Be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
The 100-year-old son of the oldest man to ever live plots to kill a 123-year-old man about to break his father’s record.
Content Advisory: Swearing and cartoonish violence. Stress of aging and mortality. A son trying to live up to his father’s expectations.
Credits:
Music: Ergo Phizmiz and Chad Crouch
Story and Narration: Christopher Gronlund
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I recently wrote about the upcoming writing retreat.
Unfortunately, it was canceled yesterday. (My friend has a minor-ish medical thing going on.)
He will be all right, but…he’s been told to not stray too far from an emergency room. A scheduled procedure in April should go as as planned, but in the event a large kidney stone decides to beat the doctor’s in a race, being deep in the woods of East Texas is not the place to be.
The good thing is this will soon be a thing of the past — and it’s not like Texas state parks are going anywhere.
While I won’t be heading into the Piney Woods this weekend, I’m keeping my days off and turning it into a retreat at home.
I will get up early and write. If trails dry out, my wife and I will hike; if not, our canoe handles wet weather rather well. Instead of sitting around the campfire talking about writing and other things, I’ll work on songs on my new mandolin with my wife in the evenings.
The weekend will still be great…and sometime later this spring, summer, or maybe even autumn, my friend and I will spend a long weekend in the Piney Woods of East Texas for our sixth year of the writing retreat.
The second day of spring has me thinking about this day in two weeks.
On this day in two weeks, the annual writing retreat I do with a friend will be over.
It might be strange to write about that rather than the excitement of an upcoming thing I look forward to. Why not write about all I’ll do in that long weekend in an East Texas cabin?
I’ve written before about how September is my writing new year. While that’s true, the annual writing retreat is a reminder of how much (or how little) I’ve done since the last one.
This year finds me close to a readable draft of the novel I’ve been working on for too long.
I’m not one to kick myself — life often gets in the way of things, and when an illness or need to put more into the day job rolls around, those are the things you deal with before writing. (Not that the writing ever stops entirely, though.)
I look forward to this writing retreat being behind me because it will be the last retreat that sees me working on finishing this particular book!
I’ve run one 5K in my life — with one of my best friends. There was a point on a hill when I thought about scrapping my plan to run the entire way and walk…but my friend chatted as we climbed the hill and took my mind off thinking about slowing down.
The finish line was shortly after the other side of the hill. As we neared the finish, my friend said something to the effect of, “Okay, let’s pick it up so we cross the finish line strong.”
I will soon be in a cabin in East Texas with another great friend…and when that weekend is over, it will be time to pick up the pace and finish another thing strong…
The last episode was a bit of a departure, with seven bits of micro-fiction. The most fascinating thing was hearing which stories people loved most (“Vlad Stovepipe” won).
So…for this episode of Behind the Cut, a bit about each of the stories…
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A bit of a departure this holiday season: seven stories instead of one!
(Think of it as micro-fiction stocking stuffers.)
Content Advisory: “Be a Man”: Child abuse, mention of a dead dog (by gunshot), alcohol abuse, and murder. “Fucking Asshole”: Uhm…swearing! “The Intersection”: Anger, violence (shooting), and family loss of a child (shooting). “Vlad Stovepipe”: Cartoon violence. “Hardcore”: Swearing and violence. “Another Christmas Eve”: Divorce, violence (family fistfight), swearing, depression, loneliness.
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Credits:
Story and narration: Christopher Gronlund
Music: Ergo Phizmiz and Chad Crouch (aka Poddington Bear)
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Something a little different this time…
Because “The Hidebehind” was the first episode of Not About Lumberjacks with a male narrator other than me, I chat with Defender Radio’s Michael Howie about what it was like to work together on the story’s production.
It’s a glorious tale of friendship, creativity…and majestic beards!
(Also, you should totally follow Michael on Twitter and Instagram.)
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Something lurks in the woods outside a lumber camp in this story I SWEAR is NOT about lumberjacks…
Content Advisory: Swearing. Violence (involving fights and knives). Alcohol use. Mass poisoning. Horror (monster in the woods). Dementia brought on by environmental factors. Implied cannibalism.
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Credits:
Story: Christopher Gronlund
Narration: Michael Howie, of the Defender Radio Podcast. (Follow Michael on Twitter!)
Music: Ergo Phizmiz and Kai Engel
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There really is a Memorial Park where after-school fights took place when I was in junior high school.
And I was involved in one myself; in fact, some reality creeped into “Memorial Park.”
If you’re interested in what’s real and not in the story, look no further than this…
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An after-school fight pits the meanest kid in Walt Whitman Junior High School against one of its shyest geeks.
Content Advisory: Swearing. Bullying. Violence (bullying and an after-school fight). Humiliation.
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Credits:
Music: Ergo Phizmiz and Chad Crouch
Story and Narration: Christopher Gronlund
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It is officially autumn, fall, whatever you call it in your part of the world. For pagan friends, it’s Mabon on top of other things, so eat well tonight.
For me, it is the second wind of September. September 1 is kind of like my writing new year. And then comes the autumnal equinox, the official start of my favorite season — even though it will be in the 90s in north Texas.
I like the image above because it’s what I love about autumn: it is quiet and often a bit obscured. It’s a time when my mind craves [even more] silence, and deliberate slowness seems to take over — even though it’s also the beginning of the more active part of the year for me. (I hate being outside in the summer…give me fall, winter, and early spring year-round!)
Obviously, I’m back to recording stories…the next one being a much happier story dealing with a bully than last year’s bully story.
And now, a return to the silence of a darker morning. Much like the trail above, there’s a path to finish walking with a bigger writing project and plenty more shorter trails to be walked.