He isn’t old. He was born well into the digital age, in fact. He just finds it overwhelming.

He likes video games—one game, really. A single title on PlayStation that he plays over and over. He knows every corridor, every enemy pattern, every place the music swells or drops away. Repetition doesn’t bore him; it steadies him. It narrows the world to something manageable. His friends are always chasing the next release, the next update. Dylan stays put. The game does what he needs it to do.

Social media doesn’t.

Instagram is too fast, too loud, like standing in the middle of a room where everyone is talking at once and no one is listening. If it slowed down—if it asked less of him—maybe he could learn its rhythms. It never does.

TikTok makes him want to throw something out a window.

Facebook feels exposed in the wrong way. Teachers. Relatives. People he doesn’t want knowing what he’s reading, thinking, or quietly worrying about.

Bluesky is too political.

X has too many trolls.

So Dylan mostly stays offline.

He reads instead.

Sci-fi. Noir. Graphic novels with vampires or zombies—stories where the rules are strange but consistent, where danger is at least honest about being dangerous. His town has a Barnes & Noble, an independent bookstore with creaky floors and handwritten staff picks, and a library that smells like paper and dust and something faintly electric. All of them are within walking distance. The B&N is easier to drive to, so that’s usually where he goes when he knows exactly what he wants.

Most of the time, he doesn’t have to go online for books at all.

He’s pushed himself into used-book websites a few times. A friend—also anti-corporate, also tired—introduced him to Bookshop.org, which he tolerates because it feels less like shouting and more like conversation. Still, he prefers places with doors. Bells. Humans.

Today, he doesn’t know what he’s looking for.

He wanders into the independent bookstore just to be somewhere quieter than his own thoughts. The front table is stacked with new releases. He circles it once, then twice. Picks something up. Puts it down. The spines begin to blur.

Eventually, he does the thing he hates most.

He asks for help.

“I’m looking for a book,” he says, already feeling ridiculous.

The bookseller smiles—not the customer-service smile, but the real one. Curious. Patient.

“What kind?”

Dylan shrugs. “It might not be here.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “We can order almost anything.”

He hesitates. “It’s not… online only, is it?”

She laughs softly, the way people do when they understand what you’re really asking.

“No,” she says. “And even if it were, we’d still find a way.”

He gives her the title. A vampire story. One he’s been thinking about for weeks.

She nods. Types. Pauses.

“Oh,” she says, typing the title (The Unlife of Lisa Cooper) into the search bar. “Yes. We can get this. Paperback. It’s also available as a hardcover.”

Something loosens in his chest.

As he steps aside from the counter, receipt folded carefully into his pocket, he becomes aware of someone behind him in line.

A young woman. His age, maybe a year older. Dark hair pulled back in a way that looks unplanned but definitely isn’t. She’s holding a canvas tote with something literary printed on it. He notices all of this at once and then immediately wishes he hadn’t.

She smiles at him in the polite, fleeting way strangers do when they’re about to occupy the same small space.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” Dylan replies, softer than he intended. His face feels warm. He steps away too quickly, pretending to study a shelf he’s already decided against.

He lingers anyway.

At the desk, the bookseller turns to the woman.

“Hi—what can I help you with?”

The woman hesitates, then asks, not embarrassed, just hopeful,

“Hey, I was wondering if you could get a book that was self-published?”

Dylan freezes.

The bookseller doesn’t blink.

“Absolutely,” she says. “Do you have the title?”

“Yes,” the woman says, relief threading her voice. “It’s called The Signal Between Us.”

Keys click. A screen refreshes.

“Oh,” the bookseller says, pleased. “Yes. We can order that. Paperback. No problem at all.”

Dylan doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t need to.

He steps out into the day.

It’s warm, foggy, threatening rain that never quite arrives. A gentle breeze moves through the street, nudging him as he walks—less a push than a reminder that the world is larger than the noise people keep making.

A few days later, his phone rings.

He almost doesn’t answer it. Unknown number.

“Hi, this is the bookstore,” the voice says. “Your order’s in.”

When he walks back in, the bell rings the same way it always does.

And she’s there again.

Their eyes meet. Recognition settles between them easily, like something that had just been waiting.

He takes his book from the counter—**The Unlife of Lisa Cooper**—the cover cool and solid in his hands.

As he turns, he sees her slip her own book into her bag. Not quickly. Just slowly enough.

**The Signal Between Us**.

She looks up, smiling now.

“You got yours too, huh?”

“Yeah,” Dylan says. “Looks like it.”

“I’m Maya.”

“Dylan.”

There’s a pause—not awkward. Just open.

“Want to grab a coffee?” he asks. “There’s a place across the street.”

“I’d like that,” she says.

The coffee shop is warm and busy in a gentler way than the internet. Cups clink. Espresso hisses. A low blur of voices that doesn’t demand anything from him.

They find a small table near the window.

