Fly: You are Welcome to Read đź“š
This newsletter brings some fun updates. This month I participated in a Stuff your Kindle event, that included a wide array of horror stories from indie authors that were $0.99 or free. I contributed my short story Blood Frequency for free. It was a one-day event on the 18th. This was my first time trying one of these events, hosted by author Donna Taylor, and it was so insanely successful. And there were also some unforeseen positives as well.
Blood Frequency was downloaded 108 times during the one-day event. So there are 108 folks out there with my little story in their digital devices for the reading and that is so exciting. I also saw an uptick in newsletter subscribers during the event as well, and we finally broke the 100 subscribers milestone, so heck yeah!
We now have 110 subscribers to the newsletter and that is so cool! Here’s me dancing, consider this my victory lap.
A lot of those new Blood Frequency readers also downloaded more of our stories from the library from other authors, so that was super cool, too.
With the new subscribers in mind, I thought it would be a good time to talk about what this newsletter looks like and share some links to past entires, so ya’ll can get a taste, but also it comes at a time when I’ve been trying to fine-tune the focus of the newsletter as well. So let’s talk about the future of the newsletter a little as well.
What’s this Weaver’s Deep Thoughts and Weaver’s Library hubbub?
This newsletter has primarily been focused around topical personal essay style writing. Much of it is written by me, but I try to bring in guest writers as well for different perspectives, and serve as an editor to these folks. When guest writers pop in, it tends to be a very collaborative experience and I love it. I pay them and submissions are open.
Here’s some past newsletter examples:
My first indie film, and protecting your darlings at all costs.
Young Hearts Run Free: Friends, the Found Family with guest writer Anya K. Jordan.
Can I get a Witness? Owning and Moderating Social Networks with guest writer Di Cleverly.
I wrote about the newsletter origins here.
The library came about two years or so into the newsletter. The idea was that I wanted to create a digital library of sorts. One that would be filled with a diverse selection of genres and authors with a collection of free short stories and poetry. I send these out via the newsletter, but also add them to the library as free and DRM-free epub files. I pay these writers as well and submissions are open.
I do the library because I’m a firm believer in reading. I’m a firm believer in folks learning from reading, maturing, expanding their perspective, growing empathy, and becoming a much more whole and free person. It’s also healthy for you, as it can help stave of dementia later in life. I talk sometimes about my homeschooling which wasn’t great, and I did most of my best learning from the library as a kid. Thank goodness for libraries! I can also see what’s going on around me with book banning and want to be a space that allows for a wide perspective of voices and stories. There’s no bigotry in this newsletter.
Weaver’s Deep Thoughts is a free newsletter and I typically send out 1-2 freebies per month. During October, I do a serialized Halloween horror story that trickles out every Friday, so there’s more emails that month. You can upgrade to $1/month and get an additional email called Nat’s Letters. This tends to be a four-paragraph “letter” that is focused on a singular idea, oft times a personal story. The paid tier helps support the paying of authors, poets, guest writers, and maintaining the site. I do have a “producer” tier that’s $5/month, if you really want to contribute to the writer fund. Sometimes I sneak out a freebie or two that the free folks don’t get, but mostly it’s the Nat’s Letter. But because I hate paywalls, and because I believe in reading and that reading should’t be a luxury, paid subscribers get “paywall vetoes” that they can use to remove a paywall. And these aren’t gift links, like some newspapers do, I just remove the paywall forever for everyone when a paid subscriber spends a veto.
Here are few of Nat’s Letters that were vetoed by the community, so they’re available for free:
When someone makes up crap about you. (Thanks for the veto, Janet!)
Thinking of Bobby — a gay man who taught me about the gay experience from 1980s-1990s. (Thanks for the veto, Nichole!)
The Future of Weaver’s Deep Thoughts.
At the start of this year, I was in my last term of my Bachelor’s degree at SNHU Online (I graduated in May), and a course I took that term resulted in me creating an author website and blog. It was something I’d been neglecting for years since starting back to school and it just so happened to be part of the project for the course. I decided to keep it up after classes ended, but that meant there was overlap between Weaver’s Deep Thoughts and my new author website and blog, and I don’t want that. So I’ve been trying to find time to sort out how to make sure Weaver’s Deep Thoughts keeps its uniqueness. And I think the answer is to fine-tune my focus on the publishing side of it.
The thought process is I’ll start viewing this newsletter as more of a lit mag and that works well with the library work we’re doing here. We’ll still have the free stories and poetry, personal essays, and such. It just means I’ll try to be more focused on making sure it feels more cohesive in content strategy for the newsletter topics. I may try a rebrand as well. Especially because I’m not sure Weaver’s Deep Thoughts works a name for a lit mag. I may put together some name suggestions and send out a poll in a week or two to see what ya’ll think. Feel free to shout out name ideas in the comments, or if you really like Weaver’s Deep Thoughts and don’t wanna lose it, let me know that, too.
My author website and blog is focused more on my personal writing journey and finding my stories in one place. It also looks really fun and cool, I think. It leans into the horror and dark fiction I like to write, but also fun — like me! Feel free to follow my blog there as well.
Conclusion.
This is already pretty long, so I’ll probably just wrap this up here. To all of the regulars, please take a moment to say hi in the comments to the newcomers. Give them a warm welcome! If you’re a new subscriber, sound off in the comments and introduce yourself if you want. Everyone take a moment to give me your thoughts on my future thinking for the newsletter.
Another thing you should probably know about me is that I love music and I often end newsletters with a song. My newsletter titles sometimes reference the song. Today I’m ending with a different version of Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly,” because sometimes we all just wanna crack open a book and fly away.
Be good to each other. ✌️
