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10/14/2026

People have been asking if they can buy one of these notebooks.

The honest answer is, not really. Not yet. Each one takes me about 20 minutes to print, fold, staple, cut, tape the spine and round the corners-which to be clear, I’m done with when making these for myself. In fact that’s kind of the joy of it.

So I’m going to make a small batch myself here soon, but I can’t make them at any kind of scale right now.

What I’m planning is limited runs. Small drops, and maybe some kind of mail club where I send out notebooks, dime novels, or both. I haven’t decided yet.
In the meantime, if you want one, you can make your own. I put together a print-at-home version of the Working Book: the cover, four page styles, and an illustrated guide that walks you through every step, from the printer settings to the last trim.

It took me six or seven tries to get mine right, and I’m genuinely proud to hand one to somebody. That’s the part I want you to have.

We’re surrounded by digital tools right now, and a lot of them are really helpful, but I think it’s valuable to know how to make things with your own hands, and to take some time to think away from the machines.

Slow down for an evening. Learn something new. Make something you’ll actually use.

Comment NOTEBOOK and I’ll send you the link.

People have been asking if they can buy one of these notebooks.The honest answer is, not really. Not yet. Each one takes...
10/14/2026

People have been asking if they can buy one of these notebooks.

The honest answer is, not really. Not yet. Each one takes me about 20 minutes to print, fold, staple, cut, tape the spine and round the corners-which to be clear, I’m done with when making these for myself. In fact that’s kind of the joy of it.

So I’m going to make a small batch myself here soon, but I can’t make them at any kind of scale right now.

What I’m planning is limited runs. Small drops, and maybe some kind of mail club where I send out notebooks, dime novels, or both. I haven’t decided yet.
In the meantime, if you want one, you can make your own. I put together a print-at-home version of the Working Book: the cover, four page styles, and an illustrated guide that walks you through every step, from the printer settings to the last trim.

It took me six or seven tries to get mine right, and I’m genuinely proud to hand one to somebody. That’s the part I want you to have.

We’re surrounded by digital tools right now, and a lot of them are really helpful, but I think it’s valuable to know how to make things with your own hands, and to take some time to think away from the machines.

Slow down for an evening. Learn something new. Make something you’ll actually use.

Comment NOTEBOOK and I’ll send you the link.

10/14/2026

Binding a Working Book start to finish. No talking — just the sounds of the work. Forty-four seconds of bookbinding ASMR.

I started making handmade notebooks because I wanted something simple that would get used and show the marks of a job well done. A notebook stops being a tool and becomes a record. I wanted something that would outlast the paper.

There’s something about making a thing with your hands. It slows you down to the speed of the work. No notifications in a bone folder. No algorithm in a paper cutter. Just you, deciding this imperfect thing is worth doing well anyway.

What’s the last thing you made with your hands?

The second shot of adrenaline didn’t stop the asthma attack. It bought us a window.It opened my lungs just enough for Mo...
10/13/2026

The second shot of adrenaline didn’t stop the asthma attack. It bought us a window.

It opened my lungs just enough for Mom to drive me from Westerville, north of Columbus, down to Children’s Hospital. I remember that drive. With every breath I told myself, just take another one. That was my whole job.

Keep breathing.

I remember the relief of pulling up in front of the emergency room. They took me straight back. I don’t remember much after that, but Mom says I was cracking jokes, making the doctors and nurses laugh while they hooked me up to oxygen.

I was in the hospital for two weeks. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to see me like that. I was proud, and I didn’t like being weak. I wanted to be strong and capable, and it bothered me that my body just would not comply.

Mom eventually talked me into letting family come through. She slept in the room with me the first few nights, and she’d run across the street to a little grocery for Lender’s bagels to microwave and put cream cheese on for me.

Something changed in me in that hospital room. I was 9. I’m 41 now, and I can still point to it. I wasn’t going to just hope for the best anymore. I was going to fight.
Not long after, Mom got a job offer in Idaho. Maybe that’s why when she asked me if I wanted to go West, my only question was “Do they have mountains there?”

But that’s a story for another day.

10/13/2026

I’ve recently been reminded of how much I love making things by hand.

On Code of the West, I try and remind myself (and by extension us as a whole) that as great as technology can be, the slippery slope comes in if we’re using it out of habit and not with intention.

So I have intentionally been leaving the computer alone more. Less audible books and podcasts, and drawing on the iPad. I’ve also been writing more long hand and doing so in notebooks I’ve been making for myself.

I’ve also been quietly working on a prose follow up to my graphic novel from 2016, CARVER: A Paris Story. This has been something I’ve talked about doing to myself for the past ten years and something just clicked recently after I started slowing down and making things with my hands again.

So last night, just for SNGs, I made a little dime novel out of my first chapter. In comics we used to call these Ashcans. Just old school DIY.

It’s gratifying to make this myself. To have the excuse to slow down, and learn and fail. But learning how to do it is actually the fun part for me. And I’m doing something I’d have regretted not at least trying.

Do you have something like that? A little dream that’s been sitting on the back of the stove? Never really boiling over enough that it’s a problem, but constantly always letting you know it’s there?

On perseverance- I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t think I could hold on any longer…Perseverance is a strange thi...
10/12/2026

On perseverance-

I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t think I could hold on any longer…

Perseverance is a strange thing. It’s kind of like waiting for a train that’s running late. A little time goes by and you think it can’t be much longer. A bit more time goes on and you start to get nervous. Finally you start thinking the train is never going to come and it’s time to figure out another way to travel…

That pretty much sums up my whole career. Me thinking I’m pushing a rope, that it’s time to give up and move on because it just ain’t happening. And right as I’m about to quit, when I’ve done as much I could and I think “that’s it”, something shakes loose, and suddenly I’m holding on to a higher rung of the ladder.

The same has applied in my darkest times. When getting out of bed was the hardest thing I could imagine. Depression and heartbreak and trauma do funny things. They take the wind right out of the sails of the strongest folks. I think the key, though, is just holding on. Walk when you can’t run. Crawl when you can’t walk.

Whether it’s a dream you’re shooting for or you’re facing the darkest hour of your soul, I implore you not to give up.

Fight for the light.

“I will see this game of life out to its bitter end.” — Zane Grey
Painting by Philip R. Goodwin.

The Bitter End is now an 11x17 poster. Comment “BITTER” and I’ll send you the link.

10/11/2026

A journal has a shelf life. The cover doesn’t have to.

I started making my own notebooks because I wanted something simple that would get used and show the marks from a job well done.

The thing about a notebook or journal is that eventually you fill one up, and it stops being a tool and becomes a record. I wanted something that would outlast the paper, that could show the bumps and bruises of use. Something that wears in and changes, that I could keep coming back to, and so I thought leather would be the way to go.

Leather isn’t really my purview though, so I went to my friends Nathan and Joey at Homestead Brand in Deer Park. We talked, tinkered, and figured it out together. Not everything has to come from a YouTube video. Some things you can still learn from people who know what they’re doing.

We arrived at something very simple. Simple enough that it could have been made by just about anyone with a sharp knife and a straight edge with a bit planning.

The catch is that every new book gets punched and sewn into it by hand. I like that though. That bit of friction is the point. It makes it a practice instead of just another thing you own.

In a world of mass-produced everything, it’s good to hold something that still shows the hand that made it.

They even made me a little mending kit to along with it, for when it’s time to put the next journal in.
One of one. For now.

Homestead Brand

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Sagle, ID

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