Dylan sets his book down between them like proof.

“It’s about a vampire,” he says. “But not in the usual way. Lisa Cooper hates being one. She’s been a vampire since the nineteenth century, so she’s dead, technically—but she still has to exist somehow. If she doesn’t feed, she disappears. So she’s trying to figure out how to make it work.”

Maya’s face shifts into real attention.

“And there are all these other vampires who won’t leave her alone,” Dylan adds, warming to it. “Like—there’s a whole ecosystem of them. Power, rules, obsession. And she keeps getting pulled into it.”

“That sounds incredible,” Maya says.

He nods, and then, because it matters, he says, “She also has a dog.”

Maya smiles. “Of course she does.”

“Chewy,” Dylan says. “And he’s… kind of magical.”

Maya laughs, delighted. “Okay, sold.”

She pulls her own book out of the bag, turns it so he can see it again—not as an advertisement, just as a shared object, a thing with weight.

“Mine’s quieter,” she says. “A father and a daughter who don’t really know each other the way they should. It’s about absence, and what it does to people. And what happens when someone finally stops pretending the silence is normal.”

Dylan looks at the cover, then back at her. He doesn’t say it, but he understands: quiet stories can be the ones that hit the hardest.

They talk a little more—about what they like, what they can’t stand, what kinds of endings make them feel wrecked in the good way. The conversation doesn’t feel like performing. It feels like breathing.

When they step back outside, their coffees are in to-go cups, warm through the sleeves. The fog has thinned. The day still threatens rain, but it doesn’t deliver. The street looks freshly rinsed anyway.

They walk side by side, each holding a warm paper cup and an independent-bookstore bag folded carefully under one arm.

After a moment, Maya says, “There’s this author on the internet—”

She stops herself when she sees Dylan’s face.

“I know,” she says, laughing. “I hate it too.”

He smiles. “Okay. Go on.”

“But honestly,” she says, “I wouldn’t know about her if it wasn’t for the internet. She calls herself a genre hopper. Supernatural, horror, and then these middle-grade books that are somehow still a little unsettling. In a good way.”

“That sounds… complicated,” Dylan says, approvingly.

“There’s one I keep meaning to order,” she adds. “Searching for Sadie. Maybe after I finish this.”

She taps her bag.

They cross the street together. The fog thins. The rain never comes.

And for once, neither of them thinks about being online at all.

In a time when dynasties are suspect and democracy is fragile, Jack Schlossberg reminds us that legacy means nothing if it isn’t earned.

When I first wrote about Jack Schlossberg, he was an activist with a camera and a conscience — speaking from the shoreline rather than the Senate floor. Now he’s traded surfboards for stump speeches, and the question isn’t whether he’ll uphold the Kennedy legacy, but how he’ll redefine it for a generation that distrusts dynasties.

As I said in the last Jack-centric piece, he truly is one of a kind. His @jackuno social persona says it all, doesn’t it? I’ll never forget my favorite comment on one of his Instagram video-grams: “I love whatever is wrong with you.” The affection behind it was impossible to mistake. That’s the kind of follower Jack attracts — people drawn to his candid humor, his ability to be both absurd and sincere in the same breath.

He’s built exactly the kind of loyal following that matters in the lion’s den of Trump 2.0 politics. Of course, his enemies will reactivate the old cynicism against legacy candidates. And yet, in an era when even Kennedys are no longer a Democratic Party exclusive, while Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is fixed in history as the defector, Jack has become one of the family’s sharpest defenders — the Kennedy who reclaimed the “D” in Democrat.

If elected by the constituents of New York’s 12th District, Jack will take his seat in the 119th U.S. Congress, a body that may yet prove to be the most ideologically fractured in modern history.

From Advocate to Candidate

Long before campaign consultants and PACs, Jack Schlossberg had already built something more elusive — trust. Through his @jackuno videos, he invited people into the raw edges of personality that most political figures smooth away. He was unfiltered but not reckless, funny but not flippant. There was something disarming about watching a Kennedy go live from a messy apartment, cracking jokes about the absurdity of modern life, then pivoting into articulate commentary on climate, education, and democracy itself.

That paradox — the earnest intellect inside an unpolished performer — became his signature. It’s what made him relatable, even when he invoked history. When Jack talked about public service, it wasn’t in the sepia tones of nostalgia; it was with the urgency of someone who recognizes the stakes of the present.

His activism, particularly in environmental causes and civic engagement, formed the groundwork for this moment. What once seemed like a young man experimenting with platform and voice now looks like preparation. JackUNO was never just performance art; it was political apprenticeship in real time — learning how to engage without alienating, how to critique power without cynicism, how to speak truth in a language people actually want to hear.

That skill — the ability to move between humor and gravity without losing credibility — may prove his greatest political asset. In an era of performative authenticity, Jack’s version of it still feels real.

