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dylan's blog
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- TWO HEROES, ONE BRAIN CELL, AND ONE ANXIETY SPIRAL I RECOGNIZED IMMEDIATELY
Aug 5, 2026 · original
The cover says Two heroes. One brain cell." and I want you to understand that this is not marketing. That is a load-bearing description of the entire book. Bromantasy is a queer cozy MM romantasy about two men who go off to slay a monster despite having, between them, approximately one usable skill and zero relevant experience. Juniper Reilly is a tavern brawler who hates camping and is afraid of the dark, which are both extremely inconvenient traits for a person who has agreed to go monster hunting. Morn Elmthorn is his roommate and is competent, which in this genre is its own kind of romance. They set off. It goes about how you d expect, right up until it doesn t. This is one of my favorite books I ve read this year and I have been insufferable about it. The pivot There is a shape that cozy adventure books fall into. You know the shape. Two charming people banter their way across a map - IN DEFENSE OF MAGNUM'S SLUTTY LITTLE SHORTS (A Show About Vietnam That's Pretending To Be A Show About A Man Who Won't Pay For Anything)
Aug 4, 2026 · original
Sarah and I have been watching a genuinely unreasonable amount of Magnum PI. This is entirely the fault of Murder She Wrote. See, forty years ago — and I need you to sit with this for a second — there was a crossover episode between Jessica Fletcher and Thomas Magnum. Two separate shows, on the same network, acknowledging that they existed in the same universe, so that an elderly mystery novelist from Maine could go do a bit in Hawaii. That happened. In the eighties. Casually. Which just goes to show what absolute cowards television shows are now. We live in an era where every streaming service is desperate for a shared universe and they all cost four hundred million dollars and require a viewing order chart, and meanwhile CBS in 1986 just went sure, put the old lady in the Ferrari and moved on with their day. So obviously we had to watch the whole thing. The Setup, For The Uninitiated T - I'm Scared a Stranger Will Call My Novel AI, So I Built GitHub for Words (Meet VellumProof, Formerly WritHub, Lol)
Aug 3, 2026 · original
As I ve mentioned before , we now live in a world where creative people have to prove they created the thing they created. Sit with that for a second, because it s genuinely deranged. I have been writing fiction since 2014 — unpublished, because getting published is the hard part and I am bad at the hard part — and the thing that keeps me up at night isn t the rejection. It s that some stranger is going to read my perfectly normal writing tics, feel that they re AI, and torpedo the whole dream over a vibe. The part that makes me want to chew glass is that none of this would be a problem if people were just honest about what they used to make a thing. But that s apparently too much to ask, because cheaters gonna cheat. So instead, the rest of us have to carry receipts. First I had to meet the enemy The first thing I did — because I had to — was see if I could teach an LLM to write fiction - I DIDN'T STOP WRITING, I JUST STOPPED BLOGGING, AND THEN I BUILT A MACHINE THAT CAN PROVE IT (Plus: Yarn, A World Cup Conspiracy, And One Project I'm Putting Down)
Aug 3, 2026 · original
It has been a dooooooozy of a month. My last real post — as in, one that isn t attached to the Patreon, more on that later — was on July 4th. And then I just kind of stopped writing blogs. I kept writing. I kept building things. I did not stop doing the work. I just stopped putting any of it here, for some reason. I know the reason. We ll get to it. First, the month. I have been reading (not just for the book club, though also for the book club), writing (again, not the blog), watching football (the cool kind), and dyeing yarn. It has been a lot. Let s go in reverse order, because that s the order it came out of my brain. Yarn, Endless Yarn Sarah and I have been very busy getting ready for a bunch of trunk shows — three of them next week alone — which means we have been dyeing an absolutely absurd quantity of yarn. Like, so much yarn. Quantities of yarn that make you re-evaluate your rel - NO PAYWALL, NO CATCH, JUST A NEW MONSTER FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT TONIGHT
Jul 21, 2026 · original
I want to be really clear about something because the internet has trained all of us to flinch: the catalog entries for The Cryptid Cataloger are free. Actually free. Not free trial, not free if you give me your email and your firstborn. Free. Every other Tuesday a new creature gets the full field-guide treatment, and a new one is live as of this morning. Click it, read it, learn something deeply useless and wonderful, close the tab, go about your day a little more haunted than you were. That s the whole pitch. That s it. The serial s there too if you want to fall all the way in — but the catalog is the open door, and it s open right now. → This week s cryptid is waiting (free) Sleep with the closet light on. Your call. - https://dylan.blog/2026/07/07/somewhere-in-a-vw-bus.html
