About The Little Island Stories
Charlie Shifflett’s Substack launched in 2023 with weekly, illustrated story episodes about a golden retriever stranded on a little island in the Gulf of Mexico. The serialized tale, which you can now read in its entirety, wrapped up in December.
Season 2 of The Little Island Stories launched in January of 2024.
This time around, each illustrated post — one or two per month — contains a standalone story unrelated to Marco’s tale (which we’re calling Season 1). Some stories will be vignettes. A few may take the form of a poem or a song or a cartoon strip. Each story will be accompanied by an audio reading and a hand-painted watercolor illustration.
Season 2 bonus posts may feature concept illustrations as well as personal essays by Charlie on his creative process.
Perhaps you’re wondering, ‘Who exactly is this Substack for?’
The short answer: It’s for my kids. Sometimes even the Paw Patrol, Spiderman and Elsa aren’t enough to distract the little ones from griping, fighting and, um…moaning. Believe it or not, a wacky story dreamed up by a parent — right on the spot — can sometimes do the trick.
The stories here are some of my favorites from our emergency storytelling sessions — plus some new ones I’m polishing up and tucking into my pants pocket in the hope one or two of them might save us all from another meltdown.
And now for the long answer: This Substack is also for me — for my own creative wellbeing.
In the big scheme of things, I’m just a mediocre writer who has bounced from journalism into content marketing and technical writing. Last year, I was told (multiple times) by company VPs that I need to learn how to use AI writing tools if I want to remain relevant, efficient, and employed. I do want to keep my job, of course, so I am trying my best to learn how to play nice, professionally speaking, with ChatGPT, Bard, Siri, Alexa and other AI assistants.
Perhaps in part because of this ongoing technological shift in my professional life (not to mention the world at large), I feel the need to double-down on analog pursuits in my creative life.
More than ever, I want to strum a guitar and finger a keyboard instead of programming chords on a computer.
I want to paint with a brush and watercolors, rather than with a stylus and an iPad.
I want to tell stories — ones that are personally meaningful, rather than ones crafted to try to appeal to publishers and internet algorithms.
Substack has emerged, for me, as an ideal platform that’s friendly to experimentation, creative exploration, and finding a welcoming community.
By reading and subscribing, you are encouraging me to keep at it, to keep creating.
Thank you.