The Kennedy Legacy, Rewired

For most of his life, Jack Schlossberg has carried the invisible weight of his name — a name that evokes idealism and tragedy in equal measure. Yet, unlike so many before him, he seems intent not on inheriting Camelot but dismantling its myth and rebuilding it from modern material. His version of legacy doesn’t rely on torchlight or marble. He might not have his grandfather’s luck of standing opposite the sweaty lip of Richard Nixon in the first televised presidential debate. No, Jack’s place in history can only be earned through irony, intellect, and a new kind of transparency.

In interviews and public remarks, he has rarely relied solely on lineage. He evokes the past, as we all do, but only insofar as it supports the merit. It’s a supporting rather than a defining feature of his presence. He draws attention to civic values — participation, compassion, reason — as if to remind the country that the Kennedy legacy was never meant to be inherited, only practiced. That’s a shrewd and necessary reframing in a time when dynasties are treated with suspicion and celebrity can obscure substance.

His candidacy, then, isn’t just a continuation of the Kennedy story but a revision of it. He’s translating an old vocabulary of service into a new idiom of authenticity. If Jack’s run for Congress succeeds, it won’t be because he looks backward but because he knows how to speak to a generation that doesn’t.

For all the analysis that will surround his campaign — the family comparisons, the inevitable nostalgia — the truth is simpler: Jack Schlossberg has done what many in his position could not. He has made people listen without first reminding them who his grandfather was.

And that, in the end, may be his quiet revolution — the moment when a famous name stopped echoing through history and started speaking in its own voice.

Editor’s note: This feature continues a thread begun in JackUNO Is One of a Kind, first published on Heavy Crown Press. The story has only grown more compelling — from civic advocate to candidate, Jack remains one of the few public figures whose authenticity feels entirely his own.

What moves me most about this piece isn’t just its documentation of artistry, but the lineage it restores. Out of centuries of exclusion and appropriation comes a burst of creative energy that refuses containment — art as inheritance, reimagined through rhythm, rhyme, and reinvention.

The genius of Hamilton wasn’t only in its innovation but in what it signaled: a new grammar of performance, built from struggle. What we’re seeing now — in the shuffle, in the syncopation of story and identity — is craft turning survival into something more: a reckoning with trauma and recovery through expression. It’s the moment when the descendants of a silenced history take ownership of the script and claim the stage not as a borrowed space, but as home.

It’s the perfect example of a cultural reckoning that seizes the full weight and power of imagination toward its own reclamation — not as nostalgia, not as protest alone, but as authorship. A declaration that the act of creation itself is resistance, and that artistry born from oppression carries not just echoes of pain, but the architecture of possibility.

Flaubert wrote that anticipation — that ache for what hasn’t yet come to pass — can be sweeter than any reality that follows. But the kind of creation this moment represents goes one step further. It transforms anticipation into fulfillment, not through arrival but through expression. Story becomes the vessel of what might be, the language through which imagination outruns circumstance. The shuffle, the lyric, the movement — they are not reenactments of history but the invention of futures. In this way, storytelling doesn’t merely preserve legacy; it extends it.

Every renaissance begins with reckoning. And what the interactive piece by Jesse Green (New York Times/Nov. 7, 2025) captures is proof that beauty isn’t born from permission but from persistence. The choreography is the archive; the rhythm, the record; the performance, the prayer. Craft and legacy are never separate. They move together, like syncopated heartbeats — one calling, the other answering, until the story finds its full voice.

Postscript: The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is currently presenting a companion exhibition on Black musical theater, drawing from two centuries of performance history. The exhibit of 270 items, titled “Syncopated Stages: Black Disruptions to the Great White Way,” runs now through February 2026, continuing the conversation in space and motion that this piece began online — a living archive of sound, image, and imagination. Check out the exhibit’s online presentation here: https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/syncopated-stages-black-disruptions-great-white-way

⚜️

The scan flickers; the grain of the paper deepens. Then—there he is.

Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke: Radical MP, reformer, troublemaker, accidental novelist.

His portrait in the archive begins to move.

The Conversation

Rovira: Sir Charles, you startled me. Are all your readers greeted so personally?

Dilke: Only those who publish me properly.

Rovira: What do you like to be called—Sir Charles, Mr. Dilke, or simply Charles?

Dilke: The title will do. The Dilke baronetcy was a modest affair—my grandfather founded The Athenæum and wrote more editorials than sonnets, which in England was considered the greater contribution to civilisation. My father collected facts; I collected controversies. Between us, we made a family tradition of earnestness and trouble.

Rovira: Speaking of trouble—history remembers a scandal.

Dilke: (smiling thinly) Ah yes, the Crawford case. A divorce trial in which everyone was found guilty, save the truth. My enemies said I’d seduced a married woman; my lawyers said I’d done nothing of the sort. The jury believed the newspapers, and the newspapers believed no one. I resigned, of course. The public adores a fallen Radical—it makes repentance so much easier to watch.

