I’m struggling when it comes to Hopeless, Maine and I need to talk about it. I got involved with Tom as a consequence of working on this project, and it defined our relationship in many ways. I wrote the scripts for him, I coloured for him, and he was my inspiration and my reason for doing all of this. If I’m going to keep this project going at all, I’m going to need input from other people. At the very least I’m going to need prompts. I could do with creative content as well to help keep this site alive.

I can keep Hopeless going as a community project if there are a few people who want it. Otherwise, I don’t think I have it in me to keep doing this.

Since we broke up, Tom has barely talked to me and he hasn’t talked to me about Hopeless at all. I didn’t even know when he’d handed Survivors in – the publisher had to tell me what was going on there. With Susie ill, Ominous Folk has fallen by the wayside because both James and I have found working with Tom impossible. We tried into July, and could not bear any more of it. The last few Ominous Folk gigs were actually Jessica Law and the Outlaws with different hats on.

It’s not the breaking up that’s caused the problems, from my perspective. That’s one of the best things we’ve done. This was never a good relationship and I was utterly miserable for most of the time. There’s not much incentive for me to try and reconnect with someone I failed to meaningfully connect with in more than a decade of trying. But, Hopeless Maine was something we mostly made between us, and I don’t know if it’s viable without Tom. He’s offered nothing for the site in many months, the social media is all me – and always was. He’s shown no signs of interest and I just don’t have it in me to keep running after him trying to get him to engage with things any more.

It’s possible that Hopeless, Maine as a project is bigger than Tom Brown and can survive his lack of interest in it. It’s also entirely possible that this isn’t the case and that without Tom contributing the project isn’t viable. I don’t actually have any idea which it is. So I’m putting this out here, raw and messy as it is because if we’re doing this, I need to do it honestly and if we’re not, I need to know so that I can let it go and focus my energy on other things.