“What’s Up, Doctopher?” is a free occasional newsletter. To gain access to bonus content including BROMAs, TOMAs, travel updates, AMAs, What Makes this Book Great?, the DJCPR series, and an exclusive forum where you can interact with the Tangentially Speaking community, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5/month or $50/year — less than a buck a week! If you’ve already subscribed, much obliged. If you’d like to join the party but can’t afford it right now, just let me know by replying to this email and we’ll hook you up.
Hey, look at me, sending out the monthly newsletter on the first of the month, like a good little worker! Well, here’s what’s been going on here at our end of the road: Frenzied, end of summer construction, mostly. While squirrels frantically gather nuts, bears tear into trash cans looking for calories, mice look for warm spots in car engines and holes in the walls, Jay and I are trying to get the last details done while Anya plasters the walls in our new room. We’re coming in for a landing on this two year, many thousand dollar project of turning this very small house into a less small house. Our total square footage is going from the original 840 to about 1400 — still not much by American standards, but plenty for us.
We’re looking forward to getting a big comfy sofa, movie screen, a decent sound system for films and music, and a big table where eight or ten people can eat, drink and be merry together. We nixed the original idea of having a bathtub in the living room, in favor of putting one up on the deck that we may build on top of this room in the spring, if we can swing it financially. I’m sure we’ve saved a lot of money by contracting all this building ourselves — and doing it all with just Jay and an occasional friend — but it’s made it difficult for me to focus on the podcast, writing, researching, and the intentional daydreaming so intrinsic to my own creative process. I’m looking forward to a long, cold winter when I can get back to those pursuits.
Anya and I want to specifically thank those of you who support this podcast financially. We couldn’t have afforded to build this beautiful room, with views across the San Luis valley, that we’ll be loving to the end of our days, without your help.
Hope you’re having a cozy autumn (or spring, for you southern hemisphere folks).
CPR
P.S. If you use Amazon, please consider using this link (on a web browser) so that a little of what you spend will bounce back to support the podcast. And if you’d like to order some merch (shirts, beer coozies, signed books, etc.) from my mom, Julie, please go here.
Glad my money is going towards a cause I can get behind.
Video house tour??