god told me to skin you alive

Western Bobcat (Lynx rufus ssp. fasciatus)

The concept of marriage in American society is a legal construct, not a religious one.

I've been doing this for sixteen years. I've seen with my eyes that giving people art, letting art move, letting stories breathe, allowing them to travel: it changes people. Those stories go places and lodge in people's hearts in ways you can't predict. That can't happen if you keep it all close to the chest, behind a paywall, locked in bureaucracy. It can't happen if you're afraid. If you operate from a place of ownership and grasping and the fear that there might be money left on the table. We want a piece of this, they say. We want to make sure we get our share. You wouldn't have made this without us. True. Of course. But who will move the story? Who will connect with the audience? Is it you? I don't think so. That's why you hired me. If you give someone something freely with intention, it carries gratitude in it like a seed. It's nonlinear. I've been saying this for years.

The "money left on the table" isn't thousands, or even hundreds. Often it's a loss! I pay to print comics to put out into the world because they will go places I can't. People will find their way back to me. If my life changed because of one college student's weird photocopied tall ship-themed zine I found in a bookstore in 2005, who knows where my work will go and what it will do.

It infuriates me to run up against this mentality because it is so hard to share anything in the world today. It is so hard to get stories into the hands of people who need them. You have to give everything a fighting chance—print it out, leave it in the library, share it on social media, post it on your blog. Yes, publish it. Put it in a book. Put that book up for sale. Of course. Of course. I want to eat. I'm not a fool. But if people don't find the story, they won't want to buy the book. That's how it works.

I'm tired of working in a system that operates on that fear. It feels juvenile. "What if someone steals my idea?" "What if someone reads my work and doesn't pay me for the privilege?" GREAT. SOMEONE HAS READ MY WORK.