After I finished The Bluest Eye, which took me five years to write, I went into a long period of…not deep depression but a kind of melancholy. – Toni Morrison
I admit I am struggling with what I think is grief to having completed a project that has taken many, many years. Now I’m in that strange time (all new to me) of selling the book and marketing myself and going to festivals. Admittedly, I am fatigued. In a little over 6 weeks, I have been in Stockholm (SIS25), Toronto (TCAF2025) and this past weekend to the 2025 Vancouver Art Book Fair. For a socially anxious person it is a lot!
And I’m writing this through the lens of having a cold [what some people call the con flu, or con crud]. I felt very lucky to share the book and yap about my project. It is extraordinary to meet people who are excited about it, and also it is so inspiring to immerse myself in the most visually stimulating environments of extraordinary artists.
I think what I miss is the research, the private journey, the exploration, the presence of the ghosts, and to be connected to mystery and with the spirits of the family that I somehow came across. And so it makes complete sense that with the book completed, it’s not easy to continue to struggle with day-to-day living without that private companionship of the project. It’s not like life changes and becomes, aha, I can just create now. It is hard and strange, but I think what’s the strangest is the grief that I feel.
I think I need to make the space and the time to wonder and sit with it all in gratitude before getting back to the hustle and bustle. To allow myself to get back to the creative freedom I felt when working on it. I need to take time to sit with that story, to be grateful to the family that I wrote about and drew about, to be grateful for the privilege of working with a fabulous publisher who gave me the creative control. Ironically, that creative control is something I feel I’ve lost. [That is simply me getting in my own way. I welcome this challenge.]
I know this is the journey of the artist and putting your work out there. I’ve been in that position before, but as a visual artist. It’s interesting to sit in it and allow the heaviness. I admit I am sharing this through the lens of a head cold, but also an exhaustion after a lot of output.
It is remarkable to look back on the work that really started in August 2003.
And so here I share some reflections that I made in early 2017 when I did an online version of the book (which is now set to private). And it allowed me some distance from it in order to kind of see what the story would be. I asked myself, “Why me?” Why was I chosen to do this book?
I thank the spirits of the family. And I thank you all for supporting my work!
Early 2017:
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My graphic novel, Salt Green Death (Conundrum Press), is a work of creative nonfiction born out of historical research – a Vancouver-based, family saga spanning mainly 1924 – 1968. I released a prologue to the project (title: JOSEPH) in 2022 as a limited edition 12-page broadsheet newspaper format. The prologue focuses on incidents on November 21, 1948.
Salt Green Death, Katarina Thorsen, Conundrum Press 2025
(Video and music by Julian Bowers)