Release date: September 15, 2024
Paint in Mud is part one of The Tan Galaxy, followed by No Wake Zone and Mule of Mass.
1972. A painting graduate, marked by his troubled upbringing, enters the contemporary art scene. His odd notions prevent him from launching a career in SoHo, and he conceives an adventure southward. There, his confidence betrays him, and he falls into a strange, unexpected labyrinth.
“Paddy– you are marked with the dazed expression of a young, foolish man under the illusion of self-determination when all the while he is blind to the seductions of merely clever people. I told you to flee. Now you are ruined.”
© 2023 Whittier Wright
Part two: No Wake Zone.
“When I am gone, let my portrait leak from its frame and down the wall and out upon the floor. She will enter her parlor, commune with all the rigid old eyes from the dry family portraits, their gazes fixed straight ahead, unable to flex as she passes them by, and she will reach the place where my visage is displayed, but something is terribly wrong– I have wormed away. You have provided my escape. I shall worm away, along the gutters, under the bridges, beneath the foundations, into the long tunnels, until I find the burying place. And there I shall wrap myself in my wooden lover’s own cool dirt…”
Release date: October 2024
Part three: Mule of Mass.
Black gnats bobbed in the air. A stray hickory leaf spiraled down and landed. He lingered at the pit. The mystery felt tactile, ready to divulge answers from that shadowed hole like tendrils to the light.
“Sometimes you have to get lost before you know what to do.”
Release date: November 2024