The Proud Boomer Podcast - Part of the Proud Boomer Dispatch on Substack

The town of Punta Seco isn’t on most maps. The ones that do show it spell it wrong. This episode is about why I went there anyway.This week, I talk about why I started writing fiction, what Florida actually looks like from the inside, and how a sixty-one-year-old woman running a bait shop in a town nobody’s heard of became the most interesting character I’ve ever put on a page.Also: a manatee named Gerald. A pelican with a Lightning McQueen Croc stuck on its bill. And what happens when a retired hydrologist drives until the road runs out.The StoryThe first Loretta Faye story is live now on the Florida Stories Substack.The Gospel of Loretta Faye — A woman, a manatee named Gerald, and the particular mercy of running out of road.This is not beach read Florida. This is the Florida where the bar and the church share a parking lot and the water tower is painted to look like a manatee in a sombrero and nobody can fully explain why. If you’ve lived here, you’ll recognize it. If you haven’t, you’ll believe it anyway. That’s the point.Read it here: floridastories.substack.comWhere To Find EverythingThe Proud Boomer Dispatch — Weekly newsletter, opinion essays, and the podcast. johnsproudboomer.substack.comProud Boomer Wellness — Evidence-based health writing for people over 50 who are tired of being talked down to. proudboomerwellness.substack.comFlorida Stories — Fiction. Loretta Faye. Weird, true-feeling tales from the state I live in. floridastories.substack.comSubscribePaid subscriptions are $8/month or $50/year. You get the full archive, one exclusive piece every month, and the knowledge that you’re supporting work with zero sponsors and zero algorithm telling it what to be.Questions, story tips, arguments: [email protected] more by following the Proud Boomer Dispatches on Substack for the weekly newsletter, fiction, and opinion essays. The Proud Boomer Wellness Substack is where the health writing lives. And Florida Stories is where Loretta Faye and the rest of this gloriously strange state show up. Paid subscriptions run $8 a month or $50 a year. Full archive, one exclusive piece per month, no sponsors, no algorithm. Just more of this. [email protected] Get full access to The Proud Boomer Dispatch at johnsproudboomer.substack.com/subscribe

What We’re Talking AboutWriting fiction for a newsletter audience is a weird bet. Most people follow a writer on Substack because they trust that person’s take on something specific. Health, politics, money, whatever. Then you show up with a short story set in a bait shop on US-1 and half your subscribers look at it like the menu just changed languages.This episode is about that bet, and why I’m still making it.Florida StoriesThe fiction series running on the Dispatch is called Florida Stories. Not the Florida of postcards and retirement brochures. The actual Florida. Pahokee. Islamorada. The retirement villages where the parking lot feuds have been going on longer than some marriages. Real places, mostly invented people, and situations that feel true even when every detail is made up.The next story drops this week. A charter fishing operation out of Islamorada. It is not about the fish.The Audience Problem Nobody Talks AboutFiction readers don’t behave like essay readers. They’re slower. They sit with a story. They don’t click or share right away because they’re still thinking about the last line. Substack’s recommendation system doesn’t know what to do with that. The numbers look worse than they are, and if you’re not careful, you start writing for the metrics instead of the reader.The readers who find the fiction write back with full emails. About their uncle who worked the docks in Fort Pierce. About a bar in Homestead they hadn’t thought about in twenty years. That’s the audience worth building, even if it takes longer than anyone wants to admit.Links* Subscribe to the Proud Boomer Dispatch on Substack: johnsproudboomer.substack.com* Health and Wellness essays on Medium: medium.com/@theproudboomer* Support the work: buymeacoffee.com/theproudboomer* Questions or story tips: [email protected] dollars a month or $50 a year. Full archive, the fiction series, opinion essays, and one exclusive piece every month. No sponsors. No algorithm telling this thing what to be. Get full access to The Proud Boomer Dispatch at johnsproudboomer.substack.com/subscribe

Episode summaryJohn gets honest about the specific frustration of writing dark fiction on a platform built for newsletters about morning routines and market trends. Substack rewards frequency and broad appeal. Disturbing fiction requires neither and delivers both badly. This episode is about what happens when you stop trying to solve that problem and start writing for the readers who were always going to find you anyway.What’s coveredWhy Substack’s discovery tools work against genre fiction writers. The tension between the platform’s appetite for volume and the patience good fiction actually requires. Why nobody subscribes to a Substack for the stories, and what they’re actually following instead. How “Mile Marker 47” found its readers not through promotion but through specificity. Why being precise enough to lose the wrong readers is the only strategy that holds up.Referenced in this episode“Mile Marker 47” and “Processing Delay” are both available on The Proud Boomer Substack. Paid subscribers get the full archive and one exclusive piece per month.Subscribe / FollowSubstack: Medium: https://medium.com/@theProudBoomer Email: [email protected] subscriptions: $5/month or $50/year. No sponsors. No algorithm. Get full access to The Proud Boomer Dispatch at johnsproudboomer.substack.com/subscribe