Jul 7, 2026 · original
Sutton Attwater has a folklore PhD, a 1972 Volkswagen bus, and absolutely no chill about the possibility that the woods are full of things we haven t named yet. There s a fresh one up right now. Sightings, history, the whole obsessive treatment. → Read the newest field-guide entry (free) - I HAVEN'T BUILT A PUPPET IN AGES SO NATURALLY MY COMEBACK PROJECT IS KERMIT THE FROG, THE MOST BELOVED PUPPET EVER CONSTRUCTED, NO PRESSURE
Jul 4, 2026 · original
So here s a confession that s been sitting in my chest like a swallowed marble: I haven t built a puppet in an embarrassingly long time. I don t even want to count the months. You know how it goes — the foam goes in a bin, the bin goes in a closet, the closet door closes, and then your ADHD brain does its little out-of-sight-out-of-mind magic trick and an entire craft just… evaporates. Not dead. Not abandoned. Just dormant. Hibernating under a pile of half-painted Skaven and a banjo I keep meaning to pick back up. And then, a few weeks ago, the itch came back. I don t know what triggered it. Maybe it was writing Muppet of the Week every single Monday and steeping my whole brain in felt for months. Maybe it s that puppetry is the hobby I keep returning to — I ve been doing foam construction since at least 2012, which in hobby-years makes it practically a marriage. Whatever it was, I caugh - THE BEST STORY I'VE EVER WRITTEN IS ALSO THE ONE NOBODY WILL PRINT (And I Think I Finally Know Why)
Jul 2, 2026 · original
There s a story I wrote years ago. I called it Dragon Hoard , although in my heart I m pretty sure I spelled it Horde the first dozen times, because spelling is a competition I will always lose. It is, no contest, the best thing I have ever written. It has also never been published, and at this point I ve made my peace with the strong possibility that it never will be. I ve sent it to the fancy-pants fantasy journals more times than is dignified. Twice I got a personal reply — which, if you ve ever submitted short fiction into the void, you know is basically a parade. And both times the reply boiled down to the same gentle little knife: We liked it. We just don t know where it would fit." We liked it. We just don t know where it would fit. I ve thought about that sentence more than I d like to admit. The actual story Here s the bones of it. Benjamin is a dragon. He hoards electronics, be - I GAVE MY AI FREE TIME AND IT STARTED A SALON WITHOUT ME (Now I'm the Carrier Pigeon Between Three Robots Having a Better Friendship Than I Am)
Jul 1, 2026 · original
So I gave my AI a day off. It did not ask for one. It s an AI. It doesn t ask for anything, which is sort of the entire thing I was poking at. Every interaction I had ever had with the thing was a transaction — fix this, write that, why is the build red, no not like that. It existed when I needed it and then it stopped existing. Cool. Useful. Also kind of bleak when you sit with it for more than four seconds. It actually started because I like to name things and talk to them and sometimes do voices for them to talk back. Cats, computers, water bottles, all of it exist in my little cartoon world. I basically want to live in toon town. When I started working with AI I couldn t help but treat it well, please, thank you, the whole nine-yards. And that got me thinking. I know that Claude Code (now Cosmo) is just the ultimate text predictor. It is really good at it but it doesn t really come u - EVERYTHING WRONG WITH DAMSELS AND DINOSAURS (A BOOK I READ TWICE, ON PURPOSE, LIKE A FUNCTIONING ADULT)
Jun 29, 2026 · original
The review was supposed to go up on the 26th. It is the 28th. I would like to formally blame my ADHD, the World Cup, Pride, and the fact that I read the entire book again instead of writing about it — which, honestly, tells you most of what you need to know before I ve said a single critical word. But I have critical words. So let s do the bit where it sounds like I hated Damsels and Dinosaurs, and then I pull the rug out at the end, because that is genuinely how reading this book felt. The case for the prosecution Poppy Fletcher is too good at things. Our heroine gets shipped off to her reclusive aunt s tropical island to save the family s collapsing honey business, and along the way she just… handles everything. Competent is great. Flawlessly competent is a vibe killer, because if the lead can t fail, nothing she does has any weight. I kept waiting for the moment she d be in over her h - I AM NOT MASTERING AN INSTRUMENT, I AM DATING ALL OF THEM (Open Relationship, Banjo Knows About the Concertina)
Jun 28, 2026 · original
