Allow Me to Introduce Myself and My Bad Tattoo

It’s summer and the bad tattoos are in bloom.

It’s like a party photo from the past: I allowed a younger and less-formed me to be documented in a particular moment, and though I had largely forgotten about it for years, the simple thought of its existence now is enough to mildly bother me.

My name is Lane Talbot and I am an author of dark fiction and hopelessly nerdy non-fiction. I’m in the midst of serializing my novel NORTH DARK here on Substack. (It’s 21 chapters, the whole thing will be available by the end of June.) I’ve also been publishing my reviews of old X-Men comics and other essays here for a couple months, though what I have not done is properly introduce myself.

So if you’re subscribing to this, hi Dad, but if this has found you another way I’d be grateful if you’d consider subscribing. My goal is to get to one thousand subscribers and I’ve currently got, like, a ways to go.

I’m committing to Substack and I’m trying very hard not to overthink this. I’m just going to treat this newsletter like a bar stool conversation: kind of fun, sometimes thoughtful, few expectations if any.

So, now that we’re bros, who am I?

I’m a writer living in Chicagoland. Broad strokes: Born in Houston, raised in Chicago suburbs, college and grad school in Arizona and Southern Illinois, a decade working in tech, now married with two small kids.

I’ll also mention that about 90% of my true identity is tied up in writing. I’ve always loved it, I do it for pleasure, and I will never stop.

My mom made me a writer by first making me a reader. She read to me incessantly and imprinted her love of literature on me very early.

I also grew up in the exact eye of a hurricane of 80s and 90s action cartoons (GI Joe, Silverhawks, even Rambo had a cartoon. Rambo!) I started writing my own stories and cartoon ideas down in notebooks and drawing out characters.

Then, right on schedule, the world of comic books fell on me like an ocean and permanently reconfigured my entire personality.

I plunged deep into the Marvel, DC and Dark Horse universes. I discovered and/or decided that, ultimately, Superman was my paragon. He was complex, mature, strong and capable; moreover, he represented the entire superheroic ideal and encompassed the complete four-color pantheon crowding that paracosm I loved so much more than the real world.

So, in late high school, I drove with my friend Kevin to a local strip mall tattoo shop and paid to have the Superman symbol affixed to my ankle. And it’s still there, popping out every summer to say hi.

I don’t regret it, exactly. It was an accurate picture of who I was and what I valued. It still is. I’ve just outgrown the need to wear it on my ankle. So, I’m thinking seriously about having it removed.

And, I know, I’ll get other tattoos in my life. There are glyphs representing other pieces of art and ideals I’ll encode in my skin, and maybe someday I’ll change my mind about those too. And maybe not. It’s just time to let this one go.

This is what it looks like by the way.

As I mentioned at the top, it’s summer now. I’m writing this on Memorial Day weekend, 2023. The weather’s finally nice and holding. I’m sharply aware that we’ll only get a few months of this before we’re back to Chicago’s default mode of 30º and raining frozen broken glass.

I don’t know if this is universal but summer reliably ushers in a personal resurgence for me. I wake up earlier, generally do more faster and better, generally want to attack all my professional, artistic, and fitness goals. Sunlight, man. I’m not Kal-El but that stuff charges me too.

Now, I’m not going to nail every goal I set for myself between now and September, I know that. But I am going to try. And I’ll also try to force a little accountability here.

There are 95 days until September 1. Here’s some of what I intend to do with that time:

·      Write 95k words of my horror novel work in progress.

·      Publish 3x a week on Substack.

·      Post something at least once a day (whether that’s here on Notes, Instagram, Blue Sky if I ever get a code—Hi, do you have codes to distribute? Would you please further enable this nonsense?).

I’ve spent the last decade or so writing with my head down. I’ve published short fiction and accomplished some serious writing goals, but most of that time has been spent toiling, querying, signing with more than one agent, watching life happen and dissolve some of those efforts.

I’ve not worked to shine light on my own efforts on a platform like this because it just seemed so repellent. The self-promotion is painful. I react badly to it.

But now, it’s time. It’s time to lift my head. It’s time to be participatory, conversational, more open.

I’m going to treat it like a relationship I want to develop. And I’ll try here to do that the right way: by being authentic, straight forward, and not too needy. Now, please subscribe and enter all your friends’ email addresses too.

Thank you and I wish you a super-powered summer.

Lane