So once again it’s been ages since I’ve posted here. LOL I get so busy doing stuff that I don’t find time to write about it! And I’ve shifted a lot of the analysis stuff that I used to do here to my podcast, and to the new project I’ll soon be launching!

So after feeling excluded from zine culture for a lot of years because of its seeming like another hyper-visual idiom that would have a lot of barriers to me as a Blind person, I finally, recently, got inspired to do my own zine! I was inspired by the amazing zines written and produced by Clementine Morrigan https://www.clementinemorrigan.com, in particular their zines Fucking Magic and Trauma Magic. They’re both life-writing zines in which Clementine shares their own journey of recovery and coming into magical and political consciousness. And they’re really powerful and beautiful! Clementine also, to my eternal gratitude, makes a point of making them accessible. They’re heavy on text, and she makes sure the pdfs are screen-reader friendly. Which finally made me feel welcome in the world of zining!

So, as I said, Clementine’s work inspired me to start a zine of my own. Because, I really like the format they use! And I feel like I feel like it’s the write idiom in which to share my own journey of and reflections on coming into politicized, magical Phanship. Because, while I’ve shared some of that in my academic writing and certainly plan to continue doing so, academic writing has certain limitations. You can’t always get as personal, as speculative – as “what if…?”. You can’t often talk about magic and spirituality except as social processes, and you generally have to present a critical analysis. Whereas, in a zine format like Clementine’s, you don’t necessarily have to present a critical analysis. You certainly can, but you don’t have to. And it also gets around the other limitations of academic writing.

The first zine I’m starting, then, is called Creature Of Darkness after the line “Pitiful creature of darkness, what kind of life have you known? God, give me courage to show you you are not alone!” from the Final Lair in Phantom. It’s part Phanzine, part perzine, and part on-going, evolving manifesto. It’s a search for self and community through sharing my own journey as a Disabled, Gender-fluid, Queerish, ChristoPagan medical/educational-industrial complex surviver Phan. And I hope it’ll help others the way Clementine’s work has helped me – by providing a space where those on similar/intersecting/parallel journeys can feel heard/seen and know they’re/you’re not alone, and by sharing the healing tools and insights that have been so helpful and powerful for me! I hope to launch it some time this month, both on my Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/phantomfemme – and on Lulu Press. Though, I also think I might make some of the first issues available here, too, for free just to help get the thing going. I’m still figuring out the cover-art, though, so I’m not sure exactly when that will happen. So watch this space!!

Also watch my Patreon, though. Because, I might also release some excerpts from the first issue there as teasers. They’ll be available at the cheapest tier, though, and there may be some freebies as well! So keep an eye/ear out for that soon.

I’m also planning, at some point, to launch a project in which I sahre my thoughts and practice of Phantom and Phanship as a ChristoPagan spiritual path.  But I haven’t decided yet whether to do that as another zine or a new podcast.  There are pros and cons either way!  As some of you will recall, I started sharing some of that as a blog project earlier this year, in fact. But, A, a blog didn’t quite feel right for it, and B, I found I just couldn’t keep up with that much writing and posting on top of everything else I’m working on!  And I’m not sure yet whether a new podcast or a zine would make that more manageable and be the format best suited to the topic.  And I have no idea when that project might happen, so definitely watch this and my other spaces for updates!

Anyway, that’s what’s coming up in the near future.  And as you can imagine, I’m really excited about it!  And of course, I hope you’ll all really enjoy my upcoming projects and find them useful as well.