A behind-the-scenes look at some semi-gruesome humor and a few quick updates

Working, writing, and birdwatching

A semi-realistic portrayal of me writing my story.

Hello! Hope you are all staying cool and keeping healthy. There’s been a flurry of things happening in my world, but here’s an overview:

Work

Currently working a few different jobs. The newest is at a bookstore where I get to talk to people. There’s nothing wrong with remote work, or my job where I am alone unless a customer walks in, but I could feel my mind atrophying. Having conversations, planning events, making new friends who live in the neighborhood, while (hopefully) helping create a welcoming community space is exciting and engages parts of my brain that are so happy to be active again.

Writing

Working on the big writing passion project while writing (and editing) on various platforms.

Health

Cancer still sucks, but my last scans and bloodwork came out well meaning this line of treatment is doing what they hoped it would do! Don’t mind me while I knock on this wood right here. My biggest issues are fatigue and GI related problems. Hair is also deciding if it wants to stay or go, but I’ve got a wig ready and eating “hair-healthy” foods to see if that does any good.

Birdwatching

Lots of birds here, and I’m deeply invested in some crow and mockingbird drama happening in our yard.

Guffaw

I’ll be updating regularly! So feel free to come check out Guffaw when you find yourself on Substack if you don’t get trapped scrolling notes. I know inboxes are full of newsletters so I’ve been cautious to send anything when I don’t feel like there’s a lot to say for fear of being “too much” although that’s probably my fear of taking up too much space.

Anyway! That’s it for what’s been up. Thank you again to those who support my humor writing. Now on to the fun part of this newsletter:

Behind-the-Scenes: The Pets Don’t Die in this Movie Where Everyone Else Suffers Gruesome Fates

This started with a throwaway note during a brain dumping session. A friend inspired it during a conversation where she said she couldn’t read/watch any horror where an animal dies.

The idea stayed with me and one night while my partner and I watched a scary movie I turned to him and said, “If anything happens to the dog, I’m done.”

When he pointed out that the teen had just suffered through a pretty gnarly death scene, I took out my phone and wrote some quick notes to follow up on later. I knew that was the premise I wanted right away. The fact we’ll accept human deaths so easily but feel absolutely gutted if the family pet dies is bizarre. Now the question was how to best communicate that premise. Another brain dumping session commenced:

From this list I picked my favorites. I loved the movie poster idea, followed closely by the director addressing the audience and then the pets on an “I survived” kind of show.

So, I went about sketching some preliminary movie posters.

But honestly, as mentioned above, I work many jobs, besides doing editing for JAW and (trying) to get my writing into a publishable state while battling the fatigue I mentioned above. Sometimes you have to know your limits and I’m getting better at that. The choice was to set this idea aside and maybe let the momentum die or to keep going. I chose to keep going but change the form, going with the second place option.

I did play with the idea of doing an interview with a podcast host or a magazine. However I’m weak when it comes to dialogue humor. So I stuck with the POV of the director speaking to their audience. I’m (mostly) happy with how the piece came out, and look forward to perhaps fine-tuning and expanding on the idea. Perhaps doing the movie posters justice later? Right now getting anything new finished and out there feels like a triumph.

Here is the story if you would like to read it: