2026 plans: artwork & community

This is my first post of 2026, the 300^th post since I added this blog to my website back in August 2008, and we have just entered the 30^th year of existence for this website (which was originally launched back in 1996). As a consequence I feel like I have earned a little latitude from you, my imaginary reader, to ramble a bit.

My artistic practice and publishing an Acid Renaissance book

This year is going to be busy for me artistically - that’s not a threat, but a promise to myself. Or maybe a bit of a threat to myself. Last year was not very productive in terms of my artistic practice. I feel like the cause of most of that was personal: tiredness, a lack of inspiration, a lack of planning.

So this year I’m going to force myself to get a lot of artwork done: this will constitute regular life-drawing (two to four sessions a month) and also finishing off my Acid Renaissance series of artwork.

I’ve also set myself a deadline of the end of 2026 to publish a book of my Acid Renaissance artwork, which will be the third book of my artwork following Myth and Masks (2016) and England’s Dark Dreaming (2018).

Back when I published those first two books the landscape was very different: I could use a reasonable following on Twitter to let people know about the books, and shipping them outside the UK was relatively simple (although still a bit expensive).

Unless things change dramatically by the end of 2026 then publishing and selling the new Acid Renaissance book will be very different: social media has fragmented (which is probably a good thing overall, but makes this task tricky); increased costs caused by Brexit and the UK cost of living crisis have pushed up base prices for paper and printing; and a combination of Brexit and Trump’s tariffs have made shipping books to people outside of the UK a lot more expensive.

The upshot of all of this is that, while the new Acid Renaissance book will be available internationally, I’m going to have to:

1. Concentrate on selling it in the UK as international shipping prices are now overwhelming, and particularly so for US people who have to pay tariffs on anything they order from outside the US to pay for Trump’s gold ballroom, and
2. Spend a lot more time getting it into a lot more UK shops because contemporary social media can’t get the word out so well, so I’ll need to rely on more ‘passing sales’ from people seeing it in a shop (and that means I get less money for each book, as each shop needs to take their cut).

I’m going to look into ways to make the book more affordable in the US, whether that’s having a separate US printing (printed in the US itself, so it doesn’t cross the border - not sure if this is either feasible or legal) and/or having a single US distributor.

I’ve been thinking about finding a freelance administrator who I can pay for occasional admin work to help all this: it will make everything easier for me, but on the downside it obviously adds to the costs.

Community building & involvement

I’ve now been in Hastings for a year-and-a-half, and I’ve started to get to know people (not one of my fortés, it must be said), which is good.

There are some existing loose local networks/communities that I’d like to get involved with or am already getting involved with—both for the joy of being part of a community and with an eye towards Prefiguration—and there is also a gap that Scott Wood (of Reweirding, the London Fortean Society, and the Londonist) and I have identified for a practitioner-led “Hastings (and nearby areas) Weird” community, for which we’re planning on setting up informal meet-ups every couple of months over the course of 2026 - drop me a line if you’re in this geographical area and want me to send you the details when we have finalised them.

I’m on the waiting list for a nearby allotment here in Hastings (although there’s a five year waiting list, and I’m only one year into that wait), and there is also the propensity of Hastings people to know how to work collectively to make their own community entertainment.

I’m also going to continue to be involved with some non-local communities, including the IndieWeb and the related online Homebrew Website Club meetups, and by extension I’m going to continue to blog here and to read other people’s blogs through the RSS feeds they provide.

And yeah, some social media as well, but still much-reduced from the heyday of 2014–2020.