Be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
This year’s annual Christmas episode was anchored by a story based on real life. But what is “real life” when it comes to stories — even those claiming to be true? I discuss how fiction and truth have a way of coming together to create even greater truths in the process of their mingling.
Also, I chat a bit about 2021 plans for Not About Lumberjacks…
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For the fourth year in a row, it’s a handful of stories (five, in fact) to make your holidays merry and bright! This year’s lineup:
Tracks – A tale of drifting teenage friendship.
Homecoming – Callan returns home for his annual visit with his father.
The Last Wish – If a genie grants you three wishes, and the first two don’t work out as planned, what should you do with the third?
Monkey-Wrenching Suburbia – A story about misplaced teen angst in 80s suburbia.
Christmas in Kansas – Most people reach an age when they recognize their parents’ flaws. Is it a gift, or a curse?
Blooper Reel – Yep, you read that right! Stick around until the very end for a gift many have requested.
Content Advisory: Some swearing, family loss, alcohol consumption, vandalism, divorce, and minor gore.
Also, I mentioned that I’d leave a link to Jennifer Moss’s novel, TOWN RED. Here it is!
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Credits:
Music: Theme – Ergo Phizmiz. Story – Johannes Bornlöf, licensed through Epidemic Sound.
Stories: Christopher Gronlund.
Narration: Christopher Gronlund.
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When Wayne finds strange items in geocaches along the old lumber roads of northern Minnesota, he becomes obsessed with discovering who’s leaving the items behind. What he finds changes his life forever…
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Credits:
Music: Theme – Ergo Phizmiz. Story – Headlund, licensed from Epidemic Sound.
Photo: Cache Mania.
Story: Christopher Gronlund.
Narration: Jesse Harley.
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A father returns as a reincarnated, talking dog in an attempt to make amends with his estranged son.
Content Advisory: Language, some [gloriously] crude humor, and discussions about the death of a family member from cancer. Yeah, Pepper dies, so it’s technically a dead-dog story…but it’s the protagonist’s dad.
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Credits:
Music: Theme – Ergo Phizmiz. Story – Chad Crouch.
Story: Christopher Gronlund.
Narration/Voices: Christopher Gronlund, Rick Coste, Cynthia Griffith, and Mandie Coste.
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A bit about how the annual Christmas episode came to be…and what is in store for Not About Lumberjacks in the year ahead…
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For the third year in a row, it’s a handful of stories — instead of just one — all to make your holidays merry and bright! This year’s lineup:
My Grandmother Wrestled Bears – A drifter returns home to her grandmother’s house for the holidays.
The Beast in the Back – The truth behind the success of BigBoxMart. (You might remember BigBoxMart — and the manager, Susan — from last year’s Christmas episode.)
Lost and Found – A family finds more than memories when the family patriarch passes on before the holidays.
Content Advisory: Some swearing, family loss, poverty, and human sacrifice. (But humorous human sacrifice, perhaps? Up to you!)
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A kid makes a monster in his bathtub for a very specific reason…
(What could go wrong?)
Content Advisory: Swearing, bullying. Mention of masturbation. A father who cheats on his wife. Overbearing mother. Violence: young boys fighting. Gross sound effects. (Seriously, I received more feedback about “Booger” than any other story…all about how disgusting the sound design is. It is a story about a vile monster, after all.)
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Credits:
Music: Ergo Phizmiz and Yung Kartz. Additional song: Whip Yo Head,” by Dollar Boyz.
Story: Christopher Gronlund.
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Femurs were wielded, and CEOs fell…
After the apocalypse, a lowly office worker is alive and alone in headquarters…keeping an old way of life going in the hope that things will one day return to normal…
Content Advisory: Death of a rabbit from blunt-force trauma. Violence (mention of a CEO bludgeoning someone with a cow femur). Suspense (the general creepiness of living in an empty corporate headquarters). Overtime and the stresses of work coming before life. Loneliness.
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Credits:
Music: Ergo Phizmiz and Kai Engel.
Story: Christopher Gronlund.
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Last year’s holiday-ish 7-Stories episode, featuring a handful of micro-fiction, was well received. So this year, it’s another handful of stories:
Content Advisory: “The Crock”: Swearing and family rivalry (mother in law vs. daughter in law). “Greetings”: Job loss and swearing. “Naughty”: Swearing and cigar smoking. Child torture.
Credits:
Music: Ergo Phizmiz and Chad Crouch
Stories: Christopher Gronlund
Narration: Cynthia Griffith, Patrick K. Walsh, and Christopher Gronlund.
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Waking the Lumberjack is the first one-shot audiodrama I’ve done with multiple voice actors for Not About Lumberjacks. Anchoring the story is Tim Czarnecki, starring as the Narrator.
I sat down with Tim and chatted about what it was like narrating this story…
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