Tiny Letters From Me

We’re told over and over again that we need an author newsletter, right?

Well, I was stubborn. “Not me!” I said. I didn’t want the stress of managing people’s emails. They’re trusting you with their personal data, after all.

I just wasn’t sure I saw the point of them. I subscribed to some people’s newsletters, mostly just to keep up with their blogs, and there were some really great ones. But I couldn’t commit to the same level of quality because I didn’t have as much to offer. What could I put in one? Marketing? Like the world needs more of that.

Plus, I’d used Mailchimp before when my bro and I tried to start a business (yeah), and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through the hassle of it again.

So I decided I’d use my blog as my mailing list: get people to sub to it, they get writing news as well as interesting, original blog stuff in their inboxes. Great!

But then I had another problem. See, I wanted my blog to have a theme: fantasy and castles. History cropped up occasionally, but that’s what I wanted this to be about: Helping inspire people’s fantasy settings.

I had other things to say. Maybe I wanna talk about that business idea I just mentioned? (It was a fiasco.) Or my terrifying interviews in Portsmouth last year? Or the pages of stupid stuff I did as a kid. It didn’t fit with the theme of my blog, so there was nowhere for it to go.

Then I found Tinyletter.

It’s a totally free mailing list manager. It’s very simple – you’re basically emailing a word document to a group: there are no tools to customise background colours or layout or anything. You can import images and do the basic word processing and that’s about it. But you know what? That works for me. I don’t want to clutter up your internet experience any more than it already is anyway.

So, the plan: I’ve started a newsletter, which you can find at the bottom of this post. It’s going out on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings. It’s gonna have a little roundup of personal news from me – the writing I’m doing, what I’m reading/watching, upcoming projects etc. I’ll be putting my personal essays up there (if you can call them that – quite excited to write those though, I’ve got stories to tell!)

It’s also gonna have exclusives. For example, the chance to read and review stories and book art and offer feedback before anyone else. I might even do some readings of my work – at links that’ll only be accessible through the newsletter.

So if this sounds like your kind of thing, please sign up. The first one goes out tomorrow 😉

Dewi’s Dispatch