Without Fear

I am starting an email newsletter.

The Two-Fisted Homeopape <– hit up, drop your email in, await with happy thoughts

The obvious question to ask me is…what, WHY?

I’ll be honest, it feels like a hack self-centred arrogant needy thing to do. To expect people to want to read my words enough to sign up, to let me eyeworm into your inbox and dump my blather on you. And it totally is. I know that, it totally is.

But it’s also just another avenue I have to/want to pursue in the effort of taking my writing gig seriously as also a career move. This year I’ve got two titles in Previews – HEADSPACE right now, and the next thing coming soon, very soon [and I’m usually not one to talk out of school but this thing feels pretty good, it is coming, you feel me?] – and so if I want to get the word out, if I want to get people excited, if I want to actually make sales, in totality, if I want to turn this navel gazing hobby into a pseudo-paying meritorious hobby then I need to explore all options.

A newsletter is different to the twitter, to the site, to the notes I’ve been leaving under your keyboard at work [check it out, lift it up now, see if I’m kidding] because the newsletter gets into your inbox. And it sits there and waits for you at your leisure. It won’t get swept away as easily as a tweet does on the holotubes, it doesn’t require your specific link click or navigation like this site does. It’s another way to connect with people, and much as my site here drops information in vastly different ways from the way I use the twitter machine, the newsletter will also be a different beast. This I promise. Or else it’ll be washed out of your Junk Folder in 5 days, no harm, no foul.

At present, I’ve been hugely impressed with the way the newsletters by Warren Ellis and the House DeConnick/Fraction run their games. Both are more rambly than we allow on twitter, more loosely structured than a site post ‘should’ be, they’re personal in different ways, and I can store them up and have them waiting for me whenever is appropriate.

I know, personally, I rarely visit peeps’ sites anymore, and my day job and upside-down timezone and current snowed under deadline superhappyfuntimes are making me a twitter deadzone, and I don’t Like enough posts by others on Facebook to be considered relevant, so I’m giving this a whirl.

Also, and this is important because it makes me sound like more than just some buzzword slinging shill and band wagon jumper [which i am, but I don’t need to sound it], a newsletter is just another media/genre to tackle, and I love all the writings. I love twitter, I love writing posts here, and what I fill the homeopape with is just going to be more fun, man, lexicographical candy for the soul, man, and the chef is always cooking, y’dig?

So, rambly ramble ramble aside, that’s why the newsletter is about to begin. In fact, the first one will go out on the 2nd of March and maybe think about hitting a fortnightly schedule. At present, I’m just drafting a rough proforma for it that I’ll maybe think about following each time.

If you are interested in an inside peek into my writing process, maybe some stuff I’m reticent to share on the public places and spaces but will happily drop into the fireside chat of my own private e-zine, and want to keep abreast of the publishing dates and links and sneaky peeks of what 2015 holds in store for me, then sign on up. If nothing else, it’ll be fun, right?

The Two-Fisted Homeopape – where good soldiers go to fight and valiantly die in the verbose arena of the mind