Rovira: Let’s turn to your creation. Tell us about Prince Florestan. Who is he? Why that name?

Dilke: Florestan was Beethoven’s defiant prisoner—the man who sings his freedom from the dungeon. I borrowed it for a prince who believes he can sing liberty from a throne. He’s half-German, half-Grimaldi: a Württemberger by birth, a Monegasque by accident, and a republican by education.

Rovira: But there was a real Prince Florestan, wasn’t there? No relation to yours, it seems?

Dilke: None at all, though the coincidence delighted me. Prince Florestan I of Monaco reigned briefly before my time—a well-meaning man swallowed by events. I merely borrowed his name and made him my vessel for folly. My Florestan is an invention with one foot in Cambridge and the other in absurdity.

Rovira: Your Florestan was fond of Rabagas. Tell us philistines of the twenty-first century what Rabagas refers to.

Dilke: Ah, Sardou’s play! A sharp little political farce from 1872. Rabagas was his caricature of the demagogue—modelled on Gambetta, though the French prefer to forget that. When my prince quotes Rabagas, he mistakes performance for politics. He imagines he can govern as cleverly as an actor delivers a line. Most governments do.

Rovira: You wrote The Fall of Prince Florestan to parody monarchy. What do you think of the monarchies that have survived into our century? The Grimaldis still reign in Monaco, and Britain now has its own Charles III.

Dilke: (chuckles softly) Ah, poetic symmetry! Monaco endures because its scandals are more picturesque than its laws, and Britain endures because its scandals are politely forgotten. The Grimaldis have refined the art of ceremonial glamour—they trade in lineage as others trade in luxury goods.

Rovira: Just to clarify for the readers, Sir Charles is marveling at the symmetry of the British throne being occupied by Charles III when, in his own day—the 1880s—Monaco was ruled by Prince Charles III.

Dilke: Precisely! History repeats itself, but with better tailoring. Your new Charles seems a monarch suited to his people: fond of gardens, mildly guilty about empire, and perfectly harmless. In my day we tried to replace kings with ideas; in yours, you have made kings into ideas.

Rovira: You sound almost affectionate.

Dilke: Affectionate? Hardly. But monarchy is no longer dangerous. It has become theatre—a constitutional screensaver, endlessly looping. One cannot rebel against a pageant.

Rovira: You’re aware you’ve been edited. Re-typeset, annotated, given a Preface.

Dilke: Indeed. Heavy Crown Press, is it? A spirited title. Heavy is the head… etcetera.

Rovira: And your opinion of the new edition?

Dilke: Only that the punctuation has been tidied. I left those commas in rebellion. One wonders whether the twenty-first century still possesses grammatical standards at all. Rovira has been meticulous in her footnotes, explaining the most rudimentary aspects of a gentleman’s life—Eton, Trinity, and the proceedings of the Cambridge Union! What next? A glossary for port and cigars?

Rovira: Modern readers like context.

Dilke: Context! In my day we called it education.

Rovira: One final question, Sir Charles. How do you want to be remembered?

Dilke: As a cautionary tale, perhaps—or as proof that reformers and sinners are often the same species. I once hoped to improve the world; now I’d be content to correct its proofs. Tell your readers that monarchy endures, republics wobble, and punctuation is eternal. Festina lente, my dear. And mind your commas.

When the screen stilled, the archive window seemed warmer, as though a page had just come fresh from the press.

The Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco—edited and revised for Heavy Crown Press—is available now on Kindle and will be available soon as a paperback.

Perfect reading for the season when the past insists on speaking—and the ghosts insist on footnotes.

⚜️

I submitted my own short story about Isaac, who is coming unraveled while his wife gives birth, but as his memories come roaring into his present consciousness, he recalls the day he met her and the instant spark that only intensified all the days after, filling him with not only love but fear, the pure terror of losing it all.

John Mese submitted the story First Kiss. It tells of middle grade puppy love. Boys don’t know girls; girls don’t know boys. It takes a lifetime, sometimes, to figure out the simplest things. How does anyone make it past puberty?

Writers everywhere are debating the merits and perils of AI technology. I’d been seeing and hearing so many incredible things—like people using AI to write entire novels, that sort of thing. Playing around with ChatGPT, I decided to do an experiment. I prompted an AI persona I’ve come to know as Veronica Verne into helping me write the story of Petra de Luca, an orphan from age four who centers her identity in the power of the ancient philosophers until one day, giving a lecture on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, she suffers a stroke. To recover, she returns not to the place where she grew up after her parents died but to the place where she was born, where it all started for her. The salty air of Monaco opens her pores. Recovering the utility of her hands, she begins to draw the seascape, the bends of the Rock, and the lines and shadows of the Oceanographic Museum. Love blooms too. She finds that she can never go back to the person she was. The tide comes in, always a new tide.