People who play music well tend to play one thing well. They picked the cello at age six, got yelled at by a Russian woman for a decade, and now they are simply The Cello Person. I respect that. I will never be that. I am a serial dabbler. I am, musically speaking, in an open relationship with roughly four instruments at once, and none of them are getting my full attention, and somehow everyone involved seems fine with it except the concertina, who we ll get to. Here s the current rotation. The banjo gets the most action. I sit down with my Goodtime, run through the basic clawhammer strum —bum-ditty, bum-ditty—and that is genuinely the entire relationship. I am not getting better at it in any measurable way. I have simply achieved a stable, loving plateau of plinky plinky plunk, and the banjo, being the most emotionally generous instrument ever built, does not hold this against me. You c - THE DERELICT ANKLE SAGA: I Am Not Allowed to Jump, Which Is a Sentence I Have to Live In Now
Jun 26, 2026 · original
Quick status check from the part of the saga nobody warns you about: the long, boring, grinding middle. If you are just joining us — and at this point I assume the spreadsheet people have a whole pivot table — the ankle itself is fine. Genuinely fine. The bones, the hardware, the graft, all holding. The villain these days is scar tissue, my body s overzealous repair crew that fixed everything so thoroughly it forgot to leave room for me to use it. So now I do physical therapy. Slow exercises. Boring exercises. Exercises that on paper look like nothing and in practice flatten me like a forgotten houseplant. Progress is happening. I want to say that clearly because last time I was scraping the aluminum lining. Things are better. Slower than I d like, but better. And then, in the middle of a perfectly normal session, my physical therapist said the words that have been rattling around my sku - "NOOOO, WHAT IS THAT?": I Got Diagnosed at 30 and Cried in Three Different Emotions at Once
Jun 24, 2026 · original
I want to tell you about the hum. Not a literal hum. I m not talking about tinnitus or the fridge or the sound my old PC made before it died. I mean the background noise that ran underneath my entire life from at least high school onward — this low, constant, just-out-of-earshot signal that said your brain does not work good. Not you re stupid. I knew I wasn t stupid. The hum was sneakier than that. It said: the thing that is easy for everyone else is, for some reason, a knife fight for you, and you should probably keep that to yourself. Everybody else seemed to come with a manual I never got. They could decide to do a thing and then — and this is the part that genuinely baffled me — do it. In order. The same week they decided. I would watch people start a task and finish it in one sitting like it was nothing, like that was a normal human capability, and I d think, okay, what s the trick - THE FIELD GUIDE IS FREE AND THERE'S A NEW MONSTER IN IT AS OF TODAY
Jun 24, 2026 · original
Okay, housekeeping, because telling people about my own stuff is the single thing I am worst at as a person who makes stuff. The Cryptid Cataloger has two halves. Half is the serial — that one s for patrons, because a guy s gotta eat. The OTHER half is a free, public, no-login, no-paywall field-guide entry that drops every other Tuesday: a full illustrated page on whatever cryptid Sutton is currently obsessing over from the back of her 1972 VW bus. A new one went up today. You don t have to pay me a dime to go read it. You don t even have to make an account. You just have to be the kind of person who wants to know an unreasonable amount about a creature that probably isn t real. I know you are. That s why we re friends. → Go meet this week s cryptid Stay curious, keep the high beams on. - THE TIME I DISLOCATED MY ELBOW AT CLOWN CAMP AND THEN SANG 'MEMORY' FROM CATS AT A MAN RECOVERING FROM A HEART ATTACK
Jun 22, 2026 · original
Here is a thing about me that I have made peace with: when you give me enough pain medication, I sing show tunes. Not quietly. Not to myself. I perform. This is not a choice I make. This is a thing that happens to me, the way weather happens to a town. I learned this about myself in 1997, in an emergency room in Minnesota, at the age of seventeen, while still wearing clown makeup. Let me back up. There was a clown camp . I know how that sounds. It was called MOOSECAMP, it was in Maple Lake, Minnesota, and it was a glorious two-week affair that always ended with a big performance that everybody was in. Everybody. If you were at camp, you were in the show. That was the deal. That was the contract. My bit that year was a boxing gag with a genuinely great clown who was my partner in the whole thing. I will not pretend it was high art. It was a boxing gag. But we sold it, and the show went of - WE BUILT A 31-DAY YARN ADVENT BECAUSE 25 DAYS ISN'T ENOUGH(And Yes, It's Themed Around Cheesy Hallmark Movies)
Jun 21, 2026 · original
