I want to talk about unfiction and metafiction and a narrative that subsumes. I started Rachel Rosen's Cascade last night and immeditaely followed Sujay's tumblr. I love a puzzle, self referential humour, and a six hour explainer about a 6 minute video that red strings its way from 90s Nick Jr to the writings of Ovid to the weather on one very specific day in Minnesota when the creator was five. I am - forever - grateful to Donovan Strain for the days and days (let's be real, nights) worth of effort he put into unearthing Ice Cube's actual 'Good Day'. All this to say I want to be consumed by a story, have it twist me. Come away not so much shattered or hopeful, uplifted, but blown open, excited, inspired to write. Query hit that mark instantly. Obviously. I barely got started before getting in touch. As you, as Night Beats, as Zilla, what's your relationship with subversions of form?

Ursula Le Guin said that people told her, "Write what you know," and what she knew was dragons and wizards from worlds inside her mind. I think she said that. I read it on Tumblr and I never bothered to check its authenticity because the message is equally true if she said it, or a Tumblr username not fit to print came up with it. I met Rachel A. Rosen online. When we talk about whether Ian would hurt Jonah more by fucking him or rejecting him, Ian and Jonah are as real to me as any of Rachel's friends. A major impetus for writing Query was my need to for someone to give Ian a hug.

Metafiction is stories in conversation with other stories. I don't ever want to tell stories alone--I want to speak with my inspiration and my community. I don't want there to be a solid line between the author, the audience, and the work.

If my art makes someone else feel the pull to create their own art ... I can't imagine anything better

So what you're saying is that Query starts as Cascade fanfic. Our friends have friends and we see them with distance. Your own work in the same universe gives you a chance to explore what matters most about those characters to you.  Is that the real impetus for the Night Beats EU? To keep the door open to these conversations about stories and characters and what they mean to you?

Not only as Cascade fanfiction, but also started as Cascade fanfiction.

Yes, that's a huge part of Night Beats. A story anyone can be part of. We started Night Beats before Tumblr invented the boot movie, or we wouldn't have bothered, I think. Goncharov, the greatest mafia film never made. I'm sure you know the history, but let me explain to the Gentle Reader. 

A Tumblr user posted a photo of a boot that claimed to be a costume from the 1973 Martin Scorsese film Goncharov, a film which does not exist. Another user made it a cinematic poster, or a score, and then everyone got in on the joke. It has an ao3 category and a canonical non-canon of queer-baiting tragedy. "If you loved me, you wouldn't have missed," no one said. Even in our fictional fiction, we can't conceive of a world where we have nice things.

This is the kind of story I need to exist. One that's bigger than any one person, bigger than copyright or canon. A story that anyone can be part of. That's why we made Night Beats.

That, and because we wanted our characters to be able to make pop culture references to things without their author coming out as a TERF.

I’m envious of this community you’ve built. There was a moment where I had something similar then not quite that last point but not all that far off. I wish I was better at trying again, trying over, but I’m terrible at people and most of the time choose to just not.

kith is two fold in intention. We want to tell the stories of the crip queer and TransMad and we want to pull back the curtain of publishing to make it less usurious and frightening for creators looking to get their work out. To this end, I ask you: Tell me about tRaum. Walk me through the process. Was Query widely submitted or had you handpicked the press?

Rachel & I self published The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food You Can Make So You Don't Die, and it was a magical experience. Working with a friend who you completely gel with, who pushes and supports you creatively in equal measure—there's no comparison to that. I'd given up on the thought that a business under neoliberal capitalism could offer that kind of experience. I dithered for a bit, but eventually I made up my mind to self-publish Query. (Side note: the cookbook is free on our website and I've been reliably informed that it's as funny as any of our novels. Plus it has recipes.)

I have less than zero skills at making things look good, so I turned to an editor friend, and asked Rysz if he'd do layout in return for money. Capitalism! He said yes. He also offered that I could have some ISBN, since he had lots and they're quite expensive to buy individually. That would mean the publisher metadata linked to tRaum Books but that only mattered if we wanted it to matter. 

