[Listen]
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[Woman’s Voice]
This is Behind the Cut with Christopher Gronlund. The companion show to Not About Lumberjacks.
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Christopher Gronlund:
Behind the Cut is an in-depth look at the latest episode of Not About Lumberjacks and likely contains spoilers of the most recent story. You’ve been warned…
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There’s a line in the latest Not About Lumberjacks story, “Lakeview Estates,” that goes like this:
“Since its construction in 1961, Nate’s Corner stood at the crossroads of Kimball Avenue and Dove Road in the tiny East Texas town of Tooksberry.”
Tooksberry is entirely fictional, but anyone living in Southlake or Grapevine, Texas will know Nate’s Corner as Yate’s Corner, an actual gas station and tiny grocery store that sits at the crossroads of those streets, with Kimball establishing the border between the two towns.
Whether calling them Easter Eggs or inside jokes, Not About Lumberjacks stories are full of little things that don’t detract from the tales if you’re not aware of the reference (that would be a cruddy move on my part) but adds a little something more for those in the know.
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Tooksberry, spelled T-o-o-k-s-b-e-r-r-y, is a nod to how so many places in Texas are named after other places, but often spelled or pronounced differently. And its rivalry with nearby Holstein is based on local rivalries of once rural towns now thinking they are much more than they really are.
As so many places nationwide (and even worldwide) have grown, most of us are familiar with this kind of development and the competitiveness that often comes with it.
Geographically, I used Harleton, Texas as Tooksberry’s location, even though it’s nothing like real-life Harleton. But my friend [and Monday night online gaming group rival], Jim Bearden (aka: PeePaw), grew up in Harleton—so that’s a nod to him.
And speaking of my Monday night gaming group, the protagonist of “Firing the Muse”—Warren Quinn—is a mash-up of the first names of two other friends who have killed me countless times in Among Us and destroyed me in rounds of Golf With Your Friends.
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I love working little things like this into stories, but I always ensure these tiny additions never confuse those not in the know. Many of us have read a book or watched a movie where we’ve felt we’re not in on the joke. It can feel every bit as annoying as sitting with people talking about a past you’re not part of, or even going as far as deliberately telling inside jokes and stories meant to exclude you for a laugh.
Those kinds of things should always be seamless. And if it’s a joke you’re going for and not just a reference, you should always be ready to make fun of yourself.
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Four years ago, when I released “Alone in HQ,” I took a poke at podcasters—some of whom are very precious about what they do. In the story, I say:
“What happens to a podcaster during the apocalypse, he wonders, when there are no more get-rich schemes to be shared, movies or television shows to review, or true crime to talk about; no more self-important hot takes on popular culture, long-winded interviews to schedule, or dude-bros who think they’re actually funny?”
Even if you’re not that familiar with podcasts, most people would assume the kinds of shows I mentioned are popular. (I know people who don’t listen to podcasts, but have asked me what kind of interviews I do or if I talk about true crime.)
It would be a low blow to tease these kinds of podcasters and leave myself out of the criticism. So…I even make fun of myself in that section with these lines:
“Employee #312566 likes to think the guy with that lumberjack show found a solar charger and still writes and records his stories. Maybe with twelve years and little else to do, if the power ever comes back, he’ll have enough of a backlog to finally release his show again on a regular schedule.”
At the time I published that story, “Alone in HQ” got bumped for more than a year by other stories I’d already written. I had one friend in particular who couldn’t wait for a post-apocalyptic story written by me, so it was my way of admitting, “Yeah, I kind of slacked on the show recently…”
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At the time of this writing, I recently went to East Texas for an annual writing retreat I do with a friend. One night around the campfire, my friend Deacon mentioned Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series—how King blended characters from other stories into that, and how characters from that series are mentioned in other King books. (King’s kind of known for that.)
