As Told By C.S. Beaty

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When I sent Haywood Fudd a copy of my collected essays of 2024, it included one titled Hunting, Or Lack Thereof. It was about my attempts at competitive trapshooting and the time my dad shot a deer and gave me credit for it. That essay was split into parts and became a running storyline in my memoir about high school and growing up in Grand Island, Nebraska. Writing is a feedback loop. You observe...

Your email needs more than just Amazon delivery notifications. Today’s guest is a mentor and hero of mine who convinced me to give up on a career (00:00:36): as a structural engineer in order to follow him to the dark side of sales. (00:00:41): We talk about that along with a bunch of his favorite stories from a three-decade (00:00:44): career in corporate leadership, (00:00:46): including his int...

When you promote a book, you end up telling the same stories a lot. It’s easier that way. Despite how repetitive and canned they feel coming out of your mouth yet again, you’d be fooling yourself to think that as a self-published, first-time author your following would be big enough for someone to have heard the story enough times to get annoyed by it. So you relive it. Again and again and again e...

Put your email in the thing and meet more interesting people. Today’s guest is my very first work friend, (00:00:38): who went on to quit that job, (00:00:40): join a cool Silicon Valley startup, (00:00:42): and move in with homeless people. (00:00:45): Kylie Sheehy. (00:00:47): I can’t hear you. (00:00:48): This is off to an awesome start. (00:00:51): Here, is it? (00:00:51): Did I fix it? (00:00...

Introducing retired newspaper reporter, Wahoo, Nebraska historian, and not my real uncle: Uncle Bob Copperstone. You know Bob is fun to listen to, so are my other friends. You’ll want to subscribe. Today’s guest is retired journalist, (00:00:33): Wahoo, (00:00:34): Nebraska historian, (00:00:36): and not my real uncle, (00:00:37): Uncle Bob Copperstone. (00:00:41): All right, you ready for this? (...

I’m very excited to introduce my friend, author and illustrator Ben Lueders on a brand-new podcast from the As Told By C.S. Beaty empire. There are way more interesting people coming who you’re not going to want to miss. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss them! Today’s guest is the guy who designed my book, (00:00:33): was in a band with me, (00:00:35): and sold me this podcast gear. (00:00:37)...

December 19th, 2024 Dear Mr. Fudd, The innards of my Royal Quiet DeLuxe typewriter have been sprayed down with a fresh coat of WD-40 and the little baby is purring like a kitten. I told my 85 year-old Uncle Bob about the WD-40, and he informed me that WD-40 stands for “water displacement formula 40.” I’m not sure how effective the first 39 formulas were, but I’m glad they kept at it. I am eager fo...

How could a vagabond woman who lived in her van end up a co-star to Frances McDormand in the blockbuster 2020 Academy Award-winning hit Nomadland? And whose transitory existence provides valuable life lessons on surviving – and thriving – in today’s world? That’s the opening line of the query letter I wrote to send to literary agents—well it’s what my editor wrote and I slightly tweaked. Pretty go...

When we parked our diesel-powered Peugeot outside the gates of the Palace of Knossos, we waited until the tree branches stopped falling atop of the car before exiting. With each gust of wind, new tree limbs separated and slammed onto the hood of our rental car. The rental car we had elected not to insure. The Peugeot was sturdy though, and my wife and I were determined not to let a little wind spo...

December 12th, 2024 Dear Mr. Beaty, Your dispatch and the delightful dispatches your children sent to Santa Claus warmed the heart of the aging King of the Literary Daredevils. Congratulations on your new typewriter! For your whatnot: some years ago I read that Ernest Hemingway banged away on his typewriter while standing up. You may find this scrap of information arresting and elect to follow Hem...

December 9th, 2024 Dear Mr. Fudd, If you notice a change in font from previous correspondences, it is due to the use of my Christmas present from my octogenarian distant relative who stumbled upon a beautiful Royal typewriter in pristine condition at a garage sale. At least that’s the story he gave me. Congratulations on the grandchild and the successful literary assault on the good people of Blis...

My dad never golfed, and I can only imagine that his father before him never golfed either. I was the next in line of generations of non-golfers, and I always assumed it was my duty to uphold the family legacy. But I also assumed I would get a job in engineering and spend my days with spreadsheets, American Institute of Steel Construction manuals, and TI-89 calculators—that was always the plan dur...