Episode summaryJohn talks about the craft behind writing disturbing fiction and why the darkest material is almost never invented. It comes from the locked drawer. The 2 a.m. thought you didn’t share. The moment you handled it badly and filed it away. He traces the line between shock and dread, explains why the scariest thing in horror fiction is usually the writer, and uses his own Substack story “Mile Marker 47” to illustrate how grounded, specific detail does more damage than any monster ever could.What’s coveredComing to fiction late, after years of writing that had to be true. Why disturbing fiction requires going somewhere you’d rather not. The difference between gore and dread, and why one of them actually works. How “Mile Marker 47” was built from the real experience of driving a dark Florida two-lane alone at night. Why the most unsettling moment in that story isn’t the figure at the tree line. It’s the realization that Mara never looked before.Referenced in this episode“Mile Marker 47” is available now on The Proud Boomer Substack. Paid subscribers get the full archive and one exclusive piece per month.Subscribe / FollowSubstack:Medium: https://medium.com/@theProudBoomer Email: [email protected] subscriptions: $5/month or $50/year. No sponsors. No algorithm. Get full access to The Proud Boomer Dispatch at johnsproudboomer.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to The Proud Boomer Dispatch at johnsproudboomer.substack.com/subscribe

Nobody went into the Blackpine Forest after dark unless they had a death wish or a secret pact. Bram Weller had both.The moon hung bloated and full above the treetops, like an unblinking eye. Fog snaked through the underbrush and crawled up the trunks of the ancient pines like something alive. Bram’s boots crunched dead leaves. Every step echoed louder than it should have in the hush of the cursed woods.He gripped his iron-tipped spear tighter. The leather-wrapped haft was slick in his hand from nerves or sweat, or maybe both. His broad frame looked carved from the same stone as the mountain he’d descended from, but his eyes were hollow. He wasn’t hunting tonight. Not really. He was waiting.They called it the Moonhunter’s Debt.Years ago, when Bram was still young enough to think bravery was louder than fear, he’d ventured into these woods with his brother, Emric. They’d heard the stories, the beast, the eyes like firelight, the claws that could gut a man in a blink. Bram didn’t believe them. Emric did.Only one of them came back.The villagers had whispered. Called it a “tragedy,” an “accident.” But Bram knew better. He’d seen the thing in the trees, just long enough to regret everything. It had let him live. Why? Guilt? Mercy?No.It was a promise.Tonight was the seventh year since the blood moon. The Debt always came due on the seventh year. Bram hadn’t run. He’d trained. Forged his own weapons. Learned the ways of silver and salt and suffering. But he didn’t know if it would be enough.The forest stirred. Not wind. Something else.Then it came.The werewolf stepped out of the mist like a shadow pulled free of the trees. At least ten feet tall, black fur matted with something darker. Its eyes were twin coals. Burning, ancient, aware. It didn’t snarl. It didn’t roar. It just looked at him.And Bram felt the weight of every sin he’d ever buried.He raised the spear.“You waited,” Bram said, voice low. “All these years.”The creature tilted its head, almost curious.“Why?”The beast spoke without moving its jaws. The words slid into Bram’s mind like cold water under the skin.“You were mine. You still are.”Bram didn’t know if it meant his life, his soul, or something worse. He didn’t care.He lunged.The spear struck true. Straight into the beast’s side, silver burning through fur and flesh like acid. The creature howled, a sound that made the trees lean away. A sound that made blood freeze and birds drop dead in their nests.But it didn’t fall.It grabbed the spear and pulled Bram closer.Close enough to smell the rot on its breath. Close enough to see what was behind those eyes.Emric.No. Not his brother. What was left of him.The beast wasn’t just a creature. It was a host. A parasite of rage and old curses. It kept its victims. Bram saw others. Faces flickering in the fur, bones woven into its limbs like trophies.“You want me?” Bram growled. “Take me.”He reached into his belt and pulled the flask. His last trick. Oil and ash, with a spark stone rigged to the cap. One twist. One firestorm.The creature hesitated.“You will burn,” Bram said. “And I’ll go with you.”The beast lunged.Bram twisted the cap.There was fire. Bright, white, and pure. It swallowed the clearing.They say the fire burned for three days, even through the rain.They found Bram’s charred body, but not the beast. Just a patch of scorched earth, and claw marks in the bark so deep the trees bled sap like tears.And every full moon since, the villagers lock their doors and bar their chimneys. They leave an offering in the woods. A blade. A letter. A child’s toy.Because the Moonhunter’s Debt never really ends.It just moves on. Get full access to The Proud Boomer Dispatch at johnsproudboomer.substack.com/subscribe