Studio Update

Hello! This is Matt & Erika; Studio Kirkland is our little house brand that covers different creative projects our family tackles. You might have signed up for this because you follow Dracula Daily; and if you don’t recall this or if you want to get off the merry-go-round, there’s an unsubscribe link at the very bottom of this email.

OK, in this newsletter: an update on current projects, showing off some of Erika’s sculpture work, and a book rec.

It’s Dracula Season (again)

If you’re following along with Dracula Daily, this week we just got to meet Lucy’s three suitors, and it’s clear that Jonathan is really in trouble over in Transylvania. That email project is running thru November. And it’s not too late to join if you want, we’re only a handful of chapters in.

Also Matt just mailed out thousands of Dracula Band Aids to his onlyfangs supporters this weekend. I am a sucker for making merch.

Honeywood!

We’re also sharing Honeywood Daily, a similar delivery of The Honeywood File. This is a very different book, as it tells the story of an architect and his client trying to build a house - and the wry Editor who comments on the correspondence. This uses much smaller bits of text - most days you get letters of just a paragraph or two.

We’d originally planned this to go ‘in real time’ like Dracula, but in practice this spans two full years, and has some large momentum-killing breaks. So after consulting with the readers, we are moving to a compressed schedule - not syncing up with the dates but still emailing one day’s worth of correspondence per day. And then shortening the gaps proportionally, so we still have a sense of time passing, but without losing the threads.

I’m pretty pleased with this solution, and excited to see how it feels in practice. And likewise, it’s not too late to catch up if you want to get started - we’re only about a fifth of the way through. Currently James is bickering with a contractor over the modern-day equivalent of $300!

One block at a time

Erika has been making this series of wooden-block sculptures. I (Matt) think they’re so beautiful - surprising combinations, really energetic colors. When they’re on a white wall they practically float as they create a fluorescent glow around them. She’s so good at taking a really quotidian object - a wooden block - and transforming it into something stunning.

Honestly I think in addition to being very cool looking, they’re inspiring. Good art makes me look around the world with a renewed sense of possibility and potential, and that’s what this sparks for me.

Will she make more? I’m not sure. Do we have a half dozen bins of wooden blocks around the studio? Definitely yes.

I mean, look at these. Cool, right? You can see more pieces and process photos here.

Other stuff

Like a lot of creatives we enjoy MAKING stuff but are not very consistent about documenting and sharing the work. But here’s progress: we’ve updated the Studio Kirkland site to share a few more projects. There’s a handful of our web projects and a few more physical things we’ve made. More to come. Probably.

Quick Rec

My client (and now friend?) Jess Goldstein has a debut novel coming out in June: Retro. I got to read an early version of this (while I helped Jess with a promo site), and it’s so fun.

Here’s the pitch: an out-of-work actress get a job as a cruise director for a luxury time travel agency. Things are not as they seem? Definitely if you liked Kaliane Bradley’s Ministry of Time, this one is a slam dunk. Take it to the beach!

Not quite a real project

I (Matt) made a little web tool to help me find new bands. Turns out though… it only works for me. But it was fun, and now I’ve got lots of new music to listen to? Anyway I wrote about it here.

Thanks

That’s it! Hope your summer is off to a good start.

- Studio Kirkland

PS: We agree.