The artwork of Amedeo Modigliani decorates almost every page of the issue. Modigliani was a complex person whose art remains resolutely undefinable. It’s not Impressionist. It’s not Cubist, nor like Picasso, and yet it carries the influence of artistic movements that raged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He did it his way, a passion and a coping mechanism for the intense pain caused by tuberculosis. He over drank, too, to mollify the pain, but that led to other problems. He painted to sooth himself. His distortions, far from detracting reality, heighten our ability to perceive his subjects’ emotions. His paintings have life. We can hear the cries of his subjects. We can hear their voices. That’s why I find that his art adds so much power and resonance to the magazine. I hope it speaks to all of you. I think it will.

You can read the issue online here: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/15b7e50933.html

Or you can download the PDF here.

Submissions are already being accepted for the second issue, due out in the Fall of 2026. Honestly, if that issue goes anywhere near as smoothly as this one, it could be out sooner. The autumn timeframe, though, feels right for now. We’re on an annual schedule that might advance to biannual if there is an appetite to justify it.

Share Heavy Crown Press

Rating: Five stars!

You can listen to my interview with Georgina in the embedded link above or view it in the embedded YouTube video below. The conversation is also available almost anywhere you can listen to podcasts. It is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, Audible, Amazon Music, Player FM, Podchaser, and Boomplay.

This Substack will always be free, although I do paywall a few articles. The paywalled articles, “Ashley’s Life Stories,” are exclusive to my paid subscribers, but this is not the only way you can support me. I have a tip jar here, where you can donate as little or as much as you like: https://ko-fi.com/heavycrownpress. I also have a Buy Me a Coffee account: https://buymeacoffee.com/heavycrownpress. Finally, there is a fourth way to help me without surrounding a penny: just give me a follow on social media, i.e. Bluesky. Go to your App Store, download Bluesky (it’s free) and follow me @ heavycrownpress. I’m also heavycrownpress on Instagram, Threads, and YouTube.

Here is Grace's link.tree from which all of her works are linked: https://linktr.ee/gracewrites. You can listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, Audible, or Amazon Music; or watch it on YouTube.

She publishes paperbacks, ebooks, Kindle Vella, and even one Audiobook at audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Searching-for-Sadie-Audiobook/B0BKBJX5TS

Her social media links are linked from there as well. She is very active on TikTok, but her TikTok videos are viewable at YouTube if you prefer that: https://www.youtube.com/@thewritegrace4566

I also mention the Kindle Vella Review that I wrote for her still-in-progress Kindle Vella story Audrey and Maude:

I briefly mention my own Kindle Vella story: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BVJ3K725

Audible! https://www.audible.com/pd/B0D65NQBG6?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

AR: Tell me about your process as a writer. Since it’s Kindle Vella, do you truly write it one episode at a time, without planning it too much, or do you have it mostly worked out beforehand? 

MS: I’m supposed to have a process? Uh-oh. I’m a planner for the most part. About 95% of my writings are outlined in detail before I start them. I write everything by hand in a notebook, sometimes multiple ones. When I type the story I may make changes, and if I do, I notate that in my notebooks. All but two of my Kindle Vella stories are finished works. The [unfinished] two I write as I go on my computer, then copy [them] over to KV. The only consistent thing I have in my writing process is my cup of coffee. lol.

AR: Where and how did you expose your writings prior to Kindle Vella?

MS: I have several novels published and those were mainly shared on social media, a tidbit here and there, and ads shared among friends and fellow authors. I share[d them] on my Facebook page, TikTok and Instagram mostly. I’ve only been on Kindle Vella for a year (give or take) and I do enjoy it. It is a good way to make extra money on the side once you grow a following.

AR: Are there any authors who serve as your “models”, or even ones who just inspire you in a particular way?

MS: In the sense of a role model for writing, in the traditional publishing world, I have always loved and admired Christopher Pike. He was my introduction to horror other than Stephen King. His writings and imagination toward unconventional subjects always left me feeling full after devouring his work. I also love the style of Nora Roberts and Laurel K. Hamilton.

AR: Tell me about your publishing company. You have an enormous amount of works. How many of them started on KV, or started on some other platform? Is there one that you’re most proud of?

MS: United Faedom Publishing started a few years ago and we’ve published many anthologies and two author collections from very talented writers. I’m proud to be a part of their first steps in those amazing creations! We aren’t doing any submissions at the moment as I am focusing more on my solo career. I hope to have submission calls out again in the next year. Legends and Legions, Hickery Hollow, Love Me, Anyway, and Mirrored Souls all debuted on Kindle Vella. Legends and Legions is an adult fantasy series with a new story in the same universe but with different characters. For KV I’m most proud of Hickery Hollow. It started as a dream I had one night when I hadn’t been feeling well. I wrote the whole thing in about a month and let my kids read it. They all loved it so much that I decided to try it on Kindle Vella first. I have plans for it to be 3 books.

