During the kickstarter, Tom Brown contacted me about his intentions regarding Hopeless, Maine. He’s not been an active contributor to the project since the final book came out this time last year, and he had not been involved with the blog for a lot longer than that.

(I thought I’d illustrate this post with a little cartoon I did years ago – Tom Brown as a spoonwalker.)

Tom Brown has stated that he does not want to be involved in any way moving forward, but he is happy for people to continue Hopeless, Maine without him.

It’s good to have the clarity. I feel this opens things up for us and for anyone interested in future Hopeless, Maine projects. In the coming weeks, I will be overhauling this site and our social media to reflect these changes. We have three people in the team who are going to take up more of the art side. Anyone who would like to be part of that is welcome to get involved – be that with photos, as a maker, or any kind of visual art that doesn’t involve AI.

We’ve got some exciting plans for October – and there will be news of that here very shortly. It’s something you can easily get involved with and it should be a lot of fun.

Hopeless, Maine has always been bigger than the sum of its parts. As James Weaslegrease pointed out, this is not the beginning of the end for the island. It is the end of the beginning. Now we watch to see what all those fascinating wriggly egg sacks have inside them…