I will return...

Another Happy Anniversary to me ...An update to let you know where I stand -- besides over there.

WHAT! Free

THIS IS FREE…

I like to tell my readers right away if a post is FREE or not. There’s nothing more frustrating to me than going into a story and the finding out that I can’t read it, or leave a comment. So I’m telling you up front, this is free.

I’ll be coming back next week…I hope. I don’t have a reading ready, and I was planning to put up a chapter of my LOCKSLEY story, but last night rethought the chapter and came to the conclusion that maybe I need to rethink it — which is another way of saying I may have to rewrite it…We’re coming close to the end of the Fourth Part now. Two chapters, I believe, but wow, what an ending! You’ll either hate me, shake your head in disbelief, or think I’m brilliant. (Which doesn’t seem likely.) That’ll be coming out on Wednesday, June 4th. I will have a reading for my current story Where the Night Hides its Shadow, by next weekend. My Poet’s Corner reading of THE CANTERBURY TALES will continue, following the week after that.

This Tuesday, June 2nd, will be my 3rd anniversary here on Substack, and I’m hoping by that time, I’ll have 1000 subscribers. I’m at 997.

1000!

It took me going through 9 months of trauma to get my first 100 subscribers. It was emotional trauma I’d been going through for most of that year. And now? I have 3841 Followers. The only ones reading this email will be my subscribers — and not all of you will look at the email I send out. I’d say maybe 25 % of you will. Well, now that I have (tentatively) 1000 subscribers, I have to try and convert those other 2841 Followers to Subscribe. I also have to convince you that I have something to offer you if you want to upgrade to paid.

What do I have to offer if you go paid?

Well, I’ve got my serial novels: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL & THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY are both completed works; JACK OF DIAMONDS will be my next project because one of my paid writers insists I write it again — or did he mean post it? Oh well. I also have a STAR WARS novel that, surprisingly, people want to read.

In addition to my stories, I now have poetry reading. I’m reading THE CANTERBURY TALES. That’s in my POET’S CORNER found on my mock station, BTC-TV Channel 13. I’m teaching myself how to use Ai. I know, I know, I’ve heard all the arguments. Even so, it’s my hope I can make my own movie here based on a script I wrote ten years ago. It takes place during the Russian Revolution. I’m working on a small cartoon right now — which isn’t working for me at all...

Do I care of it’s Ai, or not? I do, but there’s not much I can do about it. I just go with the flow. Ai is something I use for research, but it’s also something I want to explore. I’m thinking it might take me a couple of weeks to figure it all out, and when I do, I want to release all of this pent up creativity. I want to make my own commercials for my TV station.

Everything I do, moving forward, will be behind the paywall, except my STORIES, AFTER EIGHT.

My novellas and novelettes will always be free.

My intentions now are to increase the number of my PAID subscriptions. At the moment, I’m making a total of $629/year. That means I’ve made a couple of bucks over $200 a year, for each one of my three years here. That works out to $50 a month, and some change…or, a sorta good bottle of wine. (No judging, okay? Besides, rehab is for quitters.)

My PAID page only costs $30/year (Can)…8¢ a day to up-Grade. (But it’s also $10 per month if you just want to look around and then bugger off — which is O-kay by me.)

I think Anniversary dates on Substack are important to writers. I’d like you to know that Ive never once thought about packing it in, or giving up. I’ve never once suffered through what people call Imposter Syndrome. I’ve always felt as though I belonged here. Substack is a community of readers and writers, and we enjoy reading and sharing our work. I can’t say what my reasons are for writing here and posting with such regularity. Maybe it’s the anonymity? Nobody really knows who I am. A lot of the writers here talk about writing into the void. I don’t look at it like that. I know someone’s out there, reading. It could well be my friends who make me feel that way. One of them, one of the ones who signed up and went Paid on the fifth day out, told me he was reading JACK OF DIAMONDS and absolutely loved it. He doesn’t care about anything else I do. He just wants to read JACK OF DIAMONDS.

It’s been a slow climb, in my opinion…

When I started this project, it was more or less a retirement project. I needed it to keep my sanity. It was 2022, and I was in therapy after an industrial accident resulting in the death of one of my best friends. I needed a distraction, and this was it. I hadn’t written anything since the accident in January. I wouldn’t write anything until almost November. At that time, I had 51 subscribers, of whom 3 were PAID. During those months, I was posting stories I’d already written and not bothered to send out. They were long, drawn out tales. If there was a theme, I mean a common theme, I suppose I would have to say it was love: unrequited, tragic, familial, but love all the same. It was the last thing I expected of myself. But please, don’t think that I’m a Romance writer.

I like form and structure when it comes to my writing. I like challenges. I’ll tell you a story and set it in three different timelines — and then add a hiccup with a fourth — just to see if I can make it work. I write about things that interest me and don’t care what others think. I put my stories in foreign locations. I write about people of different ethnicities — Japanese, Kenyan, Cornish, German, American — gay, straight, it doesn’t matter to me. I haven’t had anyone say anything bad to me yet, (knock on wood.)

So far, I’ve written an inter-racial love story, a gay love story, a coming of age story, a fantasy adventure serial, a fantasy in the STAR WARS universe, a story set in the waning days of King Arthur, as well as a story about a thief in 1920’s England. I have a movie set in the Russian Revolution. I want to make that into an Ai movie and put it behind my paywall. I’m also working on a play, written in Iambic Pentameter because, like I said, I like to challenge myself. (That’s what Shakespeare wrote in if you didn’t already know that.) It’ll probably never see the stage, and I’ll put it up here just for the hell of it. I’ll be putting that up behind the paywall. Maybe, if I get a larger following (of celebrity, Paid Subscribers), someone will offer to read it out as a live Zoom play? How cool would that be? Six REAL actors reading out a play in real time?

One has to have a dream in order to make it come true.

Everything I do, I do with a purpose. It’s not to entertain my readers and followers, but myself. I look at everything I do as a challenge to myself. I mean…a movie? A play?

I want you to know that I don’t write with Ai. I use it as a tool. I won’t deny that. It’s a great research assistant. Sometimes, it’s wrong, and I’ll call it out on that if I catch it. To say it’s a work in progress may be an understatement, but I have the confidence that I will learn how to use it properly. I want to make commercials for my TV Station.

If you don’t like the idea of my use of Ai on my BTC-TV channel, then I guess you’ll ditch me. But if you’re curious as to what I might come up with, hang around. I’m 67. I don’t have a lot of time left. I want to see how far I can take this in 20 years. Is that too much to ask for?

So hang around. There will be times when I fail. (The Celebrity Diner didn’t work out the way I’d hoped it would.) There will be times when I have to take a moment to regroup. I mean, I’m the youngest of six. My oldest brother is 11 years older than myself. I have a lot of friends. Shit happens, people die, and when they do, they always take a bit of me with them. We all go through it at some point in our lives. I told my wife a long time ago, there will be a time when one of us wakes up alone.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’ll be here until I don’t wake up.

So if you want to up-grade, now’s the time to do it. $30…for the year? Not to be crude, but I think I’ve pissed more up against the wall on a Saturday night when I was in my youth. If you can’t afford it, tell me, I’ll comp you.

Maybe I should go out live tomorrow and celebrate?