November 9th, 2024 Dear Mr. Fudd, I was excited to see your latest correspondence. I know your time is precious as you attempt to bless this world with your beautiful words at an unprecedented scale this holiday season. I wish you much success in this endeavor. I hope the residents of Bliss, Idaho or wherever else your messages end up are as grateful as I am for your poetry. I have some bad news,...

October 16th, 2024 Dear Mr. Fudd, It’s getting colder, which means that I am in the midst of the thankless job of gradually ripping out all of the plants in my wife’s garden and placing them in our garbage bin. It’s about a two-month process since I refused to purchase those large brown paper sacks, so I can only properly dispose of one garbage bin of garden at a time. I could probably start the p...

October 8th, 2024 Dear Mr. Fudd, I’m sorry to report that I’ve yet to make it out to the bonsai tree stand out on Dodge Street. I was in the process at one point, but was distracted at a stoplight when a black convertible pulled up in the lane next to mine. The driver wore a shirt that looked like he was headed to a meeting with his bowling team, and the make of the car was one of those middle-of-...

October 1st, 2024 Dear Mr. Fudd, I read your “Strange Letter,” how is Pepsi nowadays? It’s been a while since I’ve seen him, but we never really got along, at least not since the Ferris wheel incident. It’s funny how something so trivial can leave such a big impact on a relationship. I was excited to get your letter, but I had a false alarm earlier in the week. I received a handwritten letter in p...

Dear Mr. Fudd, I’ve always wanted a pen pal. My brother had one once, it was an old neighbor girl who moved to Minnesota. I heard stories of this family growing up and had to pretend that I knew them and cared about them when we visited on summer vacations, but no one ever wrote me a letter. I think it was my parents’ idea to have them write one another, maybe to help spark a romance or to allevia...

A few weeks ago I achieved a lifelong dream by publishing my first book. It’s a coming-of-age memoir about my awkward high school years—kind of like Sixteen Candles if that annoying kid who asked Molly Ringwald out on a date wrote a book about his life. As it turns out writing a book and selling a book are two different skillsets, and now that I’ve sort of figured out how to do the first one I’m n...

A few weeks ago I achieved a lifelong dream by publishing my first book. It’s a coming-of-age memoir about my awkward high school years—kind of like Sixteen Candles if that annoying kid who asked Molly Ringwald out on a date wrote a book about his life. As it turns out writing a book and selling a book are two different skillsets, and now that I’ve sort of figured out how to do the first one I’m n...

I always thought I had a normal childhood. At least normal enough. Normal enough to eat macaroni and cheese for lunch and get told by my mom to “stop yelling” after my older brother hit me in the head with a miniature baseball bat. But when my childhood stopped being present tense and moved into past tense, I received new lenses to look at the past. I became an uncle, so I knew what it was like to...

By Bob Copperstone Thanks for reading! Subscribe to read the first chapter of Loser* A Survival Guide to High School Popularity by C.S. Beaty, Wedding in the Sand I’ve had a chance to recover from my trip to California, and now I’ll share some reminiscences with my friends. The trip was a destination double wedding of my nieces, Janie’s girls, Kathy and Tina Matschiner, who both live in Lincoln. T...

By Bob Copperstone Thanks for reading! Subscribe here and get the first chapter of Loser*: A Survival Guide to High School Popularity by C.S. Beaty! Letter to Editor Nov. 16, 2024 Bargain-Basement Comics By Bob Copperstone All the daily newspapers serving our part of eastern Nebraska are owned by a single entity, and share a thrifty, barebones half-page comics section. Recently they announced anot...

By Bob Copperstone A wonderfully quaint wooden viaduct once spanned Wahoo’ s Second Street between Chestnut and Broadway. It was a formidable, three-stage bridge with an approach, level top, and descent. It carried traffic over a small ravine, while the Chicago & North Western Rail Road (that’s how they spelled the company name then) freight trains passed underneath. Thanks for reading! Subscribe...

As it turns out, the only real difference between stroking the head of our pet cat Bengals and the head of a live cheetah, is that the cheetah seems to enjoy it more. I had the Cango Wildlife Ranch in Oudtshoorn, South Africa to thank for this knowledge, where they let you go into the animal cages and pet the animals. Granted, it wasn’t all the animals. And the line was too long to pet a full-grow...