February Links Roundup

Including books, bears, and beets (Actually, just the first one. The last two are just me making a Dwight Schrute reference*).

Look who has decided to take full advantage of her Canva Pro account.

Welcome to the February monthly roundup where I share funny stuff and other links of interest.

My first recommendation for you is going to be a movie that I’m guessing some of you already know about because it came out in *checks notes* 2018. However, I am just resurfacing from an approximately 10-year period when it was extremely hard to watch movies due to my having little kids and little sleep (hence my old tweet from above).

While searching around for movies that were both funny and mystery-ish I stumbled on Game Night and found it funny and entertaining. I somehow missed it coming out entirely, probably because I was watching some talking animal movies with my kids instead.

Keep reading for more (recent) things I’ve been enjoying lately…

Funny stuff and other distractions

• This cartoon explains why I have a rule that there must be others browsing a store before I can also go in.

• Short humor: I’ve been watching some old episodes of the British Baking show and have thought frequently of this piece. On the upside, I have also been able to add a lot of words to my “funny words” list while watching.

• Books: I’ve been interested in micro memoir lately and have been reading Heating & Cooling and enjoying it. Several of the pieces are funny and it is making me think about different format possibilities for my writing. Also, I know three humor writers who had books come out this month that I am looking forward to reading and you should check out:

  • Shannon Reed’s book of humorous essays “Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out”

  • Lindsay Hameroff’s debut romance “Till There Was You”

  • Emily Farris’s book of humorous essays “I'll Just Be Five More Minutes: And Other Tales from My ADHD Brain”

• Kids rec: Shout out to newsletter reader

  Sari Fordham
  who writes Cool It and recommended Fox Trot comics a little while back. One of my kids is very into them and now making his way through the entire catalog available via our local library.

• Margarita mix: I have been trying out different margarita mixes and recently found this one, which is the current winner. If you don’t drink, I think it would make a decent non-alcoholic marg too.

Writing-related links

• Podcast: I recommended one episode of Publishing Rodeo podcast last month and am now back to recommend listening to more. The premise— two debut authors with the same publisher have two very different publishing experiences— makes for an interesting series. I’ve started listening from the beginning and have gotten a lot of great info and appreciate the hosts and guests openly talking about things like money, marketing, and what makes books successful.

• Substack tip: I appreciated this post about an “about” post that is helpful to have on Substack and have subsequently created one (and continue to tweak the image and title on it).

• Call for parenting pitches: Spotted this call for parenting and writing pieces on Twitter (read the replies for some more info).

• Humor writing: I found this interview that

  Mary Flannery
  did with Carlos Greaves about using obscenity in humor interesting. I tend to not use a lot of profanity in humor pieces but I appreciate it when writers do this well.

• Journalism conference: I signed up for this virtual conference that the IIJ is running this week. I find conferences like this helpful for getting tips for things like pitching different publications, so if the sessions look useful to you, it may be worth checking out.

Funny guest rec

This month I’ve got a guest humor rec from author

Kyla Zhao

, who writes contemporary novels starring women of color in the workplace. Her books have been featured by Forbes, Vogue, Good Morning America, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, and more.

Her new novel Valley Verified just hit the shelves. Imagine The Devil Wears Prada meets Legally Blonde—except Elle Woods is a former fashion writer who takes on a new job at a Silicon Valley startup. In this cutthroat environment, she must confront judgmental coworkers, tech billionaires, and her own insecurities to prove she’s more than just a fashionista in a land of tech bros.

What is making Kyla Zhao laugh lately: “Ahead of the Superbowl showdown between the Chiefs and 49ers, there was this photo of Donna Kelce (the mom of Chiefs player Travis Kelce aka Taylor Swift’s boyfriend) leaving her son’s football game with a Ziploc bag of leftover pizza. She looks like your typical mom who wants to make sure good pizza doesn’t go to waste.

But the Ziploc packaging and logo are too perfectly placed in the photo for it to not be a paid product placement. As someone whose day job is in marketing, I always chuckle when I see brands attempting to be subtle! Honestly, kudos to Ziploc for their unusual but inspired choice of a “celebrity” promoter. 😉”

Thanks, Kyla! You can get Valley Verified by Kyla as a print book, eBook, or audiobook HERE.

She also publishes a regular Substack newsletter about her author life here.

News from me

• Interview with me: This month I had fun answering questions for

  Good Humor by CK Steefel
  ’s Funny AF Women series. You can check out the post here.

• Conference: I’m going to be at the Erma Bombeck conference in April. Will you be there too? Let me know!

*Dwight Schrute reference explainer.

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