Unquiet
Things

A few days ago, I wrote about realizing I need to talk about my books more. Since then, I’ve been spiraling through strategy conversations, brand consultations, and existential dread about what it means to shift from “person who writes about lots of things and also has some books” to “author who writes about lots of things.”

And here’s my real fear, the one keeping me up at night, that’s super scary to admit: What if the pivot pisses you off?

Many of you have been here since the beginning, or at least since before the books. You followed Unquiet Things because I write about perfume and obscure art and horror films and whatever other weird rabbit hole I’ve tumbled down at the moment. You found me through Skeletor Is Love, or Coilhouse, or Dirge or Haute Macabre, or Rue Morgue or that time I helped track down the Wrinkle in Time cover artist. Maybe you’re here for the perfume reviews and couldn’t care less about art books. Maybe you followed me on Tumblr in 2011 and never even knew I did any of these other things, let alone that I wrote books.

This little ecosystem has always been eclectic and sprawling because I’m eclectic and sprawling. I have too many interests to devote myself to becoming a guru in any single one. I like knitting and cooking and tarot art and weird fashion and Japanese stationery and a thousand other things, and I don’t want to pick just one to be “my brand.”

But I did write four books. They’re some of the most meaningful work of my life. And when my day job eventually ends (it will), I need those books to sell well enough to matter.

So how do I make the books more central without abandoning everything that brought you here in the first place?

Look, I know this is all very “watching me work through my shit in real time.” I know I’m being an extremely whiny baby about having to talk about my own work. Most authors probably don’t air their marketing anxieties on their professional websites…but this has never been a professional website, has it? This is where I work through things. I’m deeply annoying and deeply uncool, but that’s the deal here.  I put it out there, what I’m pondering, what I’m worried about, what I’m trying to figure out. Writing my thoughts helps me organize them, find connections, work toward solutions. And sharing them is, as cheesy as it sounds, when the magic happens, because you weigh in with your own thoughts and perspectives. Which is very awesome and very helpful.

So here’s what I’m thinking:

I don’t need to stop writing about perfume or art or any of the other things that interest me. I don’t need to turn this blog into a book promotion machine. What I need is to make the connections more explicit between all these interests and the books. The books aren’t separate from what I do here. They’re not some side project I did once. They’re the concentrated, curated form of everything I share here in smaller doses—the deepest expression of all these obsessions I’m constantly writing about.

The person who loves my perfume reviews might not realize there are 175+ artworks in The Art of the Occult exploring the exact same mysterious, symbolic thinking I respond to in fragrance: alchemists and mystics, Tarot readers and occult practitioners, all working with the visual language of transformation and hidden meaning. The person who followed me for Skeletor might not know I literally wrote the book on artists obsessed with darkness and the macabre: Victorian mourning culture, Gothic painters rendering beautiful terror, contemporary artists making work from their demons. The sci-fi art mystery nerds might not have connected that The Art of Fantasy is packed with visual worldbuilding across centuries: medieval illuminators dreaming impossible creatures, Symbolists painting myth as truth, modern artists constructing entire universes through paint and brush and canvas.

And the fourth book (not yet officially announced!, this is just me hinting and winking!) is all about artists who pursue mystery itself. Artists who document the inexplicable not to solve it, but to honor it. Spirit photographers capturing the impossible. Medieval painters depicting angels like personal acquaintances. Contemporary artists exploring parallel dimensions and threshold spaces, and that old chestnut, “liminal space.” David Lynch died while I was working on it, and the timing felt weirdly, sadlariously perfect—the master of the unexplainable vanishing just as I’m wrestling with how to write about mystery without trying to explain it away.

And now I’m gearing up to do it all over again, promote a new book, talk about it endlessly, make people care, while trying not to neglect the three books that came before or the space I’ve built here or the people I’ve invited into it over twenty years. Writing about embracing uncertainty while being profoundly uncertain about how to do any of this right.

You’re already here for the aesthetic. The books are just… more of it. Deeper dives. Curated collections of exactly the kind of art and artists I’m always sharing pieces of.

I’m not pivoting away from you. I’m trying to make sure you know the books exist as resources for the things you already love about what I do here. I’m trying to be more intentional about weaving the books into what I already write about. Not “BUY MY BOOKS” in flashing lights, but simple connections, making those threads visible instead of assuming you’ll just… figure it out on your own. I’m trying to build on the long game I’ve been playing all along—where the perfume enthusiasts, the Skeletor fans, the mystery nerds all eventually find their way to the books through whatever tentacle of interest brought them here. Because I value the community we’ve built here over 20+ years. Because I’m betting that most of you who love the blog would also love the books if you knew they existed and understood they’re made of the same stuff.

I don’t have it figured out! But I am working on it! I’m sitting with the discomfort of not knowing exactly how to do this without it feeling weird or false or like I’m betraying the eclecticism that makes this space what it is. Maybe some of you have thoughts. Maybe you’ve been wondering why I don’t talk about my books more. Maybe you forgot I even wrote them (no judgment, truly, I’m crap at marketing myself, which is the point of all of this whole monologue!). Maybe you have ideas I haven’t thought of. Maybe you’re navigating something similar in your own creative work.

But …maybe that’s where I always seem to do my best work anyway? In the not-knowing, in the questions without clear answers, in the mystery of what comes next? Hm.