Newsletter Update: New Year, New Opportunities

Just giving you a sense of what is to come in the next year of this Substack.

Hey everyone,

With the new year up, I'm coming to a new year of my Substack in February, the beginning of my fifth year. So I'm looking for new ways to do things and considering new opportunities. This is part of why I requested that people fill out the survey at the end of the year. I hope you have done me the favour and filled it out to the extent you have or are considering it. Given that new opportunity, I've decided to do some more things to try and encourage paying subscribers this year.

One of the things which I'm going to do is that there are a couple pieces I couldn't decide whether they should be for paid subscribers only or for free subscribers. As a result, the idea will be to split the difference. I was concerned about how some people might react to them. So much of my audience have a whole bunch of views on various issues. Meaning that while the pieces will be available for everyone to read, paid subscribers will be the only ones allowed to leave comments. Partly because there may or may not be controversy among subscribers about the topic. I have often been of the view that if you want to pay me a fee to make nasty comments and fight among each other, you're more than welcome to do so.

Which doesn’t mean I won’t moderate the comments of paid subscribers. It just means that I’m happy to have heated discussions if it comes up for paid subscribers. However, up until this point, you've all been very nice and this hasn't happened, but I'm not naive. Particularly given what these will be about.

Exclusive Long Form Pieces

The other thing happening in this next year is I'm going to be releasing the very first long form series exclusively for paying subscribers. It will never be made available for free subscribers and will remain for paid subscribers only. This will also be an opportunity to deal with more controversial topics in depth. Only paying subscribers will get to vote on them or make suggestions on what will be covered. I already have the first picked out and voted on by a paid subscriber and I'm putting it together. I have at least two other options for some more controversial topics and a couple others which may or may not be controversial. But they're almost certainly going to be an option to paying subscribers first.

If they don't want it, then I will consider it for free subscribers. I still have a list of things I will be covering for early access. the next two series are iZombie and Zombified Systems and Riverdale and the Loss of Innocence as were voted on by all subscribers. They are ready to go later this year.

Speaking of polls, here’s the results of the last one on themed events:

You voted overwhelmingly for more of them so I’m working that out. I have a Halloween themed one in mind and a second Christmas one focused on Christmas TV specials specifically that are different from the ones written about last month. They will be Christmas episodes of TV shows, some of which I’ve covered here before.

I'm also looking at doing some movie series. For instance, trilogies of films (like the Sam Raimi Spiderman series, The Crow movies) or potentially cinematic universes.

Looking Back to Go Forward

At the same time, I'm going to be introducing some of my older fiction writing on a separate Substack available for everyone. Some of it I can't really profit off which is why it's not being posted here. Pledging is turned off for it as well. Yet it largely informed my writing here. People in the past have described it as a “philosophy textbook in narrative form”. It's very old at this point (as early as 2002) so it's going to be a look at who I used to be and some of the issues I was dealing with when I was younger. If you're interested in that type of insight, feel free to check it out here:

https://forgottenconscience.substack.com/

Eventually, I'll be posting some more recent original fiction that I can profit from. That will be posted on a separate Substack which you will be able to pay for. However that's going to be after most of the not-for-profit fiction will get posted. That will be a while for people to check out.

Unless you want it sooner.