Author Archives: Shannon Menu

Friday February 12, 2021

Lynn's Comments: The way to write a story, using one statement a day, is to include valuable information in dialogue that is crafted as a joke. Here, we get the joke about the hat, but it's connected to Gordon's gloves. He needn't have left his gloves at the Patterson house, but by having this happen, I was both confirming that Elly had intervened and that Gordon liked being in the Patterson home. This works as ongoing information without having to delve into the difficult storyline again.

Tuesday February 9, 2021

Lynn's Comments: This strip left readers wondering and imagining what was happening behind those closed doors. Not showing anything more was a good thing—it kept the strip from becoming too negative, and it gave readers the opportunity to think about what goes on in their own neighbourhoods. You can suspect something is happening, but you might never know for sure.

Tuesday January 26, 2021

Lynn's Comments: My daughter saved up for her first car. She was so excited about buying one. She had a used car picked out and was ready to negotiate the price, but the salesman kept referring to her dad. Eventually, her dad told the salesman to talk to the actual buyer! Kate took the reins and negotiated a great deal. It was a high five for all of us!

Monday January 25, 2021

Lynn's Comments: They say that each car has a "face." By the way the lights are placed and the grill is shaped, a car can have a real personality. One of the Volkswagens was designed to have such a visible face that eyelashes were created just to augment the illusion! I noticed recently that the new Lexus has a face...it looks surprisingly like a boss I once had. If I owned a Lexus, I'd call it "Mitch."

Sunday January 17, 2021

Lynn's Comments: Sunday pages gave me the opportunity to stretch things out. It was especially enjoyable when I could come up with TV jargon and funny game show dialogue. "I'll take a P" and the subject of cross-dressing were against the censorship rules, but in a case like this, it was lost in the mix. Great fun.

Saturday January 16, 2021

Lynn's Comments: This strip became the title of one of the annual collection books. Finding a title was often the hardest part of putting a book together. I always tried to find the title in the text of the strips that appeared in that book.