Adam Gnade

1 So last week I bought a bat box which is basically a DIY batcave you attach to the side of your barn to attract bats. Bats eat mosquitoes. Mosquitoes eat me and my friends, so I’m waging war. The bat box came in the mail yesterday and when I get back from London I’m setting it up and then all bats reading this are welcome to come live on the ever-lovin’ Hard 50 Farm. Next step, barn room #2 becomes a fucking recording studio.

2 The Book’s progressing well. I’m on page 100 of the rewrites. Not a whole lot of edits lately. Just a lot of adding new things to give it life. I want to be done by October and ready to find an agent for it but who knows when anything will happen. Bart’s book is done and he’s about to start query letters. I’m pretty excited about that. Keep an eye out for it.

3 We’re harvesting our green bell peppers and roma tomatoes now. The kale became kimchi and salad greens and now it’s gone. New buds on everything. How ‘bout a big fuck yeah to self-sufficiency? Like the Defiance, Ohio song goes, “That’s my rosy picture of the end times.” Rachel keeps saying she wants society to die off already so we can get started on the rebuild. TC and JD I think are happy to keep the lights on for a while. I’m in the middle. Let me finish the Book first and go on tour a couple more times and then we can roll. Let me learn how to make a still first.

4 I’m leaving the country and going overseas in a couple days with about ten bucks in my pocket. Wish me luck. If you see me out there buy me some wine and make me dinner. I’ll pay you back one day I swear. (And if you’re going to V and Mears’ thing in the forest you better be ready to hang out and roll deep.)

5 Reading Garcia Marquez to keep my mind watching for narrative patterns. Reading him sitting in the fields out here while the wind blows in a thunderstorm is pure heaven. I’m a Californian. I’ll always be a Californian. But goddamn it if Kansas isn’t the promised land. It’s funny when I look back on things I’ve written and the path here runs straight and true and lit up in tarmac lights. I never thought it would actually happen and that it would be this good. I figured cutting ties in the city and looking for a new kind of life would be harder. It’s been hard, yeah, but the good outweighs the rough. Now it’s time to come up with what’s next and point myself there. A word of advice: Don’t ever fucking stop.

Your pal,

-Adam