I had someone ask me recently what I do when I’m not teaching or making art (and it’s obviously not sleeping), and there’s a wide variety of things I like to do: the movies, obviously hiking (on hiatus until I find out if this is a broken bone in my foot), art opening, reading, and sometimes (although it’s been a while) a book reading. Last Saturday, I went to this…

to hear a friend of a friend read (because how else do you hear about these things?). I had never been to Digital Gym, although I’ve been invited to a ton of things there, so that was interesting. They have a nice outdoor space for these things, but it started to rain, so they moved us inside into the computer lab.

The reading was part of the release of this book…

Volume 1 in a series of stories about monsters in every state (available on Amazon). Certain creatures seem to inhabit territories, and each state seems to have a list of those monsters that are most known there. The authors picked monsters and states and wrote, and the artists illustrated. The reading was a sampling of edited stories (for time), and was definitely worth the trip.

I tried to photograph each author reading, but missed the first one, and then they did some weird backlit scheme, which didn’t help my photos, but here they are…

I missed Jessica Hilt…my camera was deep in my bag, but here’s the art for her Frogman story titled Punctuated Equilibrium…

The art is by David Ferreira.

Here is Sunny Katz reading her scary Mystery Box…

About a dog that can sit on the ceiling before it eats you.

Ed Farragut reading When You’ve Seen Beyond about the Dover Demon…

Hanna Tawater reading Wakiya, a surreal tale of snakes who could fly…

Jim Ruland reading Flesh Air, the story of the Bunnyman…

Julia Dixon’s story of a weeping mother looking for her lost children, La Llorona, She Weeps with You…

Ryan Bradford’s The Desert Climate…a story about a missing wife and maybe some aliens… 

Rachel Lee Taylor’s Route 351, the story of Charlie No-Face…

And finally, the man we came for, Alex Bosworth, whose story Old Foukey made everyone laugh out loud with his sarcastic tale of a balding monster with an enormous penis…

 

 I took the obligatory weird leg photo…

And saw this art in the book…by Emily Dumas…

I’m totally giving that little guy a hug…

All in all, very enjoyable. I’m looking forward to reading all the stories and seeing future readings as the rest of the volumes come out…only 18 stories were included in this one, and they plan to do all 50 states.