My name is Dan Sheehan. I'm a writer based in Los Angeles. If you're here, you probably recognize me from somewhere on the internet.
But Who Are You?
I was the writer behind the viral social media personality NOT A WOLF. I wrote a book about the character, a wolf pretending to be a man in a dead-end office job. That book was released by Andrews McMeel in 2021. It was received quite warmly, being named one of New York Magazine's "Best Humor Books of 2021" as a part of their year-end culture coverage. These days, the account is mostly on hiatus but occasionally the desire to tweet in all-caps strikes me and I can't help myself.
I've done a fair amount of comedy writing outside of NOT A WOLF, briefly contributing to ClickHole in 2016 and having worked as a contributor for The Onion since 2017. My main beat is American Voices. You know the ones with these guys? I've written a lot of those. I've written for outlets like McSweeney's and appeared on television shows like The Late Late Show With James Corden. I also co-founded and hosted the Chicago shame-based storytelling juggernaut, We Still Like You.
My longer form writing has appeared in publications like Playboy, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork. I've done some worldbuilding game design for the beloved card game Magic: The Gathering, having contributed both to creative text game design and narrative worldbuilding.
If you're not familiar with any of that, you've probably just seen a lot of aging screenshots of my tweets reposted on reddit and know me for goofy stuff like coining the phrase "luxury bones".
No matter how you got here, it's nice to see you.
So What's The Point Of All This?
I started my career by building a massive platform of people who liked my writing. Writing little jokes and longer form pieces online helped me go from just another recent grad with an English degree to a full-time writer. Then, as the 2010s wore on, I watched helplessly as the websites I built my platform on slowly began revoking my access to it, making it very clear very quickly that any piece of content that directed people away from their Twitter/Instagram/Facebook loops would be buried.
I got sick of having to take screenshots of my own work, sick putting the link to my book in the comments below a post about it, and sick of dancing around algorithms that did everything in their power to stop me from promoting my own writing to people who had explicitly expressed that they wanted to read it. So, I left those platforms behind. I wiped my Twitter and made my own website. Here it is.
My hope is to use this as a central hub for my work, anchored by my weekly-ish newsletter. The name, Really Very Human, is a nod to both my NOT A WOLF days and my insistence on putting out accessible, vulnerable, human, work in an increasingly bland and impersonal artistic environment.
What Does It Cost?
Most of it is free! However, subscribing here remains the best and most direct way to support my work. Despite having a whole lot of my work regularly making the rounds on the internet, I see very little money from a lot of my most well-known writing. So if you find yourself willing to part with a $5 bill every month, I'd be very appreciative. If you can't spare it, it's just as helpful to sign up for a free membership and send the ones you like to a friend, maybe one who just won the lottery or perhaps received an inheritance.
That All Sounds Really Reasonable! I Plan To Subscribe!
Wow, thank you.
So, What Now?
I'm looking into bringing more projects here than just my newsletter, ultimately having my podcasts, writing, and the newsletter all living in one place where people could subscribe to whatever they were most inclined to enjoy, but first I'd like to get acquainted with the platform.
But until then, thanks for being here and supporting my work. See ya online.