New Year, New Newsletter

What to expect from the Shades of Greaves newsletter

Image by Digital Buggu via Pexels

Happy New Year!

If you’re reading this, then you’re most likely familiar with me, Carlos Greaves, and my writing. If you’re not familiar with me, hi there! I’m an electrical engineer turned humor writer, and I frequently write topical satire and short humor for sites like The New Yorker and McSweeney’s. I’m also a headline and features contributor at The Onion, I teach online satire and personal essay classes at The Second City, and I lead topical satire workshops at Writingworkshops.com.

My New Year’s resolution this year is to do a better job of letting people know what I’ve been up to, and sending them my work. Hence, this newsletter! I plan to send 1-2 emails per month that’ll be a combination of original satire pieces exclusive to this newsletter, thoughts on the humor writing process, and updates of what I’ve been working on.

In fact, I’ll be sending another email later today with a satire piece I wrote about Disney shutting down the Splash Mountain ride. So keep an eye out for it, and if you like the piece, please share it with your networks!

In the meantime, here’s my first update on what I’ve been up to recently:

Last fall, my debut book, Spoilers: Essays That Might Ruin Your Favorite Hollywood Movies was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter! I finished the first draft of the manuscript earlier this month and I’m on track to publish the book this June. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the campaign!

If you missed this (because, again, I am terrible at keeping people informed) you can still pre-order the book, as well as get signed copies, and even get your name printed in a special acknowledgements section of the book. Any support is greatly appreciated, and will help me promote the book once it’s out. Thanks!

In more recent news, I had a piece published in McSweeney’s that’s a tongue-in-cheek guide to becoming a professional writer (and is definitely not based on my personal experience at all *laugh* *laugh* *cry* *cry* *cry*). I also got a shout out to the piece from THE Roxane Gay herself in her latest post in

The Audacity.

(thanks

Input/Output

for the heads up!)

Lastly, I have a piece coming out in The New Yorker this week about streaming services, so keep an eye out for that.

Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be sending some more stuff your way shortly.

-Carlos