Introducing Stray Lungs
A new banner for stories about other ways of being in the world.
Hi! Jo here.
Another revolution around the sun, another revolution (slow but certain) in service of what José Esteban Muñoz calls “other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds” (that’s from Cruising Utopia, 2009). This year, we created a new world in Hearthbound. A world of other ways of being in the aftertimes. Of song and soil.
And today, I’d like to bring the work we’ve done and the work we are about to do under one roof. It’s a bit rough-shod, leaking probably, and marked by giant, wobbly, alien-hailing letters.
WELCOME TO STRAY LUNGS.
Here be a touch of the speculative, a solemn vow to continue bastardizing the canon, and a curiosity for how contrary forces collide to create something new in the expanses beyond them.
And for our next trick… indie game development.
Exhibit A:
Sorry, I mean, EXHIBIT A:
My Darling Monk: A Journey to the West Visual Novel
Here’s what to expect:
Art direction from the crackerjack illustrator and grandmaster of Creatures With Weird Little Hands, Anya Boz.
A loving and light-hearted approach to the irreverent Ming Dynasty classic.
And a treat for all the monsterf***ers out there (and the true “hear me out” girlies).
You can watch this space for occasional updates on the writing process, mechanics design, and character work for My Darling Monk. That is, if I can stop replaying Slay the Princess (for research).
So now that expectations are set, I want to leave you with some words I’ve all but carved and calcified upon my own vagrant, breathing organ—words from the great prophet of Muñoz’s ultimate worlds, Ursula K. Le Guin:
“Lest there be no more telling of stories at all, some of us out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we'd better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one's finished. [...] Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.”
- The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, 1986
Happy New Year, and here’s to telling the life story.
-Jo