Nods like that to fans are a time-honored tradition for many writers. We see a character named Jenos Idanian in the I, Jedi Star Wars book. The name was used as an alias by Han Solo and adopted by another character after him. Jenos Idanian is an anagram for “Indiana Jones,” a character played by actor Harrison Ford—who was also our favorite smuggler from Star Wars: A New Hope.
C.S. Lewis wrote a poem in Through the Looking Glass in which the first letter of each line spells Alice Pleasance Liddell, the name of a child he knew. And F. Scott Fitzgerald included an epigraph in The Great Gatsby attributed to a poet he created in his earlier novel, This Side of Paradise.
It’s fun for authors to give nods to other works and for readers to dig and discuss these literary surprises.
If you miss these things, they usually affect nothing, but it you recognize them, it’s like a secret handshake or password to an elite club.
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Another example from a Not About Lumberjacks story—this time, from “Gerald’s Grail.”
They spent the afternoon meandering around town, ending the day in a convenience store that had a few arcade games in the back. Gerald and Brian got excited when they saw a new cabinet next to Joust.
“What’s Tron?” Akara said.
Gerald and Brian looked each other in mock amazement before Brian said, “We really need to get you caught up on some movies you’ve missed. Trust me on this one…”
This reference to the Tron arcade game is obvious to Gen-Xers, but there’s more in that little exchange.
My dear friend, Curtis Hart, loves the movie Tron. (And he’s been a big supporter of Not About Lumberjacks from the start.) Somewhere along the way—I think in 2010—he posted something about Tron on Facebook.
My reply: “What’s Tron?”—knowing full well what it is and how much Curtis loves it.
It was one of those goofy things that caught on, to the point friends started replying to Curtis’s future posts with random images asking, “Is this Tron?”—or doing posts of their own, setting up the in-joke.
Thirteen years later, we try being a bit move covert about dropping “What’s Tron?” into things, so…slipping it into a Not About Lumberjacks story made me laugh out loud when I wrote it, and I would have loved seeing Curtis’s face as he listened.
But as goofy as forcing it into a story was, it does serve a purpose. The character asking “What’s Tron?” is a Cambodian refugee. Growing up, I had friends with parents and grandparents from Mexico, but no friends born in other countries until the later 70s and early 80s, when people from Vietnam and Cambodia moved to my hometown. Things my friends and I took for granted were unknown and even challenged by our new friends who lived lives we couldn’t fathom.
Akara Mok is a nod to those old friends and the things I learned about the world from them.
We couldn’t believe they weren’t aware of some pop culture reference that was second nature to us, and they couldn’t believe we assumed they’d know, given how different their lives were from ours up until that point.
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There’s one final inside joke right up front in the latest Not About Lumberjacks story—the name.
I live in an area that was once a bit rural, despite being adjacent to more populated spaces. Today, the area is not only developed, but near some of the wealthiest towns in Texas. Where an outlaw biker club was in the 1980s is now a suburban ranch (likely for the tax breaks). Where a cult compound stood is now office space. And multi-million-dollar homes stand on sites where tiny homes once dotted the land.
In high school, I worked as a dishwasher and busboy at a restaurant called The Catfish Hut. At a bend in the road on the final approach to that slog-of-a-weekend-job was a trailer park called Lakeview Estates.
Today, it’s the site of million-dollar homes in a housing development called—you guessed it—Lakeview Estates.
To this day, that’s one of my favorite inside jokes…
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Thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks and Behind the Cut. Theme music for Behind the Cut is a tune called “Reaper” by Razen. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the music, the episodes, and voice talent.
Also, for as little as a dollar a month, you can have access to a bigger behind-the-scenes look at Not About Lumberjacks on Patreon. Check out patreon.com/cgronlund if that sounds like your kinda thing.
In November, it’s not only the annual anniversary episode, but the 50th story episode of the show! So, what’s in store for the most NOT Not About Lumberjacks story of the year? How about this:
The first second-person story I think I’ve ever written in which YOU are a lumberjack…
Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
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