Shoutout LA Interview with...Me
Three Words I Didn't Plan to Say
ShoutoutLA ran an interview with me on August 24. They asked about my background, my work, and where I'd take a friend visiting for a week. The full piece is here: https://shoutoutla.com/meet-chris-mcnulty-songwriter-author-photographer-and-product-creator/
When they asked what keeps me busy professionally, I started with "I make things." I hadn't planned that line, and it's the one I keep coming back to.
It settles something I got wrong for years. I kept a ranking in my head. Software was the career. Photographs and writing were things I'd get to later, and later never came. Writing answers for strangers made it plain that I've dropped that ranking. The work has been better since I did. The interview goes into how and why, including what framing a photograph has in common with designing a system.
Explaining yourself to people who don't know you is a useful exercise. It shows you which stories you reach for first. For me, that was casting a musical. My goal was always to send a cast home as better singers than they arrived. Decades later, that's still how I think about building a team or a product.
The shoutout question made me look back, too. ShoutoutLA asks who you'd dedicate the piece to. Family was the easy answer. I named the North Fork Community Theater in Mattituck, New York, where I performed from high school into my early twenties. Small community stages start a lot of creative careers, and they rarely get credit in print. I was glad to give some.
If you only read one section, make it the travel itinerary. I split my time between two coasts, so I wrote two versions. The LA version includes an ask I meant seriously. Skip Santa Monica for once, and spend your money in the Pacific Palisades and Malibu, where businesses are still recovering from last year's damage. That fits ShoutoutLA's mission, which is getting more people to spend with small businesses and independent creatives.
The Pacific Northwest version is a week-long road trip. It runs from Cannon Beach to Rainier, the Olympics, Coupeville, Chuckanut Drive, Bellingham, and up Grouse Mountain.
The interview also previews what's next. There's an AI industry news publication this fall, then a book on AI and marketing and my first collection of short stories by year end. And there are new Cascadia Oceanic prints, including Wharf 2026 and Snow Bridge 2026 - plus everything I shot in Alaska this month.
Thanks to Chris Miller and the ShoutoutLA team for the questions. Read the interview, then tell me where my itinerary is wrong.
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