A Substack-versary Zillow Horror Show

... plus what's ahead, and a special offer

I’ve been doing this Substack thing for a year! Thank you—all 11,072 of you, at last count—for being into it, at least sometimes. I’ve really enjoyed building an online community that doesn’t have Elon’s dirty Kleenex all over it, and I’m hugely grateful for the support (moral, financial, vocal) that so many of you have provided.

How are we celebrating?

1. With an absolutely ridiculous Zillow tour, below, of a mansion that contains the most terrifying workout and massage rooms I have ever seen.

2. With a preview of things I’ll be writing about this winter, also below…

3. With a discount, if I’m doing the tech part of this right! If you want to upgrade to a paid subscription to SubMakk, or gift a paid subscription to someone, or tell people to subscribe QUICK, I’m doing 20% off yearly for new paid subscriptions until next Friday, 12/15.
   

   Paid subscribers can leave comments, ask questions when I do an AMA or advice series, and see additional content.

   

   
   ***Here is the link…***

   Please feel free to pass it on to anyone who might be interested!

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I hope you are very much ready for some Zillow.

This estate in extremely-upstate New York is for sale for only 17 million dollars, on extensive land once owned by one of J. D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil partners.

But the house is new, and is currently being used as a lodge for things like the lovely wedding above—perhaps because the owners/original decorators were haunted by their decisions. Please keep this charming couple and their guests in mind as you see the decor they have been subjected to.

We’re not in the nightmare part yet, but we’re starting off with one of my least favorite aesthetics, something I call “polished, wavy sticks.” I’m sure there’s an actual term, like “modern trapsman” or “Ron Ronson chic”? The shellac makes you just confident enough to run your hand down the banister, and then you get a splinter the size of a skateboard.

Strong commitment to the aesthetic throughout, including what looks like a birchbark grandfather clock, and what’s definitely a canoe on the ceiling, a la Applebee’s.

Here we have a mirror inside a snowshoe and, on the left, a full-on tree? The toilet, fortunately, is not made of wood.

This estate is named Partridge Park, but since I’m a 12-year-old child, I absolutely love that the towel by the toilet says “PP.”

We’ve also got a birchbark fridge with tiny antler handles (from a baby antelope?)… but look closely at the back of the kitchen, and you’ll see what you knew was inevitably going to be a theme here. Oh yes oh yes, it’s… a taxidermy house.

Wait, before we’re too harsh on these people, let’s check if they’ve juxtaposed the taxidermy with any racist statuar-

Oookay, yes, we’re in the clear. Let’s proceed to mock them.

I’m not going to show you every piece of taxidermy, but please just know that the entire house is basically this. It’s the house Belle would have been trapped in forever if she’d married Gaston.

Most bedrooms have deer heads, but here’s the child-friendly taxidermy—a bobcat, what looks like a skunk tail (?) and the kind of stuffed bear that won’t haunt your dreams. Sweet!

Okay, I want you to stop scrolling and imagine what the workout room might look like in a house like this. Really give it some thought. Imagine that you are a wedding guest, and you want to get in some quick cardio before your college roommate’s storybook nuptials. And then proceed.

Yes, those are rusty serial-killer saws on the wall. Yes, that is probably a photo of a judgmental 19th-century oil baron. And yes, that is…

THAT IS TWO TAXIDERMIED RACCOONS STICKING THEIR HEADS THROUGH THE WALL ABOVE THE 5-POUND WEIGHTS.

Like, it is hard enough to motivate yourself to work out when you don’t have to snatch the free weights away from the soul of a dead raccoon.

Okay, stop scrolling again. Knowing what you now know, please give some thought to the massage room. You know, the place where you—the bride-to-be!—are meant to be at your most relaxed and vulnerable.

And behold:

Yep.

Yep.

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What’s ahead

Okay, thank you for bearing (pun! pun!) with me. Here’s some of the stuff I’ll be posting about in the near future…

• After my series on endings in fiction, I got a lot of questions about whether I have material on openings. I sure as hell do! I’ll be posting a series this winter, probably starting (appropriately) right after New Year’s.

• More Zillow stuff, obviously. Always.

• My adventures in reading my way around the world paused recently for the stupidest possible reason, which is that I left my current book—the Yemini novella The Hostage, by Zayd Mutee' Dammaj—in a hotel room, and it’s taking a while for a new copy to arrive. But after Yemen, I’m very excited to work my way down the east coast of Africa. Almost all the African literature I’ve read has been South African and Nigerian, and I hope you’ll join me in discovering some of the wildly varied literature of the continent.

• More publishing answers. I answered a bunch of publishing questions from readers in my last post, and have some more GREAT questions waiting for answers.

• I had a huge response to my posts about writing with ADHD, and I’d love to answer some reader questions about it.

• Some of my adventures in learning Hungarian. It is… HARD. It is hard. I’ll leave it at that for now.

What else do you want to hear about? Like a tipsy piano player in a half-empty Italian restaurant at 9:20 pm, I’m open to requests.