AR: You mentioned in one of our Facebook Messenger chats that there might be something more to come for Edmund (of [the KV story] “Naughty or Nice.”) I’m excited to read more about the tricky elf! What’s that all about?

MS: I love Edmund! The story was originally published in an anthology several years back. I added it to my short story and poem collection (out in 2024) but I have plans to make an origin story for him. Plus, future collections of mine will include more shorts of the tricky little fella.

AR: Anything else you’d like to add? Upcoming releases, ideas, forthcoming projects?

MS: The Chronicles of Fey trilogy has its second release in 2024. The first book is already available on Amazon, and Diverse Shadows will return to publication after a small hiatus in the new year as well.

Keep scrolling down for links and teasers to all of Mel Sell’s works, as well as my reviews of Hickery Hollow & Naughty or Nice!

I was pleasantly surprised to learn in the interview that there’s a sequel in the works for The Unlife of Lisa Cooper. “Lisa goes to Ireland,” Jamie told me. That’s all he’s willing to divulge about it. Well, that, plus, he’ll be turning up the heat on the slow burn romance that begins at a low simmer in the first book. Back in July, Jamie wrapped the prequel, The Vampires of 1883, on Kindle Vella. That covers Lisa’s backstory—when she was a fledgling vamp, just three years old in undead years. It takes us back to mid-19th century Boston. There was a missed opportunity to ask about Wicked Wound of Whitney Hill, available as a paperback and free on Kindle Unlimited. That has nothing to do with Lisa, or vampires. It’s actually about witches, though they’re a lot like Lisa in that they have do-gooder instincts in deviance of their underworld trappings.

Since we mentioned the social writing site INKITT in our chat, here's a link to the INKITT version of Honey Trapped: https://www.inkitt.com/stories/romance/828202

Follow her on instagram/twitter  @authorjaprice Subscribe to her YouTube channel:  @JAPrice  Thank you for listening and subscribing to this podcast. If you'd like to support my work and enable us to continue platforming creative people, consider tipping me at https://ko-fi.com/heavycrownpress.

Anne's link tree: https://linktr.ee/annetrowbridgebooks

Follow on Instagram @annetrowbridgebooks Follow on Twitter @annetrowbooks

Thank you for listening and subscribing to this podcast. If you'd like to support my work and enable us to continue platforming creative people, consider tipping me at https://ko-fi.com/heavycrownpress.

At Vimeo, you can see samples of his acting, producing and directing work, i.e. Bugtussle and Wild Son: The Testimony of Christian Brando, at Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/johnmese

He starred in a horror movie called Noise in the Middle (2020) which we somehow neglected to talk about at all. 

Thank you for listening and subscribing to this podcast. If you'd like to support my work and enable us to continue platforming creative people, consider tipping me at https://ko-fi.com/heavycrownpress.

My post-interview write-up: https://heavycrownpress.substack.com/p/a-wonderful-life

BUGTUSSLE (short film 2022) links: https://heavycrownpress.substack.com/p/bugtussle

https://heavycrownpress.substack.com/p/of-men-and-morals

TUTU GRANDE (short film 2018): https://heavycrownpress.substack.com/p/tutu-grande

Follow  @DerekSitter  here on YouTube.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0803272/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Sitter

Instagram @ dereksitter

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When she met “Dave,” she asked him out, and even though he turned her down on the first try—only because he had a prior commitment to a comic book convention—she did not back down. This anecdote was recorded, and made the final cut: She was shocked at his choosing to keep his monthly comic book meeting plans rather than go on a date with her. Some girls might have even been affronted by this. Not Amanda. It spurred her curiosity! What was so special about this comic book convention anyway? He was passionate about it, so much so that on one of their later dates, he brought with him his work-in-progress Boba Fett costume, needing her help to stitch together the “wookie braids” on the costume. Again, some girls might have been annoyed about such an unconventional “romantic” evening with a new boyfriend. Not Amanda! Nope, far from it. Amanda said, That’s my guy!

The Murphys moved to Arizona because they wanted to buy a house—something two IKEA employees could never do in Los Angeles County. After several years in Coolidge, AZ, they lived moved to Norristown, PA, where Dave continued to work for IKEA while Amanda worked at a bank. She says with a smirk that their neighborhood was “kinda shady,” and that even their dogs, Danny Boy and Cookie, were relieved to get back to Arizona.

Earlier this year, their 13-year-old fox terrier, Danny Boy, passed away from kidney failure. Danny Boy and Cookie are the Murphys’ beloved babies. Cookie is a Brittany Spaniel/Beagle mix rescued by the couple in 2013. (Cookie’s rescue anniversary happens to be July 5th, the day after Amanda and I recorded the episode.)

Then there is… Slowpoke_the_desert_tortoise—mentioned only last, but definitely not least, and not exactly a baby. Her age is not precisely known, but it falls somewhere between 60 and 90. Amanda believes her to be nearer to 90. Slowpoke is really her mother-in-law’s pet, but since her mother-in-law moved in with her and Dave, she has eagerly taken on the role of principal caretaker.

