August Wanders and September Destinations
A monthly fantastical simmering stew.
What’s upcoming in September, what we left behind in August, and what feels electric today. A monthly fantastical simmering stew.
August Wanders and September Destinations
A lot of writers I subscribe to utilize weekly or monthly “check-in” posts, where they talk about what’s up in their worlds when they don’t have a deeper story to publish. I think of
with her “Midweek Musings.” I think of and his weekly cataloging of the entire Philadelphia writing scene, where the world’s core might implode on Thursday morning, but there will still be a Philadelphia Arts roundup in my inbox.I so deeply embrace the idea that consistency enables growth. I have struggled with this creatively my whole life. I have battled the energy drain of day-job work or depression that likes to run up behind me and pull my underwear over my head.
I know that
stories take me studious time to write and edit. I know it takes time for my crude Golem hands to draw sexy mountain art. How I am approaching this consistency now is to create posts that will support the stories and I can imagine them into existence in a few hours to delight and terrorize readers.The sitdown have-a-cup-o-rum-drenched-story-tea roundup style - I like it. I want it. It will be fun to revisit the stories I poured myself into so that new readers can drink my tears of creativity. AND we have an exciting September to preview with an El Norte Redwoods highway robbery and our first non-me guest on Irreverently Vulnerable.
The September Stomp Roams destinations.
Sunday, September 10th – Irreverently Vulnerable with
and founder/hostIrreverently Vulnerable explores what torments creators and what turns them on. I ask a dozen questions meant to evoke the personal mountains and dungeons that churn inside the guest creator and make them the weird brilliant person that they are.
My community-building efforts on Substack thus far have resulted in meeting several fiction and nonfiction writers who share an oddly similar background – same age-ish with a background in freelancing or project coordination, a heartfelt sincerity to connect and grow, and own the heck out of their niche. One of these kindred peers, M.E. Rothwell, will be the first to delve into the mines of personal Moria on Irreverently Vulnerable.
Calling M.E. just a writer would be like calling a Norwegian Nomad River Troll just “a troll.” He is a prolific researcher, historian, and world-wanderer documenting travels across this earth in the present and in times past. His newsletter,
exploded over the summer and his newsletters have become a prominent destination for literary talent and medieval doo-doo memes on Substack.He also writes The Moleskin Notebooks in his “Substack Bestseller”
, which explores a region’s art, history, cartography, and culture with gorgeous imagery.Sunday, September 17th – The Fantastical News Courier
The universe of Stomp is like those wild jungle tendrils that eat cars in Jumanji.
The Fantastical News Courier will be a newspaper edition previewing the era of the next week’s Stomp story, complete with police reports, obituaries, and true-to-life coverage of the Fantasticals trying to live in peace (or mayhem) on the periphery of human society.
Sunday, September 24th – Stomp Bigfoot Robs a Beer Truck
I’m so excited just to say that line. Stomp Bigfoot robs a beer truck. Stomp Bigfoot robs a beer truck. Goodness, I love a beer-drenched highway robbery.
The first two months of Stomp Roams have been full of Stomp grieving, healing, saving babies, and searching for pie. Well, it’s time to break out Criminal Stomp.
In a feature-length short story, Stomp smuggles a precious cargo in a beer truck in the Pacific Northwest, as he races the police to get to a safehouse.
Sunday, September 30th – Rest and Recovery
This is my birthday weekend, and I’ll celebrate by putting on a full orc costume and dashing along my local creek, screaming “Find the halflings! Find the halflings!” As dogs howl and neighbors quickly herd their children indoors.
The newsletters that got me turnt up.
I’d like to highlight one to three newsletters I stumbled across each month that made me feel like I found an 11th-century Norse penny in my backyard.
A week or two ago I discovered the fiction oasis collective of
, organized by and . I recognize that I’m writing what I now call Surrealist Crude. Or Surrealist Fantastical Crude. Haven’t quite settled on the trendy-to-be name yet.Fictionistas also hosts a beehive of guest writers, like
, who has written about the business of making an income from your writing, and publishes fiction prompts and encouraging posts about the struggle of the writing process. Visitors can tell immediately that this newsletter is a giant beating heart pumping blood to growing writers. Congrats to Fictionistas for hitting 2,000 subs last month.In this wandering through the caverns of Fictionistas, I came across a complete list of Substack fiction writers compiled and managed by fiction writer
.I learned that of the thousands or millions of Substack writers and readers, Stomp Roams is one of about 300+ documented fiction newsletters. It is enormously exciting to feel like a Substack speculative fiction pioneer. Now, the mission becomes sitting down with a bucket of munchy garlicky cucumbers and researching every single newsletter to find my kindred fiction writers.
