In Jane's House
Of the many alternative fiction methods I’ve outlined in my Calls for Entries series ( Part One, Part Two, Part Three), one of the more recent is ‘tell a whole story with a series of yard signs.’
Well: I’ve often ruminated on the dumb joke that takes this format, and finally decided to make it real. Sort of.
So: I made a little website studiokirkland.com/inthishouse - and now you can read ALL of Pride and Prejudice as a yard sign. And also buy one if you want to get a sensible chuckle out of your literate neighbors, I guess!
My Favorite Bands' Favorite Bands
Here’s the story of a little website I built for myself, but thought I would share with others… and then realized I definitely only built it for myself.
I love live music. I am pretty choosy about what kind of recorded music I listen to, but I will happily listen to the worst band if I can be in the same room with them, and feel the bass vibrate with my actual body. I love a live show.
And while they’re always kind of a crapshoot, I do really like to hear the opening acts. I show up to concerts on time!
The very first concert ticket I bought myself was for the REM Monster tour, in 1995. The opener for that show as a little British band I’d never heard of called Radiohead.
SO: I’m interested! If you like a band, what kind of bands open for that band?
I designed (and vibecoded) a little app:
This would be a perfect little app: connect your Spotify* account, get a listening history. Find the bands you listen to the most. Analyze their touring schedule. Build a playlist of which bands open for them.
And it worked!
It’s not perfect (sometimes it finds people that play the same festival, or even just the same venue on the same date, and confuses things). But it’s already surfaced some new-to-me music.
I was all excited to share this, and then found out: Spotify doesn’t actually allow this. Their API has two modes: build for yourself, or become a big partner. My Big Partner application was rejected (you have to have millions of users and serious revenue before they consider you).
So it only works… for my Spotify account.
Breathwork for Church
OK, ‘breathwork’ is this thing about controlled breathing, right?
Taking deeper / longer / more measured breaths in specific ways is supposed to have all these real, actual health benefits: physical and mental and emotional. Like, it can supposedly calm you, improve your sleep, improve focus, juice your attention span, etc., all depending on how you’re breathing. Maybe it’s a bit woo-woo, sure. But on the other hand: we all understand that taking a deep breath is calming. It seems plausible.
I know the few times I tried an ‘activating’ breathwork thing, it felt AMAZING. As good as a strong cup of coffee.
SO what I’ve always wondered, and think about once per week: does anybody write songs that build in breathwork? Singing is by its nature a kind of structured breathing, but in a loose way. When you sing, you generally decide when to take new breaths in, but the song itself determines when you breathe out. And it seems like with a little more planning, you could map this into a real breathwork exercise. Instead of just ‘in’ and ‘out’ and ‘hold’ in breathwork, we could have words and melody.
And furthermore: I go to church on Sundays, and every week we sing songs together that are meant (in part) to affect our mental and emotional state. That’s not the POINT of worship music per se, but it’s part of it, right? We sing Amazing Grace to remind ourselves that we once were lost but now are found. We sing It Is Well With My Soul to practice equanimity both when peace like a river attendeth my way AND when sorrows like sea billows roll.
SO my question is: who is writing new-age-breathworky songs for Christian worship, and where can I try them out?
So I started an OnlyFangs
I have a real job, but my side projects have occasionally gotten out of hand. One of those is Dracula Daily, the email newsletter where I email you the entire book Dracula, in ‘real time’, on the days when the events happen to the characters. The whole book runs over about six months. And then I do it again the next year.
My side project life now has a rhythm, and one of the big sections in that rhythm is Dracula Season. In 2026 this will be our fifth time through, and we’re about to embark on Dracula Season.
A crazy thing about this is: most people don’t unsubscribe after reading it! There are still hundreds of thousands of people sign up, and this year more people than ever read Dracula together. This kind of blows my mind!
The newsletter runs on Substack. Even if your newsletter is free, the platform really wants you to consider a paid subscription tier, and whether you like it or not they offer your readers a way to ‘pledge’ a subscription. So last year I caved to that pressure, and launched the official supporter tier.
I called it Dracula Weekly, because for those supporters only I write a weekly recap post. I cover what happened in the reading (in case you missed one or feel behind), and point to some of the good memes/jokes/artwork/etc that people have created, and then some general notes and pointers to other things I think are neat. That’s not much of an ‘exclusive’ reward here. Also I might mail you some merch.
I called it Dracula Weekly officially, but secretly I call it my OnlyFangs.
Sending the same emails out year after year to hundreds of thousands of people is exciting - but having these actual supporters is surprisingly motivating! It’s not the money, but the signal that people actually care. Because I get it: you sign up for something, you may or may not read it, and you might just never get around to unsubscribing. Maybe you delete it when it comes in, maybe you just throw it in your junk or to-read-later pile. I also don’t allow comments on Dracula (because I don’t know how I would community-manage this many people), and so it’s hard to know if people are engaged… or just haven’t gotten around to unsubscribing.
So knowing that there are real supporters out there who have made this choice, that actually want Dracula Daily to keep going, makes all the difference. Like I said, surprisingly motivating!
(Yes, there ARE also tens of thousands of new subscribers each year. I’m excited about them too!)
Anyway, this year as a thank-you I’ve made some Dracula Daily-themed band-aids, which I will send out to supporters. I think this is a good joke! We’ll see.
Anyways: Dracula Season starts on May 3! You can sign up to read along with us - it’s free! Or of course, you can also subscribe to my OnlyFangs.
Ride the Retro Metro
Today I’m excited to share a new site I made with Jessica Goldstein, author of forthcoming novel Retro.
Retro is a delightful read: an out-of-work actress joins up to be a Time Travel Agent for Retro, the world’s only time travel agency. I got to read an early copy of this and thought it was so much fun.
I worked with Jessica to build a site for Retro the company, following the description in the text (and adding some details here and there). My favorite bit: you can get your Pastport, the official ID that lets you ride the Retro Metro.
Sadly we couldn’t play it completely straight; the publishers and agents all want to eventually, you know, link to the book so you can buy it. But this was very fun, and I think Jess is going to sell a million copies of this thing.