FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
(aka: Questions We’d Probably Ask Too)
🌿 About Human Beans
Q: So… what exactly is Human Beans?
A: Human Beans is an independent creative house for books, stories, art, audio, handmade things, and other projects about the wonderfully strange business of being human. It began with Human Beans Radio, but it didn't stay behind a microphone for long. Today the garden includes Human Beans Radio Publications, The Tiny Worlds Collection, essays and storytelling, the Bean Patch, original merchandise, handmade work through Flair d’Arte, and whatever we're curious enough to build next.
Some projects are thoughtful. Some are useful. Some are weird. We like it that way.
Q: Who is behind Human Beans?
A: Human Beans was founded by writer and creative director Mira Crowe, but it isn't a one-person universe.
We’re a small, evolving collection of writers, artists, makers, musicians, technical people, friends, family, and creative collaborators. Different people step into different projects depending on what we're making, what skills are needed, and who's available to bring something good to the table. Mira remains the primary writer and creative director behind much of the work, but Human Beans is deliberately built around collaboration rather than pretending one person can or should do everything.
The cast may change from project to project. The garden is bigger than one Bean.
Q: Why the name Human Beans?
A: Because humans are basically beans. We need decent soil, enough light, some water, room to grow, and occasionally somebody to notice when we've fallen sideways against the windowsill. It started as a joke and became a surprisingly durable philosophy.
Q: Where are you based?
A: Human Beans is rooted in the American South, but the people who contribute to it aren't necessarily sitting in the same room, town, or even state. Fortunately, creative people have been figuring out how to make things together from inconvenient distances since long before somebody invented Zoom.
👩🌾 About Mira Crowe
Q: Who is Mira Crowe?
A: Mira is the founder, primary writer, and creative director of Human Beans. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, specifically in double focus areas of Substance Abuse and Child Development, is Gen X to the bone, 26 years sober, neurodivergent, a mother of two grown sons, and deeply interested in why humans do the peculiar things humans do. Her work draws heavily from storytelling, psychology, folklore, lived experience, dark humor, and curiosity. She's also the person most likely to wander into the garden with an idea and say, “Okay, hear me out…” Historically, this has consequences.
Q: Is Mira the only creator?
A: Nope.
Some work is entirely hers. Some involves other Human Beans collaborators from the beginning. Other projects bring in additional artists, makers, musicians, editors, technical people, or specialists when we need a particular skill. We believe credit should follow the work, so when someone makes a meaningful contribution to a project, we want that contribution acknowledged rather than folded invisibly into somebody else's name.
📚 About Human Beans Radio Publications
Q: What do you publish?
A: We're gloriously unwilling to pick one shelf. Human Beans Radio Publications includes illustrated books, coloring books, practical guides, reflective nonfiction, essays, creative work, and experimental projects that don't necessarily fit neatly into a conventional publishing box. If something is interesting, well made, and belongs in the Human Beans world, we're interested.
Q: What is The Tiny Worlds Collection?
A: Tiny Worlds takes literature, folklore, history, legendary creatures, strange traditions, and other fascinating subjects and turns them into detailed chibi coloring adventures for grown-ups. The collection wanders through Poe, vintage Halloween, witches, Dracula, ghost stories, cryptids, Grimm tales, apothecaries, mythical beasts, and plenty of other peculiar territory. It's what happens when research and adorable tiny monsters are allowed to share an office.
Q: Will you publish other writers and artists?
A: That's part of what we're building toward. Right now we're establishing Human Beans as a sustainable independent creative house and developing our own catalog. As we grow, we'd like there to be room for more writers, artists, and interesting humans with work that fits here. We're building the house before inviting everybody to move furniture into it.
🎨 About How We Make Things
Q: Do you make everything yourselves?
A: It depends on the project. Some things are written, illustrated, designed, assembled, or handmade entirely in-house. Some are collaborations. Some require outside production or specialized skills. Our merchandise may be manufactured and fulfilled by production partners, while Flair d’Arte pieces are genuinely handmade. We care much more about being clear about how something was made than maintaining the fiction that one exhausted person personally forged every coffee mug over an open flame.
Q: Do you use AI?
A: In short, yes. I shall explain.
AI-assisted tools are part of our creative toolkit, alongside writing, research, photography, illustration, digital design, editing software, traditional materials, and very human judgment. How they're used varies by project. They may assist with visual development, research, editing, brainstorming, production, or other parts of the creative process. They don't eliminate the humans from Human Beans. Concepts are developed, outputs are directed and selected, work is revised, mistakes are corrected, layouts are built, writing is edited, sources are checked where appropriate, and finished projects still have humans responsible for what goes into the world.
Q: Why be open about that?
