Before there were blogs there were zines. I was 17 when I discovered these xeroxed, cut ‘n’ paste booklets that gave me complete freedom to put my words and drawings out there for pennies on the dollar–no censorship, no authority telling me how to express myself or judging the value of my work, no approval required. From that day onward self-publishing was my heartstring.
My first zine was Wholesome, which chronicled life on the family farm and whatever I was into. I used to rattle a coffee can of change around school to solicit donations. I knew I was onto something when kids would get detention for reading Wholesome in class, then the vice principal would confiscate it, take it home and read it too. Wholesome ran for a year and seven editions. |
This is how I really found my voice. Mezcolanza means “jumble, mess, mixture” in Spanish, which basically gave me license to include whatever I wanted. I wrote about alligators, backpacking trips, Native American death songs, my mom, travels abroad, various part-time jobs, and the time my dog sparked controversy in the local newspaper. Mezcolanza was also a place to showcase my paintings and photography, though mostly I could only afford to print in black and white.
Of 20 editions, five comprised a series called “Lowcountry Living” which chronicled my adventures here in coastal South Carolina and Georgia. Issues came out whenever I had time away from freelancing, and in addition to distributing locally I maintained a snail-mail subscription list on a donation basis. Doing Mezcolanza was the happiest I’ve ever been as a writer–just me being me in paper and ink. |
In 2008 the recession conspired with massive changes in print journalism to basically put me out of business. By 2010 I couldn’t afford to rent a place anymore, so I started living out of my truck and resolved to make a literary adventure of it. I crashed with friends between shoestring road trips around the South, stockpiling material for what I thought would be a zine. But a year later when Ain’t a Rambler’s Life Fine: the South! came out, I realized I’d accidentally written a book.
I followed up with Rambler’s Life: the South Reloaded, which to this day is the most ambitious writing project I’ve ever undertaken. I interviewed sharecroppers and moonshiners, visited plantations and folk art environments, went gem mining and creekin’, fought in a martial arts tournament and heard people speaking in tongues, made a lot of new friends and slept in my truck with the dog down dirt roads in every state in the South. Both books were laid out by hand cut ‘n’ paste style, printed locally, then hand-bound with twine and original triple-block-printed covers that made them collectible art objects. They soon became underground classics, and as I continued to travel I sold them at readings or out of the back of my truck; hundreds of copies made their way around the world. They went out of print when the cover blocks became too warped by heat, humidity and bad storage to print anymore, but you can find the ebook versions here. |
In 2011 I learned Vipassana Meditation and undertook serious study of the Buddha’s teaching. Several years later I discovered the Jatakas, a collection of ancient Indian folktales held to be stories the Buddha told about his past lives. I fell in love! They’re so full of adventure, magic, humor, wisdom, compassion, and real talk about the harsh realities of existence–yet no one’s even heard of them!
I spent several years studying the Jatakas and eventually landed on the project of retelling them for children–which turned out to be the perfect way to reach adults. Though I stuck to the storylines faithfully, I used my creativity in the rhymed verses and illustrations. To me, the Bodhi Stories are about making ethics awesome, and putting forth the simple message that good actions lead to happiness while bad actions lead to suffering. |