An Update on the Podcast

I’ll get this out of the way: season two of This Small Town is on hold indefinitely. The first reason is extremely straightforward — my laptop decided to take a dirt nap. A replaced battery pushed the death rattle off for a few months, but eventually my precious laptop went off to the great big home office in the sky. I like to imagine it finally got the standing desk it deserved.

I thieved my husband’s old laptop which is more than fine for writing, but after working with it for a while, I know it could not handle the editing software needed to make the kind of podcast I’ve made. And I’m not interested in making it differently.

That issue will eventually be resolved when I’m able to get a new laptop, but as I’ve already alluded to: it’s not the only reason.

This past year, I’ve been very focused on my writing life. Specifically, playwriting and screenwriting. I’ve been a playwright for over a decade, but screenwriting has only been in my life for less than two years. It takes a lot of focus, and when I’m not working at my JOB-job, I’m writing new work, new drafts, new commissions (!!!), or applying for any number of fellowships, residencies, and competitions. (Shout out to the Austin Film Festival in which my pilot script for Himbo was a second rounder!)

It can be a slog, but it’s also exciting to me and I love it. I feel like I’m coming to it all later than I’d like. What was I doing at 22? It should have been this! (If you knew me at 22, no you didn’t.) And that makes me feel like I need to run as fast as I can.

So, for now, no more episodes of This Small Town. It doesn’t mean I’ll never come back to it. I very well may! But I need to not for now so I can focus on other things.

What will become of this Substack? Great question! I may try writing about writing here, with the occasional story about my hometown or family (after all, my mom did just buy me trouser socks for Christmas so my legs look like Paulie Walnuts is headed to a funeral) or just about anything else.

That may not be something you enjoy. Fair! No one will keep you tied up in the basement of my mind, feeding you fish heads and peeling your eyes open so you have to watch me type. But I hope you understand that I gotta do what I gotta do. Something Paulie Walnuts would say while wearing his trouser socks, we can assume.

Some of you have been here since October of 2022! Remember 2022? What a time. I so appreciate you reading, listening, laughing along with me over the past 2+ years, and especially your support of the podcast.

Whether you stick around to see what’s next or not, thank you.

If you’d like to see some highlights of my writing life in 2024, there’s this video:

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