{"id":18167,"date":"2026-07-07T19:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T23:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=18167"},"modified":"2026-07-07T19:02:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T23:02:15","slug":"episode-682-katie-skelly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-682-katie-skelly","title":{"rendered":"Episode 682 – Katie Skelly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 682:
\nKatie Skelly<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_682_-_Katie_Skelly.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“I was on twitter and saw someone say, ‘The Weeknd makes music for haunted strip clubs,’ and that idea is something my brain kept coming back to.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>After a 12-year Virtual Memories <\/em>gap, Katie Skelly<\/a> is back to celebrate her fantastic new graphic novel, HEAVEN<\/a> (Fantagraphics)! But that’s not all: she’s also got the Bad Girl Tarot II<\/a> (Kickstarter closing July 16, 2026<\/strong>), her horror comics anthology, Viscere<\/a>, and the Thick Lines<\/a> podcast! We talk about how she restructured her life and creativity post-lockdown, how she wound up marrying Jaime Hernandez<\/a>, moving to LA, abandoning the Mets, and finding a community of cartoonists (spoiler: community is the thread that runs through Katie’s art and life), the funny tweet about The Weeknd that inspired HEAVEN<\/em>, why she designed this new tarot deck to be like a prop for a movie you’d want to live in, and why she didn’t learn from my example and avoid making her own podcast. We get into how writing Ed Piskor’s obituary<\/a> broke her, and the episode in Ed’s life that she takes as a cautionary note, the festival that drew her into the comics world, how she measures herself against her yearly Nabokov read, why she’s pretty much done with social media, the flight delay that led to her next comics project, and more! PLUS, Katie reads my tarot<\/em> as we talk about what it’ll take for me to finish my book! Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read HEAVEN<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“I started to incorporate tarot into my daily practice of life. Not in a way that restricts anything, but just in a way that gets a little bit more perspective or think about things that are just out of my control. It’s about a getting a bigger picture.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n