A: Because we'd rather tell you how we work than perform a little dance around the tools sitting plainly on the workbench. Creative tools change. Responsibility for the finished work doesn't.
🎧 About Human Beans Radio
Q: Is the podcast still around?
A: Absolutely. Human Beans Radio is where this whole strange garden started. The podcast is currently on pause while we're building other parts of Human Beans and because of health concerns keeping us away, but the existing episodes remain available in the archive. And nobody has thrown away the microphones.
Q: What does the podcast talk about?
A: Humans. Recovery, mental health, family, identity, creativity, relationships, resilience, absurdity, and the peculiar experience of trying to build a life while you're already standing in the middle of it. Future audio projects may take different forms as Human Beans evolves.
✍️ About the Writing
Q: What will we find in the Essays section?
A: Stories, personal essays, observations, creative nonfiction, humor, folklore, memory, cultural oddities, and whatever else has been rattling around somebody's head long enough to demand its own page. Some pieces are funny. Some aren't. We don't require every story to teach a lesson before it's allowed indoors.
Q: Is everything written by Mira?
A: Not necessarily. Mira is currently the primary writer, but Human Beans is built to accommodate other voices. When somebody else writes or meaningfully contributes to a piece, you'll know who made it.
🛍️ About the Shop
Q: What's in the shop?
A: A suspicious number of things. The shop is divided into several patches: Tiny Worlds for merchandise connected to the book collection; Gen X & Feral for those of us who survived without a user manual; Bookish & Weird for readers and assorted peculiar people; Gifts & Little Things for exactly what it sounds like; Human Beans Merch for official garden-variety Beans; and Flair d’Arte for handmade work. Inventory will continue changing because apparently we cannot leave well enough alone.
Q: What is Flair d’Arte?
A: Flair d’Arte is our home for handmade work. Unlike print-on-demand merchandise, these are physical pieces made by hand in small quantities. What appears there will depend on what we're making, what materials are available, and what has temporarily taken over the worktable.
Q: Who makes and ships everything?
A: It varies. Many Human Beans products are made to order and fulfilled by professional production partners. Flair d’Arte and other designated handmade pieces are produced directly by members of our little creative orbit. Product listings will tell you what you're buying and, when relevant, how it was made.
🌱 About the Bean Patch
Q: What is the Bean Patch?
A: The Bean Patch is our newsletter and community corner. It's where everything can mingle: new books, essays, creative experiments, behind-the-scenes stories, shop releases, recommendations, things we're working on, things we're thinking about, and occasional useful or delightful objects we've found growing under a leaf. Think letter from the garden, not corporate email campaign.
Q: Does it cost anything?
A: Nope.
The newsletter is free.
Q: Do I have to participate?
A: Absolutely not. Read every issue. Read every fifth issue. Lurk peacefully from behind a shrub. Come running only when the subject line contains tiny vampire. There will not be a quiz.
☕ Extremely Important Questions
Q: Is everyone at Human Beans obsessed with coffee?
A: We are a diverse organization and decline to impose a beverage-based ideological purity test. That said, coffee is doing some fairly heavy institutional lifting.
Q: Why all the garden language?
A: Because Human Beans started with a terrible bean pun and then committed to the bit so thoroughly that we somehow acquired an entire botanical cosmology. But underneath the joke is something we actually believe:
Good things grow better when they're tended.
Ideas included.
Q: Is Human Beans a mental-health or self-help company?
A: No. Mental health, recovery, neurodivergence, resilience, and human behavior may appear in our work because they're parts of human life and subjects some of us know well. But Human Beans isn't therapy, a wellness program, or a prescription for how anybody should live.
We're a creative house.
Sometimes creativity helps people make sense of things.
That's enough.
💌 Getting in Touch
Q: How can I reach you?
A: Head over to Ask Mira Anything for general messages and inquiries. As Human Beans grows, we'll add more specific contact routes where they're useful.
Q: Are you open to collaborations?
A: Yes, selectively.
We're interested in writers, artists, makers, musicians, storytellers, publishers, and other creative humans when there's a project that makes sense for both sides.
Pitch us the interesting thing.
Q: Can I send physical mail or products?
A: Please contact us first. Digital communication is easiest, and we don't publish anyone's private home address.
🌻 In Short
Human Beans isn't one person frantically trying to manufacture an empire from a laptop.
It's a small independent creative house being built by people who like making interesting things with other interesting people.
We publish.
We write.
We make things.
We tell stories.
We collaborate.
We experiment.
Some of it is serious. Some of it is useful. Some of it exists because somebody said, “You know what would be cool?” and everyone else made the tactical error of listening.
And yes.
Some of it involves a tiny Dracula.