<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Highway 62]]></title><description><![CDATA[The only writer you'll ever need.]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 20:39:46 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.highway62press.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: GONNA MAKE A DEAD END ON YOUR STREET]]></title><description><![CDATA[Last week I went to an SFF show. In person and everything. And people say I’m antisocial and never leave the house. Not entirely true. I was only able to make it down for a day, given circumstance and it being on a holiday weekend and needing to be around to take care of a family member who has one of those things where they’re never going to get better from, going to always be there. Which is one of the reasons why I don’t get out as much as I used to. Like I’m going to miss a comic con in...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-gonna-make-a-dead-end-on-your-street</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a511e3a4edfc4e4ec450eef</guid><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 16:33:44 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_8d12ffa43ab0477f8f989dfb3b7df8c3~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: BUT EVERYTHING THAT I KNOW LIES UNDER]]></title><description><![CDATA[Tricky subject this one, since it wanders over into nostalgia, critical and otherwise. Nostalgia is a poison or the greatest thing ever, blah blah blah. I'm not here to litigate that. Both sides are right. I've seen nostalgia-poisoned dudes do terrible things in order to reshape the world into something more their liking. Hell, we're seeing it happen right now, roll that clock back to 1950. Or 1910. I have no patience for that. That said, I make no bones about liking what I like, and a lot of...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-but-everything-that-i-know-lies-under</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a230766861147e383959209</guid><pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2026 17:32:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_117e719304c744d7af2c785e7230ff7e~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: IT’S THE WAY THAT YOU DON’T PAY, THAT’S OKAY]]></title><description><![CDATA[Deep breath. The campaign for My Gifts Are Hungry is done and dusted. All those desperate Bluesky posts and blog posts and photo threads and attempts at outreach that just got blown off (even to some folks I know directly and that’s not a great feeling), all the surprise pickups and all of it. It’s over. Even after that despair post from last Thursday, when the campaign seemed moribund and belly up at the surface of that fishbowl and don’t let Timmy see, he’s too young to understand death....]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-it-s-the-way-that-you-don-t-pay-that-s-okay</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a1df9a961de78e3b215daa6</guid><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:41:09 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_17a0d9d552334cf38a53934e9fbcd4ad~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: PEEL BACK THE MOUNTAINS, PEEL BACK THE SKY]]></title><description><![CDATA[Taken at Mt. Wilson Observatory, 2026 Listening to Fables of the Reconstruction (or Reconstruction of the Fables, if you prefer) by REM, a forty-one year-old record. I’m old enough to remember waiting for it to come out, still have a ratty promotional poster from Tower Records somewhere, I think. I’d have to go dig it out. It’s an album that still rings for me, slicing into a very particular time and place. That being graduation from high school. Yes, I’m rather old, though I was young when I...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-peel-back-the-mountains-peel-back-the-sky</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a1992d569f69d4475af14ed</guid><pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 13:26:54 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_020d2d3e71ea4cce99a9c531477c6805~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: THE LAND OF FAKE BELIEVE]]></title><description><![CDATA[I suppose I should start this with a disclaimer that there’s no wrong way to write or to tell a story. That you can do whatever it is that you want. They’re your words. They’re your stories. They’re your worlds, even if that world is supposed to be a replica of this one. That being critical to understand because fiction simply isn’t reality. Even when it’s pretending to be, maybe even particularly when it’s pretending to be. Fiction isn’t bound by gravity or the square cube law or oxygen...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-the-land-of-fake-believe</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a10615f8fa816dacc7ea8d6</guid><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 14:11:55 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_2deb8ffa2e5b46e49aa5b1ac4cdb5935~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: MY EYES SEE WHAT THEY WANT TO SEE]]></title><description><![CDATA[Kinda some spoilers for previous Hazeland works here, at least the first two. I’ll try to be as oblique as possible. Be forewarned. Full disclosure: I’ve never been comfortable with horror as a descriptor for my work on Hazeland. Even before it was Hazeland and it was just a couple of short stories and then a novella called The Queen of No Tomorrows. Firstly, the stories, particularly one called “Chunked” but the others as well, didn’t have any relation to The Queen of No Tomorrows. Which was...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-my-eyes-see-what-they-want-to-see</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a0cdf57983c9f06161f4227</guid><pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 22:13:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_d9374eb18253454d9894a3c756910dd3~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: WE ALL HAVE TO MAKE SOME KIND OF PLANS FOR OURSELVES]]></title><description><![CDATA[It's a free concert from now on. That's our world. All the ticket booths got taken down and the hairies from the Wild Zone have crashed the scene. Woodstock without limits. The old world of outdoor festival and money at the door just took the first helicopter out. If only there had been a better plan. The organizers had to head out of there pretty fast. Hey wait a minute, this isn't Woodstock. It's Altamont. Only the world isn't so much planned as cobbled together from moment to moment,...