The two-part interview covers a wide range of topics: pets, fan culture, cosplay, favorite films and projects dear to both of us. Yes, Amanda did what I had no reason to expect. She turned the proverbial mic around and became inquisitor, quizzing me about my writing and why I began doing these interviews. The short answer to the latter question is that I want to platform all the creative people I come into contact with—just because I can, and just because it’s fun.

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Driving along in his automobile, a teenager, he heard an advertisement for Puttin’ On The Hits on the radio. Now, at this time (1986ish) he was just a kid in small-city Oklahoma. When I think of Oklahoma, I think of Tulsa, and The Outsiders. I was obsessed with all of S.E. Hinton’s books (and the movies that came out of them) as a kid. Derek Sitter, though, was no greaser, and McAlester is not Tulsa. Derek was on the brink of enlisting the in the Air Force when he and some buddies got the wild idea to audition for Puttin’ On The Hits.1 They went all the way to the grand finals in Hollywood (clad in diapers and singing/banging around to “Infant Rock,” their version of “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister) and actually tied for the prize. The money enabled Derek to get out of his Air Force enlistment and go to college.2

I don’t want to use the words he says are most commonly ascribed to him—words like “intense” (or worse) “crazy.” From the way he talked about his grad school years at LSU, they were fun but also incredibly challenging. The young student of John Dennis and Barry Kyle was practically bouncing off the walls in a time of highest energy and exhilaration. At the same time, he was pushed to limits previously unimagined. “Intense” or “crazy” might not be far off the mark to describe those years for Derek—and yet, these words don’t feel quite nuanced enough. They feel hollow, empty, almost cliched. Years after that time, Derek came to realize that the “craziness” wasn’t just the recklessness or the restlessness often attributed to youth. His LSU years were rockin’, that’s for sure—literally, as he was a singer in a Blues Funk band called Bonedog! So on top of doing plays and teaching acting to undergrads, he traveled around southeast Louisiana performing with three other guys at college venues. There’s a photo of him in LSU’s Daily Reveille that perfectly encapsulates the abundance of energy bursting from him in those days. It shows him climbing the flagpole in front of the Music and Dramatic Arts Building. He says he used to do it before every show. It is tradition in the LSU theatre department for one of the students to hoist the departmental flag before a show, only students were advised to use a ladder. Derek bucked this advisement and simply shimmied his way up the pole! In the photo, taken by W. Scott Kiker, Derek is seen looking down from the top of the pole. The caption reads: “POLLING—Derek Sitter, a graduate assistant in acting, shimmys [sic] up a flagpole in front of the Music and Dramatic Arts building to hang a flag, only to find out that he does not have the key to the lock that holds the flag to the pole. Sitter helped prepare for Thursday night’s production of ‘All the King’s Men.’”

He was able to unleash a lot of energy in scene study classes. Professor J.D. (John Dennis) admonished him to stop banging his head during a Chekhov scene. The implication was for him to be a little less Okie and a little more turn-of-the-century Russian. That’s easier said than done for a Gen X kid in the throes of yet-undiagnosed bipolar mania.

People liked him, though. A lot. He even met the woman who became his wife and mother of his child in the MFA program. Sure, people called him Crazy D. “Crazy in a good way,” they said. “Whatever the hell that means,” he scoffs.

Professor J.D. helped him and his girlfriend (now-wife, Jeanne Sanders) get set up in Los Angeles. J.D. put him in contact with a former MFA student called John Mese, who was already settled out there, and already well-established in the Screen Actors Guild. Mese helped Derek and Jeanne find an apartment and get going in showcases. (Mese actually tells that story in my interview with him.)

Derek (who already had SAG membership from his two years living and working as an actor in Portland after graduation)3 cut his teeth in roles like “Rooker” in Reggie’s Prayer (1996); Recruit #1 in one episode of Nowhere Man; “Cop #2” in Chicago Hope; and a chopper pilot on ER. Nothing prepares you for the gruesome, fast-paced, sometimes flattering but rarely fulfilling realities of generic TV appearances. J.D.’s and Barry Kyle’s acting students were classically trained in character studies from the best playwrights of the 20th century. Dressing up as “Cop #2” and having a bunch of egomaniacs direct one as to how and when precisely to pick up a coffee cup are not calculated to inspire a hungry soul like Derek Sitter. He kept at it, however. It was not in his nature to just throw in the towel. And it wasn’t all bad. There was some great stuff in the mix—some diamonds in the ruff, we might say. In 2001, he was cast in a play at the Laurelgrove Theatre—a fantastic experience, he recalls. His role in The Dead Boy by Joseph Pintauro—the U.S. stage premiere, no less—earned him a nomination for Best Featured Actor at the Ovation Awards.4 He was even friends with a fellow nominee in the same category, one incredibly famous Leslie Jordan, who lives in my personal memory for his plethora of hilarious guest TV appearances on shows like Will & Grace and Boston Legal. Leslie ended up winning the Ovation Award—for Southern Baptist Sissies,5 but he and Derek remained friends. People often scoff at the idea that “it’s just an honor to be nominated” but when you’re in company like that, it has to be true. They picked five stage actors from all over Southern California, and Derek, not even 35 years old, was one of those selected. Nevertheless, the stressors were building up: marriage, becoming a dad, and juggling these new experiences with the rollercoaster of bipolar disorder and mental health treatment. While he got some good credits on hit TV shows (Presidio Med, Zoey 101) he and his wife were increasingly worn out by the bullshit of L.A. life. (His wife had her own difficulties, being a schoolteacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. One time, she phoned him to say her school in lockdown after a gang shooting in a parking lot.)6 In 2007, they decided to move to quieter Bend, Oregon.

