We were lucky to catch up with LE Francis recently and have shared our conversation below.

LE, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I have learned most everything I do on my feet.
As far as Sage Cigarettes Magazine goes, a portion of what I bring to the table comes from my stint as an arts journalist & editor. I have a knack for meticulous line editing, organizing social media output, laying out print pages, & creating punchy headlines. I also have a background in web & graphic design & can tinker with our website.
But honestly, I just accumulate skill as needed. If there’s something that needs to be done & nobody else can handle it, I’ve got it. I’ve taught myself how to digitally draw logos & art for the podcasts & magazine, how to edit audio & video for the podcast.
The only subjects I have an academic background in are creative writing & vocal/music theory & I don’t know that either of those things are practically helpful. They may be useful for exploration & inspiration, but the editorial processes in all the mediums I work in are much more exacting & have required a lot more than just the bones of the thing.
All of it is a living process. It’s been a lot of trial & error & fine tuning but I’m always game to make a fool of myself & learn anything I can along the way.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started working with Sage Cigarettes Magazine & Stef Nunez in 2020. I’d written this ridiculous flash fiction piece to spite a writing buddy & Stef kindly chose to publish it. A few months later, I saw a post on Twitter that she was looking for help with the magazine, I reached out, & we ended up bonding almost immediately over our love for goofy post-hardcore bands & the TV series Supernatural.
In the years since, Sage Cigarettes & our horror movie review podcast, A Ghost in the Magazine, have become two of my biggest regular projects.
As Sage Cigarettes’ Managing editor, I manage our weekly blog output, write a biweekly music column, & do anything else that is needed to manage the site & get our biannual issues out into the world. I also appear on, & regularly edit audio & video for A Ghost in the Magazine & our second podcast, Annegirls, where we read & discuss Anne Rice’s massive catalog of books.
Outside of my collaborative work with Stef, I’m a Pushcart-nominated poet, a freelance editor, a visual artist, a musician, & I write long & short-form fiction under a pen name.
My approach to my work is organic. I am here because this is who I am & what I do. If my day never comes, I will still be making art in one medium or another & using every little bit of skill that I’ve accrued from my previous jobs & projects to help myself & other artists.
I switch things up to keep my mind fresh, to keep inspiration flowing. Since I started leaning into multiple projects & mediums, I’ve been unreasonably busy but I’ve also never experienced “writers/artists/musicians block.” If I’m feeling stagnant, I just shelf what I’m working on & shift mediums.
I’ve found that once I reach a basic level of competence in a craft, I simply lean back on inspiration. I’d rather cultivate my wider artistic voice & play in the weeds of craft than narrow my focus to a point where I may be adept but limited in what I’m actually expressing.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

While I don’t have a particular story, resilience is all I really have. I was the kid from the trailer park, I started working retail/service jobs at 14. I couldn’t find a way to make ends meet while I was going to school so I finished my associates degree & just kept working.
I’ve had to adjust my trajectory so many times but I’ve never given up. I’ve always operated under the idea that If I don’t know how to do something, I will find a way to figure it out. & that has landed me some very interesting opportunities.
I don’t know where my break will come from, but I’m sure it will come. & ultimately, it doesn’t matter, this is what I do & I’ll do it even if nobody’s watching.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I think for me it’s been a connective journey. I was always a shy, quiet person who felt socially awkward & there’s something extremely comforting in reading a poem written a hundred years ago that expresses that exact sentiment.
Existence comes with a lot of baggage & it’s hard to express the deep underlying anxiety of what it means to be a human. It’s not just anxiety, it’s not just “life sucks & then you die,” there’s a lot more to it than any teenage angst let on.
& even in moments of fear & loneliness, there is great beauty because as Blake says “without contraries there is no progression.” There is always something to rally for because even the absence of something is the essence of the thing.
& I think it is a great & awful thing to be conscious, to feel & think & perceive things in a way that nobody else quite does. & in those edges where our perceptions overlap, I think we may feel something like eternity, permanence, something we can’t quite touch in our usual lives. & sometimes you will find that confluence in a pulpy contemporary novel or a desolate antiquated verse, sometimes you find it between the worst lines you’ve ever heard an actor deliver. That is the nature of art.
Wherever it is, I’m going to keep looking for it in myself & in others.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.nocturnical.com
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/n0cturnical
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nocturnical
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GITMPodcast
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nocturnical
• Other: http://www.sagecigarettes.com
  http://www.ghostinthemagazine.site
  http://www.instagram.com/richardpillceo