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-we-all-have-to-make-some-kind-of-plans-for-ourselves</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a0b7defc5d6668af2e95e7a</guid><pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2026 21:06:44 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_3f84485a2ff4433c87ab009d1d0c6ea0~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: SUBURBIA AND OTHER WASTELANDS]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Kickstarter campaign for My Gifts Are Hungry is still rolling. We’re at 150% funded but there’s stretch goals to think about. Oh yeah, and how this is the time that people actually buy and connect with the books because after this, it’s onto Amazon and benign neglect by the algorithm. Over the next little while, I’ll be talking about some influences and inspirations for Hazeland and in particular, My Gifts Are Hungry. I always say that books come from a place I can’t reach, only through...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-suburbia-and-other-wastelands</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a024b5b0e085586d479dd2c</guid><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 21:39:53 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_932adf96682e41d29a951625811b484b~mv2.jpeg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: THERE WAS NOTHING TO FEAR AND THERE WAS NO DOUBT]]></title><description><![CDATA[So, don’t know if you’ve heard. Maybe you haven’t. But I’m running a crowdfunding campaign for my latest book over on Kickstarter. It’s true. Not a dream. Not an imaginary story and won’t be written away in the next generation of for-hire writers coming onboard and making everything grim and gritty and ready for prestige presentation over ten episode seasons with all the fun sucked out. I know. Curveball. Additionally, the book funded. In the first day. In fact, it funded even when I doubled...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-there-was-nothing-to-fear-and-there-was-no-doubt</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fa7acfb27e981e27c83ef1</guid><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 23:25:07 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_d9b64729b15c4df2abd566a2d8cfc11a~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: AND GOLD IS NOT REALITY]]></title><description><![CDATA[After going back and forth on things over the last couple of weeks, I went ahead and decided to run the Kickstarter campaign for my newest book. I’d thought that I wouldn’t have the energy/focus to run it and promote it and all, particularly since I was spending a lot of time helping my wife recover from surgery. Yeah, last week was long and rocky. The surgery isn’t the only issue in our lives and I’m gonna leave it there. I have a lot to do that has nothing to with writing or promoting (and...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-and-gold-is-not-reality</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69d58ed374eeae096e5238ac</guid><pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 23:15:17 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_730654b7adcb4731b70fd06ab7b7dcaa~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: IN BLACK WAS A COLOR BLACK WAS YOUR COLOR]]></title><description><![CDATA[A lonely Imperial Pilot guiding folks into the waiting area before the show. Flew down to attend Wonder-Con last week. Well, and to spend a few days seeing friends and LA and eating a lot of Mexican food because my family doesn’t like it as much as I do. I’ll spend most of this one talking about Wonder-Con as a show. Not sure I’m going to write up the other stuff so much except to wrap up everything in passing. Part of what I’ll talk about there is the root of the problems that I’ll talk...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-in-black-was-a-color-black-was-your-color</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69cc5aa08022aa79e2c8e9f0</guid><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 23:40:17 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_8c2fc70e3a614e9fad306d517aaa0114~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: NOT ALL HOUSES ARE HAUNTED BY THE DEAD]]></title><description><![CDATA[Hey folks. Yeah, it’s been a minute. Last time I posted here, I’d just finished up the first draft of My Gifts Are Hungry. Well, the second draft really. That first draft is the maybe fifty pages of raw plotting, that whole skeleton. In this case, there were another couple rounds of putting stuff in different places and changing the fundamental nature of the “antagonist” in the book, which forced some other stuff to be written a little more fully. Made for a slower process. Last week, I...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-not-all-houses-are-haunted-by-the-dead</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69bc7293bec251fc0ba929eb</guid><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2026 22:13:36 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_5700dd18437940e89fe2fe8c58bc5513~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_844,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: LITTLE ORPHANS IN THE SNOW]]></title><description><![CDATA[Maybe you heard the news. Finished another novel a couple days ago. Trying to remember whether this is number ten or eleven. There’s four I can’t really count even though I wrote ‘em. Maybe those names will get counted one day. Not today for sure. So yeah, that’s My Gifts Are Hungry printed and waiting markup. I say “finished” knowing full well that there’s an edit pass. This serves a couple purposes. One, it makes me experience the book in reader time, ie over a course of hours (over a few...