Greetings & Updates from Ben the Human!

Books I'm reading, Where I'm finding joy, and writing updates!

For the first time, I did an audio version of a recent article I shared on Monday and I had a positive response, which I was hoping for, but didn’t expect the reason why so many people told me they liked it. A number of people reached out to me to say it was so lovely to have this connection to Ben the Human, to hear my article in my voice with all my energy and passion and enthusiasm. I am always pro-being extra human, and since I already have a regular practice of reflecting on the month behind me and the one ahead, I figured I could start writing some updates on Ben the human for the last day of each month.

Ben the human visiting the Shedd Aquarium, protecting his disabled community, and meeting some cool fish!!!

Writing updates!

I’m hard at work on a number of projects, and the more time I spend on them the more I fall in love with the portrait of myself as an author that I can see becoming clearer.

• The fantasy novel I’ve been writing for the last few years is about to get a major step up: I am a Lambda Literary Fellow in the YA cohort, and I’m going to spend the next week studying with Aiden Thomas!! I’m being a huge nerd about it but doing all of my geeking out in advance so I can be normal when I meet him. If he’s reading this newsletter and finding out about my geeking out, I must admit I’m going to have a lot more geeking out to do.

• I'm continuing to dream of my next nonfiction book, which will be about the ways we use joy to build community, resilience, and lasting change in our communities. It will examine the power of joy and social movements through history, and I’m so ready to write this book. When I shared the idea with my agent a few months ago, she said that my existing platform was good but that I should try to hit 50,000 subscribers on Substack to get a publisher to buy in. While I have managed to double my subscriber account since then, 11,000 is nowhere near 50. If you have any ideas for how I might grow this project so I can spend even more time talking about joy, I’m all ears!

• Good Queer News is about to hit it’s one year anniversary, which is absolutely bonkers. Still figuring out how exactly I want to celebrate that!

Oliver updates

• I’m thrilled to report that my little dog is a beautiful angel in perfect health. The Chief Barketing Officer you know and love is still hard at work, napping, playing, and being a menace to other dogs in public.

An old picture of Oliver watching in concern as my friend, an actual surgeon, performs surgery on his monkey. This picture gets me every time.

Breathe In to Breathe Out

I learned this phrase recently from another artist friend: “You have to breathe in to breathe out.” Engaging with other forms of beautiful art make me a better artist. In that spirit, I’ve read a lot of really phenomenal articles this month. Here are some of my favorites:

• Don't Let Transphobes Bully You - by KB Brookins from Trans News that Doesn’t Suck

• Are We Facing a New Lavender Scare? - by David Begor 🏳️‍🌈from A Queer POV

• OK, Doomer - by Stephanie Nakhleh from We Can Have Nice Things

• The Cost of Favour Banking: On Performed Gratitude, Ungratefulness, and the Contracts We Never Signed by Jamila Bradley from The Broken Pedestal Society

• Unrot your Brain by Kylee from Plum Pits

• Things I Do When I'm Losing Myself Again from Milk and Cookies

Been making time to PLAY this month, which is always an amazing source of joy and rest for me. Me and my wife looove a lil day trip to disneyland.

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I spent time going back-and-forth about this, but the rest of my updates, including some more personal life updates, the books I’m reading and the places I’m hanging out, are going to be for my paid subscribers.

I am incredibly open in my writing, but vulnerability is still not something that is free to share, and I don’t think it’s the best idea to post where I’m regularly hanging out on the open Internet. My subscribers have put in a lot of extra leg work to make me feel seen and supported, and to equip me to start work on some of the bigger projects I’ve been dreaming of, and I don’t want to paywall any of my content that’s more time sensitive, so this is part of the balance I’m striking.

As always, if you want a free upgrade to paid, you can share this newsletter with friends, buy & review a copy of my book (and tell me about it), or literally just ask me and I will upgrade you for free, no questions asked.