Two of my favourite things in life are metafiction and community. Rysz and I started to talk about what it would look like if tRaum did publish my book. Rysz drew up his usual contract for me, "If I hurt your baby, you get to punch me in the balls." And it's been a dream. I couldn't imagine a better father.

Everyone kith has ever published knows that same Rysz motivated, 'Hi'. We're here because I said hi to him about you. Then Rachel said hi and now I know about Ian and Jonah and, no doubt, my friends and relations are as grateful as ever that I left ao3. As someone who spent time in fandom on tumblr, this organic web weaving feels instinctive to me. Trad Pubs call it networking and I feel the life leak out my soul. Query plays into that distinction so beautifully. Poking holes in the pretense of proper, Zilla belies her humanity and I wish we didn't both know she came up mostly cold. Say tRaum, say Night Beats, say kith grew bigger than reason. Say we had the power to change the way trad pub works. Would you applaud a return of humanity to the process? Do you think the artist as person is part of the art?

I am a dedicated introvert. I don't know that I want the author as human at the centre of the art, because I want a world where I can have people read my works without me dancing on tiktok. What I want is death of copyright. I want the artist as fan, one more person playing in canon, their voice as crucial or meaningless as anyone else's.

And I want a way to reach my people. The weirdos who read and write cross-genre unhinged fiction are dispersed, like panning for gold and coming up mostly with pyrite. Why hadn't I met you before now? Why do I count each meeting with a like-minded artist in units of one? Science fiction, crime, paranormal romance--there are formal and informal places to find your crew. I want that for us. I want to knit the red string into a sweater.

Zilla comes up cold because she's asking the wrong question. No one in trad pub will ever buy her book but why does she care? The dying trad pub model doesn't match her values. 

Because there are nearly 10 billion artists on just this one planet and only so many a lifetime allows us to know. I want to know everything but wish it didn’t mean trusting or vulnerability. I want to bleed out onto pages and have no one ever again lay eyes on a tangible Me. It is cover and cowering and it’s what my tired soul needs.

kith's process is messy and intimate and varies quite widely depending on the needs of our creators. Some projects come print ready, some formal and cover lettered and staid, and others in notes app screenshots, screenshots and once, notably, in the form of a late night tumblr rant. Where do you fit on this spectrum and did tRaum meet you? Were you to do it again is there anything you'd change?

Query was a fever dream that flowed through me and out my fingertips. I wrote the entire thing in a few months shortly after I gave up on finding a literary agent. It helped that I had a base--many of the story excerpts were kidnapped from unfinished pieces I'd written earlier. And, like all my stories, I wrote with a community. A number of good friends beta read along letter by letter--I wrote one a day most weekdays--and shared their own experiences of querying literary agents and the letters they wished they could write in response. As the saying goes, "It takes a village to raise an ASCII peen."

As for meeting Rysz--the writing community is kinda like a red-string conspiracy board of connections. The author of Most Famous Short Film of All Time, Tucker Lieberman, did an interview on our blog, and I couldn't stop thinking about his words, so I did something I'd never done before and asked him for an ARC. His book is beyond stunning. It's the sort of story that lives rent-free in my head and I keep bringing it pizza and encouraging it to stay. In my Goodreads review I more-or-less begged anyone who had read it to be in touch so I could discuss it with them. As the book's publisher, Rysz had read it, and he said hi. 

Form is critical to Query's message, and one of my fears for my baby was how I'd find someone skilled enough to survive the layout process. I'm extremely fortunate that I met Rysz because he has an artists' sensibilities, which I do not have. The underlining vs italics, the straight vs curly quotation marks, every detail tiny that made the print edition look authentically typewritten--that was all Rysz. I can't speak for Rysz, who is somewhat more hinged than I am, but during the process of trying to make an epub of experimental fiction look good across different ereaders, I had moments where I swore I would never publish a book like this again. But like any childbirth, the pain of labour is soon repressed. A few days ago we started work on an anthology of fiction about the relationship of writer, reader, story, and neoliberal hellscape. I hope we never learn from our mistakes.