I have, yes, a badly neglected store. Thank you to the 50-something people (!) who bought my first eBook . . . but it definitely needs more stuff in there. I actually have fully completed manuscripts that I just need to design covers for. Maybe I should just do the thing Melville House does with their ART OF THE NOVELLA series and use the same sort of template for each of the GRITT tales. Yes, I think I will!! That was I think my original plan, but I’ve been so tired and drunk for the last year or so, and have forgotten what my original intentions for anything in my life were. I’m making a judgmental call RIGHT HERE and RIGHT NOW that that is precisely what I will do. OK!

World-famous French-Canadian multimedia artist / my spirit sister Laura Rokas and I have been talking about making ROKAS vs. STARSAILOR stuff, and I think we’re gonna after her big show in June passes. My buddy Cole works at a press-thing in Oakland, and he made the Pipefest T-shirts last summer bearing my likeness! Seen here:

. . . and he has agreed, quite cheaply, to produce shirts for us. Cool!

Well anyway: I’ve always wanted to hire Aidan Hughes aka BRUTE! to design something for me. I’ve been lovin this dude’s stuff since I was in god darn middle school, for heaven’s sake. Lookit this stuff:

I love it!

So I sent him an email yesterday:

Mr. Hughes,

I wrote to you many many years ago inquiring about commissioned artwork. You said you took commissions. I never ended up following through with it and I’ve always regretted it!

Well, all these years later, I wonder: Do you still take commissions? If so, I’d like to pay you to make something for me.

Hope you’re doing well, dude. Been a fan for a long time~

R☆

The original email I’m referencing is from all the way back in 2004! Fourteen years, man, and we’re both still here.

A very alive Aidan Hughes responded early this morning (UK time and all that):

Yes, Ryan. I still take on commissioned artwork. What did you have in mind?

I am drafting an email to this beautiful man right now, preemptively apologizing for how dumb my idea is, which is something like this: The Starsailor, black-clad and pompadour’ed and wearing white Blublocker sunglasses, soaring through a dark starry void . . . while holding hands with two grinning skeletons! Wait! Where have I seen this ghastly trio before?

lol nice

OK well, if the guy digs it, we’ll have a sort of business exchange, and then the thing will be mine. Maybe it’ll be a cool shirt. Maybe I’ll just make like 20 or something. I think that’s Cole’s minimum. And if no one wants them, I’ll have enough of my own T-shirt to last me for the rest of my life. THE IDEA is to create something that is cool-looking irrespective of what it tenuously represents, which is, I guess, some sadsack idiot’s queer little square-millimeter hole of doom and gloom in a vast digital dumping ground of toxic waste called the world wide web. Yeah?

(Would you buy one? I’d sell them at cost. . . . I just want them to exist at all~)