Sunday Newsletter

Conversations, #4

Jan 12, 2025

For this installment of the Conversation Series I caught up with my friend Erik Tinsley. Erik lives in Oregon, but he’s got a San Diego past like a lot of my friends. I met Erik through the audio book record label I run. His second tape we released is a recording of the novella I hope this finds you well, which is about transitioning, both medical and spiritual (or maybe metaphysical). I love Erik’s writing because it’s useful. He reminds me of that Fred Rogers quote about looking for the helpers during a period of chaos or instability:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

Erik Tinsley is one of the helpers, and that’s a valuable thing in this age when half the people you meet are screaming while the other half pretend not to hear the screams.

About this series: The Conversations Series is what it sounds like—transcribed conversations with people I like. Not interviews. Not journalism. Just a nice, in-depth talk about whatever’s going on in our lives. These come out Sunday afternoons or Sunday nights because Sunday afternoon/night feels like a good time to read a long talk between two friends.

Other things—

-I’ve got some writing in the new issue of the Neutral Spaces magazine. Big thanks to the very tall Giacomo Pope.

-The new Reyna Tropical album, Malegria, is really nice for these winter days. Pop music of Afro-Mexico.

-Check out your new favorite publishing house and distro, Bread & Roses Press. All my things are available there and many more. New stuff added constantly.

-I’m recording an audio book album of Roberto Bolaño “covers.” It’s a Patreon exclusive because I don’t own the rights to the excerpts I’m reading. Each poem or story is posted to Patreon as soon as it’s recorded. So far there are two of them up, “The Romantic Dogs” and “Luck.” It will not be released publicly.