let’s follow the Dead Man’s Compass, locate ourselves within history, and chart surreal, new maps to follow.
Let’s watch a rotting thing turn beautiful.
The poetry and illustrations in this collection meditate on decadence and vanity, in every possible sense of the word, but especially as it recalls the splendor, urgency, sweet futility, and brevity of life. Here lies decorative grief for the autumn of an ailing society, and for you who have Seen Things.
& Other Tales You Told So Long You Can't Tell What They Mean
Tidal Locks is a salty, playfully anachronistic glimpse into the private diaries of an irreverent contemplative and amiable recluse. An illustrated blend of fiction and confession, Marin’s poetry remixes the hallucinatory symbolism of folklore, natural history, occultism, and dream to explore the deep surrealism, haunted beauty, queer urgency, and mundane heartaches of waking life in a decaying world.
Tidal Locks blends melancholic brinewifery with gleeful, modern hipster trash in an attic’s stash of verse, written in secret over the course of fourteen years, published for the apocalypse.
We built this gate and kept it locked.
We tethered up and linked the knots
Until our knuckles polished down to bone.
We named the battened outfit Reassurance,
And we rested reassured we were alone . . .
Vanitas & Other Sticky Kitsch
Once upon the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Dutch elites commissioned master artists to paint lavish still lives of their riches, arranged nicely with human skulls, snuffed candles, rotting fruit, and other memento mori symbols. All this to recall that earthly life is ashen and senseless compared to the afterlife, so we’d best not get too precious about these fleeting, pretty things (preserved for all posterity in gilded frames above the banquet table.) The paintings were opulent, grim, Baroque, high-brow campy, and goth as Hell. So pious, it burns….
Vanitas & Other Sticky Kitsch rummages through the curio cupboards of haunted memory and macabre history. Let’s throw ourselves doomed searches for meaning in artifice, hedonism, and play-pretend psychometry. Let’s bum around with ghosts and call it research. Let’s find saucier ways to parade our confusion as we trace how we got here. Let’s follow the Dead Man’s Compass, locate ourselves within history, and chart surreal, new maps to follow.
Let’s watch a rotting thing turn beautiful.
The poetry and illustrations in this collection meditate on decadence and vanity, in every possible sense of the word, but especially as it recalls the splendor, urgency, sweet futility, and brevity of life. Here lies decorative grief for the autumn of an ailing society, and for you who have Seen Things.
And Nocturnes for Book Sluts is a late night, dark academia soundtrack to read by. Audio illustrations just for kicks. (I'd been writing nocturnes anyway.)
You can thank the Discorders for requesting a bit of tasteful ankle flashing on the cover lol.
That catches us up for now. IDK exactly what my posting schedule will be for videos, but I'm gonna try to churn them out. I may share some vlog roundups here as we go, or you can subscribe directly on the Tube. Thanks for reading and take care all! Hope you enjoy the stuff!
You can thank the Discorders for requesting a bit of tasteful ankle flashing on the cover lol.
That catches us up for now. IDK exactly what my posting schedule will be for videos, but I'm gonna try to churn them out. I may share some vlog roundups here as we go, or you can subscribe directly on the Tube. Thanks for reading and take care all! Hope you enjoy the stuff!
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