Where Stomp left footprints in August.
My goal is to publish four out of every five weeks. I started Stomp Roams in June and we’re doin’ alright, Internet. Here’s where Stomp roamed in August:
August 5th – Irreverently Vulnerable Volume 1 – He-squatch Fiction Writer Jon Delp
I had not yet secured a first guest for this interview series that I’m so excited to host. Feeling like I needed to publish something – anything – I interviewed myself.
It was fun, scary, and cathartic.
You’re gonna create today. What is the thing or things you do beforehand that need to be done before you can write a single word?
I like to get a coffee and breakfast in a café somewhere and just soak up the people around me. But really, I’m consciously adamant about not having any set routine. I see all these authors who have some kind of cool quirk in their routines, like, “I drink 7 glasses of raw goat milk then stand atop a weathervane naked.” I don’t really do that. I just sit down with the idea of, “go to work and write like it’s a job.”
Because it is.
Read Irreverently Vulnerable Volume 1: He-squatch fiction writer Jon Delp
August 18th – Stomp Fights Sewer Gators in a Manhattan Speakeasy
It’s Prohibition, 1931. Booze still flows like rainwater. Under the pavement, jazz trios of river otters and salty bartender rats mingle in a Manhattan cantina with smugglers, drifters, and the bullet-riddled bodies washed out through the pipes to the Hudson.
Some come for the beer. Some for escape.
One comes to seek any sign of a herd.
A weary Stomp rests in an underground speakeasy with river rats and jazz otters, drinking his beer and recuperating when a pack of sewer gators attempt to eat an orphan baby washing out to the Hudson River. Stomp’s innate big-heartedness forces him to take action.
This story introduces the concept of The Lighthouse, where Shepherds go to train. It also introduces the origin of baby Nautilus, a future big piece of the Stomp universe.
Moaning echos – like a pod of whales - rattled the pipes and echoed through the tunnel. Mounds of shimmering golden scales dipped and dove through the current, like porpoises at the shore. It was a pod of sewer goldfish, full-grown. One of them raised its great glittering back and stopped along the cement ledge. A big friendly eye rolled around and squinted up at Stomp at the bar. A trio of chittering river rats tumbled off the goldfish’s back. One of them turned and nodded thanks and tossed a handful of cat food in the water.
Read Stomp Fights Sewer Gators in a Manhattan Speakeasy
August 25th – Wildlife Watching in a Crowded Restaurant Volume 2 – The Endearingly Eccentric River Breakfast Haven of Ma-De’s Chat Shop
I traveled across the bridge to Milford, New Jersey to people-watch and profile an establishment that has been serving river folk for 47 years and hasn’t changed its prices since the 90s. I paid $6 for an omelet breakfast. I decided that I needed to treat this establishment with such reverence that I wrote a mostly straightforward 2,000-word profile of my experience with the delightful eccentricity of Ma-De’s.
Suddenly a customer gets up from his bar seat, walks around behind the diner bar, and picks up a coffee pot. “Which one is the regular?”
Shirley hustles by and points. The fella fills his cup, empties the pot, and then changes out the coffee filter and puts on a fresh pot. He returns to his seat and…and…I want to do that.
I stare down at my now-lukewarm coffee that I’ve mostly drained. I look up as this fresh pot blows up steam and it blends with the sunlight that filters through the window. It’s like a cloud that I want to drink in and exhale into a Mason jar, to be molded into a coffee steam candle.
Thank you, readers.
I’m so glad you came along for this session of me reflecting and cataloging stories like a dusty small-town librarian amongst the stacks in 1933. If you’d like to support Stomp Roams, you can share the story or tap that little “subscribe” button. Learn more about the author at www.jonathandelp.com.
Thanks for the mention! Honestly, the “Midweek Musings” wasn’t my idea. I had readers that wanted to know more about the stories’ progress during the week. I hesitated because, like you, I’m trying to balance time, effort, mental abilities, paying gigs. But, the engagement with the progress reports has been consistent with my more substantial posts, so I’ll keep it up for now. I like the way you’re giving a little peek at what people may have missed. And, Happy Birthday!🥳