Sam Hasler and I have been working collaboratively since 2018, when we self-published a collection of short fiction and digital collages titled, It Came From The Fog. Our process is a slow one; of walking, talking, writing, reading, recording sounds and making videos.
Over the years we have accumulated a broad range of material with loose connections to cinema, suburban spaces, the nocturnal and the in-betweens of urban spaces. Our most recent work examines the creative process itself, searching for humour in that process, our procrastination or self doubt. It has been a way of bringing life to our endless discussions about what we’re doing and why, what we like and dislike about the culture we experience. But also, it is a story about friendship and finding ways to work together.
The fog is the fog of a film noir film, or the fog in a ravine of a vampire movie, or the fog and smog of Dickensian London, or the fog of a coastal romantic melodrama, or the fog over the swamp where Swamp Thing rises, or the fog around the foot of an office tower at dawn; like a hard glass monolith lifting out of the mists, and all the ways that fog makes a simple city feel mythical. And it – the ‘it’ that came from the fog – it is the clichés of film noir films, and the clichés of vampire movies, and the clichés of Dickensian London and the clichés of coastal romantic melodramas, and the clichés of Swamp Thing’s lagoon, and the clichés of cities at dawn, and the sense that some mythologies can be given to any simple city with a generous layer of fog. This book is about two characters that live in that space between simple cities and the pulpy, ghostly, sly, creepy, slippery, mushy, messy fog.