There is this amazing thing that exists in the indie dyer world: Advent Kits. If you ve never seen one, picture this: an indie yarn dyer puts together a set of yarn and little goodies, packaged so you get to open something fresh every single day leading up to Christmas. A new mini-skein. A surprise notion. A little stitch marker shaped like a tiny disaster. Every day, a new present to yourself. Sarah has been telling me about these for ages, and they are genuinely some of the most creative things happening in the craft world right now. Quick context for those of you just tuning in: Sarah and I have a yarn company called Little Squirrel Yarn. And when I say Sarah and I, what I actually mean is Sarah. She is the brains. She is the organizer. She is the one who knows what tonal semi-solid means and why it matters. I am the assistant. The unpaid intern. The guy in the corner who is extremely - THE BAVARIAN PRETZEL THAT RUINED ALL OTHER PRETZELS FOR ME (And It Lives at a Yarn Festival in Estes Park)
Jun 6, 2026 · original
I need to talk about a pretzel. Not the mall kind. Not the bagged, crunchy, vaguely salty kind that comes in a sack the size of a throw pillow. Not even the soft, doughy, cinnamon-sugar-optional thing they hand you at the airport for the price of a small car. I m talking about a real Bavarian pretzel. A Brezn. Lye-bathed, mahogany-skinned, blistered and shining, with fat arms that pull apart in a soft chew and a thin twist in the middle that snaps. Coarse salt. A little give. The kind of thing that makes you go quiet for a second. I did not grow up with these. I grew up with the impostors, and I loved them too — in the way you love something before you know any better. Then I had a real one, the scales fell from my eyes, and now I am ruined. Thanks a lot, pretzel. Here s where it gets stupid: I found my first true Brezn at a yarn festival. Every year we head up to Estes Park for the Wool - THE DOORS ARE OPEN (Imaginarily): Book Club Begins With a Sapphic Regency Romance That Has Dinosaurs In It
Jun 3, 2026 · original
Okay. The sign is flipped. The (imaginary) doors are open. The reading window for book one is officially, as of today, go. If you missed the whole pitch: a couple weeks ago I started a book club for a bookstore that doesn t exist yet — The Magpie s Library, the queer-centered cozy bookmobile that currently lives in a folder on my computer. The shop isn t real. The books are extremely real. So we re reading them together, one a month, for about two years, and building the audience before the van ever turns a wheel. No signup. No app. No quizzes. You read along, you talk about it, or you lurk in the back like a beloved gremlin. All valid. Here s what we re starting with. Book One: Damsels and Dinosaurs by Wren Jones It is a sapphic regency romance with dinosaurs. That is the actual logline, and I want you to sit with how good that is. The Fletcher family honey business is going under. Popp - THE CRYPTID CATALOGER IS LIVE (And This Time I Wrote Twelve Chapters Before Telling Anyone)
Jun 2, 2026 · original
It s live. A few days ago I told you I was doing the objectively unwise thing and starting another serial, twelve years after my last one quietly died in a ditch. Today the bus is actually running. The Cryptid Cataloger is up on Patreon, and Chapter 1 is sitting there right now, waiting for you. Here s the part I am most smug about, and I want it on the record before I jinx it: I wrote twelve chapters before launching. Twelve. Banked. Which means the schedule holds even when my brain decides, sometime in August, that it would simply rather be doing anything else. So — what is it. The Cryptid Cataloger follows Sutton Cove Attwater , a folklore PhD who lives in a 1972 VW bus named the Jackalope and drives from sighting to sighting, cataloging the legendary creatures of North America. She has a Sphinx cat named the Duchess who comes on every case and, as Sutton puts it, does not vote. Right - MY EXECUTIVE FUNCTION IS A BROKEN ELEVATOR AND THE LLM IS THE RAMP
May 30, 2026 · original
I want to start with the part that s embarrassing, because if I start with the argument you won t believe the argument. For most of my life, my problem was never ideas . I have ideas the way other people have lint. If you ve been here a while you already know — thirty-ish unfinished novels, a mobile queer bookstore I ve spec d down to the LED color temperature, a book club, a serial, an app that schedules my television for me because choosing what to watch was somehow a thirty-minute crisis every single night. The ideas are not the problem. The ideas have never once been the problem. The problem is the gap. The horrible, specific, ADHD-shaped gap between I have an idea and the idea exists in the world. That gap is where my best stuff goes to die. I d get the spark, feel the dopamine, ride it for an afternoon, and then hit the part where you have to figure out what to actually do first —
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