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Bend has gained some recognition of late for being the last place on earth where there’s a functioning Blockbuster video store. In fact, the director of the documentary The Last Blockbuster, Taylor Morden, is a great friend of Derek’s. Morden and Sitter worked together on Bugtussle, the 22-minute short film that Derek and I discussed at length in the first and second segments of the interview. Bugtussle was released into the film festival circuit last year and continues to rack up awards. In fact, shortly after our interview wrapped up, it acquired two more accolades—a Best Duo diamond award (for Derek and John Mese)7 and a “Best Actor in a Dark Comedy” platinum award for Derek.8

And yet Bugtussle is skipping way ahead in the story because the man who directed and acted in Bugtussle is very different from the man who first embarked on a filmmaking path early in the 2010s. The man today no longer has panic attacks. He finds solace in mindfulness techniques like meditation. He talks about having awakened to living in the present moment. He had to go through quite a bit of therapy and psychiatric treatment to get there. There was a great deal of overlap between his early forays into filmmaking and his experiences as a psychiatric patient. His current work-in-progress, a script called Brain Slut, is a direct descendent of his first screenplay, written about a decade ago and titled, Second Sleep. Second Sleep never got made (not fully) although it got a fair amount of publicity in Bend.9 It seems there is a curious story behind it. They put a good deal of work into it. Derek's friend Fred Lehne had the starring role, a part reflective of Derek's personal experiences as a psyc patient. Weirdly, the director of the film took the footage and disappeared. All Derek has now from Second Sleep are a couple of trailers, which you can watch on his YouTube and Vimeo channels. With Brain Slut, however, he’s taking the original ideas that went into Second Sleep and turning them into what has the potential to become his first feature film. Before I even read the script the night before my interview with him, I googled the term “brain slut” and didn’t find very much. There was an urban dictionary definition and there was also an article from the Bend Bulletin about Second Sleep. Apparently, a “brain slut” is a “person who submits to psychoactive drug testing for pay.”10 While Derek never did that, he certainly has enough firsthand experience with those kind of drugs to know what they do to the brain. The script gives the impression of overlapping, hyperactive thoughts and images. There is a frequently recurring image of an "Antler Man" that haunts the protagonist.

derek_sitter

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Is it real? Is it hallucination? Is it a daydream? As we discussed in the interview, Brain Slut promises to produce a questionable sense of reality in the audience. It’s also a first for Derek in filming technique. Bugtussle (Short 2022) and Tutu Grande (Short 2018) were very theatrical, character-driven, actor-focused. This will be an entirely fresh experiment in visual presentation. There will still be dialogue, but mostly it will be a visual experience. You’ll see not only what the character is seeing, but also what’s going on in his mind. At the end of it, as Derek says in the interview without spoiling the ending, the viewer will be left wondering if any of it happened as perceived in the moment. One image at the end will threaten to overturn the whole.

But here is the rub. If we saw it, if the character saw it, how could it be anything other than real? A thought in the brain is real. A flash of emotion is real. How Philip (the protagonist) experiences his trauma all comes down to brain chemistry—the drugs working in his brain or the withdrawal from those drugs. I know for myself, when I’m least conscious, when I’m most consumed in whatever thoughts are swirling in my brain, or intoxicated, I’m disconnected from the present reality. In that disconnection, I’m lost in past trauma, or anxiety of the future, and it’s only when I “wake up”—Derek talks a lot about waking up—that I become aware of what’s happening right here, right now. Drugs take you out of the present moment by numbing the pain. Anyone of us has potential to become a pharmacological guinea pig, and that opens up a pandora’s box of issues about addiction and dependency. So many of us are completely broken by these things, or nearly broken. Through this brokenness, though, which Derek’s films shine a light on, there is a path to an expansion of consciousness—a sense of being connected, really connected to aliveness. I mean aliveness, not just life, not just a beating heart, but in fact, the essence of that life as it beats, and beats again.

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