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-little-orphans-in-the-snow</link><guid isPermaLink="false">698bc74ec54aab42f42008fc</guid><pubDate>Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:06:20 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_8d8bbd80bae044d2896cdf63c1913b09~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: AND THEY WERE SAYING BIG B, LITTLE O, LITTLE M, SILENT B]]></title><description><![CDATA[It's tough to look around and think that things are going well. Living through America's Years of Lead and seeing all the obvious, flagrant and almost comical violations of the law on the part of those in power and you'd be insane to think that things are going well. I'm just talking on a relatively limited personal basis. Hell, there's stuff still going on within reach that's bad enough that I won't freely discuss it here (and don't hold your breath.) So I'm clearly selfish to think...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-and-they-were-saying-big-b-little-o-little-m-silent-b</link><guid isPermaLink="false">697be4eeccf6db790cb13ced</guid><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 22:57:34 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_115366b84e73447f8ee9e8c873267c6a~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: TAKE A RIDE, TAKE A SHOT NOW]]></title><description><![CDATA[Thirty-five years ago, I started a job out of college. I'd moved to a new city to be with my girlfriend of four years, to one day to be my fiancée then wife who I'm still married to. I'm anything but a quitter I guess. Just don't talk to my bandmate in the Roswell Incident. The turn of the new year makes me think of this, mostly because I started that job on January second, which is basically monster-like behavior. It wasn't a great job, but it wasn't terrible. I was (shockingly)...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-take-a-ride-take-a-shot-now</link><guid isPermaLink="false">696a5b2a482610fa2890d213</guid><pubDate>Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:39:42 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_b0c602fd0f134dc19f5f4da909d9238a~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: GHOST WRITING]]></title><description><![CDATA[In 2020, I drove out to San Francisco. I want to say it was in February. Reviewing, it was actually in January. I covered that trip here, in the post called " That Good Godspeed You Black Emperor Light. " There was a thing called Covid in the news, but it wasn't real. Not like it would be. It would be the last trip I took to the city until probably 2023? Just checked, actually December 0f 2022. I seem to be a month off in my recollections. Of course, Everything Horrible that's been going...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-ghost-writing</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69572a663049016ee543945a</guid><pubDate>Fri, 02 Jan 2026 02:21:48 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_a2f7d9c3712148f59bb249814370c5ed~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: CUT THE CONVERSATION, JUST OPEN YOUR MOUTH]]></title><description><![CDATA[I know, this should have a more Christmas-like or Solstice-like title. It is that time of year, right? Of course it is. That’s why I’m wiped. All that obligation dragged around, begins to weigh on ya. Yes, it’s joyous and a time of being together with your family (only this year it’s not, by and large – long story which I’m not relating here). No, nothing’s wrong with the immediate family, not any more than usual. Just weirdness with relatives. And oh, making it over to my family involves...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-cut-the-conversation-just-open-your-mouth</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6949fa55d4fba6e402a56e20</guid><pubDate>Tue, 23 Dec 2025 02:16:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_470365b4dce545f59f8863b5481bc009~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: JUMPED INTO THE RIVER WHAT DID I SEE]]></title><description><![CDATA[I'm spending more time these days responding to writing from other people than I am writing my own work. That's probably not a good sign. Though it's good in that there have been works worth responding to. That's something, right? Totally worth not getting back to my own work for. Sure, I guess. I'll lay the blame at the feet of the holiday season, which is a time of year where I have to do more and more with every year that passes. There's reasons for that. Maybe I'll be brave enough to talk...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-jumped-into-the-river-what-did-i-see</link><guid isPermaLink="false">693f21ba38266d8ba629af87</guid><pubDate>Sun, 14 Dec 2025 20:59:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_ab285cb6082b4c4ead7d5395796658fc~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: DE/VOID]]></title><description><![CDATA[I’m not particularly good at this. As it’s neither a formal essay nor an informal response to a piece of writing, I don’t exactly know where to start. So I’ll just keep writing until something catches, perhaps a piece of friction between two words sparks something. Bear with me. This is essential in apprehending the subjects we’re going to take a look at in this piece. A word of background on me, or at least some attempt at explanation. One of the areas of study I found myself enmeshed in...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-de-void</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6929cf73a20c8b33b26492d7</guid><pubDate>Fri, 28 Nov 2025 16:40:38 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_c2967289d6d2461791893568ff4516af~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[FULL BLEED: PREAMBLE AND PREMONITION]]></title><description><![CDATA[Spent last weekend in a flux state, passing through more than couple interzones at a time. Saturday anniversary. Yes, I chose the wedding date. And I didn't. It was the first night we happened to get together, back in [redacted]. So yes, I decided to make that our wedding date as well even though it happens to fall upon Day of the Dead and All Souls Day and Samhain and I bet I'm missing a couple others in there. We've been married a good long time, together longer even than that. I wouldn't...]]></description><link>https://www.highway62press.com/single-post/full-bleed-preamble-and-premonition</link><guid isPermaLink="false">690a94b1757e81902cec9bbb</guid><pubDate>Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:08:55 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4572af_e45079c766dd488389174c36ede22372~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Matt Maxwell</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>