Introducing SLAMMING DOORS: My newsletter project

Welcome to Slamming Doors

Recollections, inspirations, and confabulations from a violent home.

Joey Groff has always wanted to be a writer, but he could never figure out how to create something that felt important. As he nears 40, and at a time when his life is feeling particularly aimless, he discovers that his estranged, abusive father has died. To make sense of his conflicted emotions, and learn more about a man he never truly knew, he embarks on a writing project—to use storytelling to understand the roots of family violence, the truth in habitual lies, and the uncertainty of identity.

Slamming Doors is a series of essays, stories, and interviews that come from the place of where fiction meets reality.

What’s the deal?

In 2022, I published a graphic novel called Tyranny of the Muse and an absurdist novel called A Broken Everything. In both books I explore personal subjects like self doubt, existential crises, struggles with artistic fulfillment, anxiety, depression, and domestic violence, and how those subjects can be interpreted through a fictional lens and integrated into artistic works. I’m incredibly interested in how reality informs fiction, and vice versa. Slamming Doors is a deep dive into that.

Why a newsletter?

I chose the newsletter format because it brings with it a loose freedom that also feels personal and real. It gives me an opportunity to experiment with words and ideas without being overly precious.

Additionally, like many others, I’ve been adjusting my relationship with social media and making it a much smaller part of my life. A newsletter is the best, and the most creatively compelling way to directly share my work and connect with you. It’ll be helpful to have a captive audience rather than one that’s been ripped apart by algorithms.

When will it happen?

The first installment of Slamming Doors launches Friday, Jan 6, and new ones will hit every couple weeks after that. I’ll figure out a cadence that feels right. This project is meant to keep me focused and consistent, so I hope you’ll hold me to it by subscribing and reading and commenting and sharing. Your feedback will be invaluable as we go through this together.

If you’re currently subscribed to my regular newsletter, you’re already a member of Slamming Doors, but if you’re not, you can do so below.

Thank you for your time, patience, kindness, and everything else you do.

Eddie