The War at Home: The Crazies (George A. Romero, 1973; Breck Eisner, 2010)
What happens when the scares start catching up with reality?
Today, January 19th, is the final order cut-off for the last issue of Be Not Afraid. Go put it on your pull list, while you have the chance. Also, if you're not yet convinced, check out this preview, which contains some of my favorite covers of the series.
Next Tuesday, January 27, the DILF World Tour hits Literary Arts in Portland, where I'll appear in conversation with long-time friend and/or personal role model Katherine Cross. DILF is available at Literary Arts and wherever fine books are sold, and it is also in smell form at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.
Finally: Dead Teenagers, a time loop/slasher/horror/comedy/coming-of-age tale, is still coming your way in March. Put it on ye olde pull list now, and read an interview with me and artist Caitlin Yarsky here.
I spent most of 2025 trying to get my feet under me, and I’m still not sure that I’ve done it. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s re-election, I felt useless: I’d spent my adult life trying to advocate for a certain set of values, and the majority of the American public did not share those values. Clearly, I had done nothing to advance them, and therefore, I probably couldn’t help. I had done my best, and my best wasn’t good enough. The end.
Giving up wasn’t acceptable; it never is. It also wasn’t based on reality: Most people don’t want or enjoy fascism — it’s just that the vast majority of wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of fascist-leaning people. Still: I spent the rest of the year trying to work my way out of that state, to imagine myself useful, and the ground kept shifting under my feet, so that every time I got up the nerve to confront how bad things were, they had already gotten worse.
For example: I want to recommend the George Romero and/or Timothy Olyphant movie The Crazies — opinions vary on whether the original or the remake is better — and I also want to talk about the fact that ICE shot an unarmed woman in the face and prevented doctors from treating her as she lay dying. I am not sure how to live in a world where I have to do both of those things.