This will be shorter than yesterday’s installment of “Stuff.”
As I’ve hinted already, one of my goals here is to not limit myself as to what I cover. I mean that.
But last night Dana and I were listening to Michael Ian Black’s podcast, Obscure. He originally titled the podcast after the book he read in season 1, Jude the Obscure. He kept the title for reasons of his own but as I listened to him read Frankenstein, the book he selected to cover in season 2, I had this random sequence of thoughts:
Why did he keep that title if he’s reading Frankenstein? He could’ve changed it to Frankly Obscure or something. Oh. Maybe because he reads these books because they were also brand new to him, therefore—in Michael’s life as a reader—obscure.
I suspect I’m totally wrong, of course, but something about the word “obscure” and its dictionary meaning clicked in my head.
At that moment I found a focus for this here Substack.
I’ll write whatever I want (I’m totally talking to myself, by the way), but it struck me last night that I am good, sometimes, at unveiling the obscure. Stories forgotten or missed. Personal anecdotes that might seem unconnected but lead to a cogent conclusion when tied together. I have tales of my own and tales I know of that few others have touched upon—at least in recent years—that are intriguing, worth examining. Yes, some of them are straight-up unsolved mysteries and/or historic true crime.
In fact, I have an organized mental list of such stories. Some began life as book ideas and in one case I’m not dropping the prospect of a book-length treatment regardless of what I do here.
Here’s the plan:
I’ll begin with one story I’ve known for years and I’ll tell it serially, for free.
Once that story has concluded—again, these are all true, and remarkably, some of them have almost no coverage online—I will evaluate the response and tee up the next one, which is bigger and wider-ranging and frankly a lot of work—and that will be for subscribers who pay a monthly or yearly fee.
When I snagged this Substack subdomain I had no intention of offering paid content, but for several reasons, I have changed my mind. And I think it will be worth it for the reader/subscriber.
Ultimately I believe I will add a podcast. I’d concluded I might never go the extra mile and do that because I know how much time and work they take. But some stories need that audio element. And there is so much I dislike about what people do in podcasts (especially true crime) I know the ideas I have are pretty damn original for that format.
But I’m primarily a writer. I just believe there are many ways to tell a story and the web has been providing an unparalleled chance to tell stories in mixed media, in a variety of kaleidoscopic ways, for decades. It’s time for me to dive in and make some old ideas a reality.
Okay, what the hell is next?
Soon, readers and subscribers will begin learning about an unsolved series of crimes that occurred at the beginning of the Great Depression. They were supposedly committed by one person and in many ways presaged a much more famous series of unsolved crimes many years later. I suspect there was a hoax element at work, but…that doesn’t detract from the story’s eerie power. It travels through great cities at night and on lonely buses and trains. It’s a story that will walk us beneath the streetlights as a bizarrely courtly killer ensures a terrified and bewildered young woman gets home safely. It will, perhaps, leave you a little creeped out, haunted, and maybe mystified as to what really happened.
You might want to start doing some sleuthing of your own. I won’t discourage it.
More soon.