Mindspaces - Charity Presale
Mindspaces is a unique puzzle and essay book by Mike Selinker, focused on the fusion of creativity and mental health. It contains 111 marching bands crossword variants that Mike created as an exercise in therapy, along with his reflections on how to be creative even when your mind is telling you that you can’t. If you’d like help harnessing your creative power under pressure, or just want some puzzles, Mindspaces might be for you.
This is a special charity presale. All presale proceeds after costs—that is, any money that isn’t used to manufacture and ship the book—will go to Game to Grow, a Seattle charity that uses games of all kinds for therapeutic, educational, and community growth. The proceeds will still benefit Game to Grow. (The minimum we’ll send them is $1,000. There’s no maximum.)
This presale is pay-what-you-want. You can choose any amount of $5 (the printing cost) or more for the 160-page softcover and PDF, or $1 or more for the PDF by itself. After you choose your amount, you’ll be charged a regular shipping fee during checkout if you preordered a softcover book. (After the book comes out, it’s planned to go on the Lone Shark store as a normal item, likely for about $30.)
The essays
Each section is preceded by a multipage piece on the challenges of creativity under pressure. Arranged in puzzle grids, these essays tackle the hard practice of making art when your brain works against you. Everybody’s got a different approach to that. Mike talks about how his process works, with an eye toward helping you forge a process that works for you. If you or someone you know struggles with making art while life stands in the way, these might help.
The puzzles
The book contains 111 marching bands puzzles. A marching bands is a crossword where the words read in four directions—right, down, left, and up—in a series of concentric bands. The normal size for these puzzles is 13×13, but these get a lot bigger. The puzzles range from 7×7 to a whopping 23×23. Here are some examples.
We hope this combination of puzzles and words is right for you or someone you know. If you’d like to see what Mindspaces is about, click these buttons.