2026 05 06

Katlin Bourgeois of Joffrey. Chicago, Illinois. June 2023 © Clayton Hauck

My new zine is now out and available! You can buy a copy here.

This image is one of the frames contained within. It was a lot of fun to put together, but in typical me fashion, I’m already having regrets about various decisions I made. That said, the positives far outweight the negatives and I feel good about the project overall. Mainly, I’m excited to move on to the next printed photozine, which I’m already at work on. Over the span of the first two book projects, I feel like I’ve come a long way in learning by doing. Really, that’s been the aim all along. I’m a strong believer that there simply aren’t things you really know until you do them.

Logistically, this book has been taking up too much of my time lately, so I’m excited to be mostly over the hump. I’m nearly done packaging up all the pre-orders and am very thankful to everyone who did purchase the book prior to its release. Because of y’all, the zine is mostly paid off already, which has become my goal on any of these projects. While I don’t expect to make money doing these things (and any profits I do encounter will go straight back into Realm), I also can’t continue to do them if they are losing money — and I’m really hoping to be able to continue making them!

Really, I just find it fascinating to learn how vital pre-sales are to most book releases. I had no idea until I started dabbling in books myself, but it’s really kind of the whole ballgame.

I’ll continue to drop some images both that made the cut and didn’t make the cut in the coming days. Tons more to share from my Illinois Wanderings, as well.

-Clayton