Category Archives: Stories

Alex the cat, 6/13/25

Posted on by Henry

The busy-ness will continue until morale improves. Or maybe that’s until baby gets much older? Either way, I missed my usual post here yesterday and I’m here to offer you a cat.

I did read Stuart Gibbs’ first FunJungle book in the last week, Belly Up. It’s great. It is a neat distillation of the noir-ish detective story reinterpreted for a middle grade novel, and set in a zoo. There’s a whole series of these books, and I’m itching for a go at the next one. Maybe when I’m more awake and have more time I’ll give you more in depth thoughts, but now the baby is waking and I must feed him.

05/01/25

Posted on by Henry

This time I finally have two posts in the works. Maybe next week I’ll have enough time to finish one of them and post that instead of pictures of Alex. Until then, I hope you’re able to enjoy some good spring (or fall, you do you) weather.

belated 04/24/25

Posted on by Henry

I’m afraid we have a changeling. That, or Alex the cat has hidden our baby.

She’s not supposed to be in the bassinet. She knows this. She’s a cat, so she sleeps there anyway.

4/17/25

Posted on by Henry

I’ve just finished Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh. It is excellent. It is more than a little painful, especially right now. It is also lovely and full of hope. I hope to talk more about it here at some point.

For now our political crises continue to worsen, books like Some Desperate Glory feel more relevant, and I have a baby to take care of. I’m not yet such a professional papa that I can care for my child and get lots of work done at the same time (or much work at all). Please continue to enjoy pictures of Alex.

Gibby’s homecoming

Posted on by Henry

Little does this cat know, but she’s about to have a new baby to keep her company. He’s coming home today!

Maybe I’ll have something else for you next week. Maybe I’ll be trapped in a fog of sleep deprivation, unable to escape. We will see.

Baby!

Posted on by Henry

I have a baby. The baby is not Alex, you’ll have to enjoy seeing Alex instead.

Posts in the near future may be less long-winded, coherent, or have a significantly higher cat content.

Real life intrudes, and art by Nate Powell

Posted on by Henry

This week’s post has been delayed by hospital visits. I might have more for you on that topic next week. For now, I wanted to call your attention to About Face, a comic by Nate Powell about symbols, identity, and the normalization of the language of force. It’s an excellent piece, though perhaps not an uplifting one. It does, however, make me wonder whether Nate Powell would be interested in working with me on Ironsides.

Powell also made the March series (book 1, book 2, book 3), creating the art for the late Representative John Lewis‘s nonfiction work about the American civil rights movement. I haven’t yet picked those up, but I’m really looking forward to reading them. I think you might like them too.

Internal tumult, and comic progress

Posted on by Henry

Today’s an odd one. My cat is not doing well, and I’m stressed about a lot of different things both large and small. I am, however, still making progress—the agent who offered feedback on my query liked my rewritten draft, I’ve had a very helpful conversation with my friend Lucy Bellwood about making comics, and I’ve been reading Molly Ostertag’s substack series on making graphic novels. With those last two details, I can confirm that…

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The Peripheral, by William Gibson

Posted on by Henry

The Peripheral is a science fiction novel from William Gibson set in an awfully recognizable near future and a slightly less recognizable but still palpable further future—there’s kind-of-time-travel, but not quite. It’s been so long since I last read Gibson. I’d forgotten how wild and weird his books can feel, while also feeling so grounded in our own reality. I wrote a little about this last week. I have more observations now.

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Ho-ho-home time, 12/26/24

Posted on by Henry

I’m on the road visiting with family. You can expect to hear from me again next week. In the meanwhile, I hope that you are doing well and (if you’re in the northern hemisphere) staying warm.

Take care!