Newsletter News!

I finally have newsletter news! Please sign up if you haven’t already.

Thanks to all of the subscribers patiently waiting for a newsletter from me. After several months of dithering, moving from one provider to another to another, and wondering what on earth to include, I’ve finally come up with a plan.

Existing newsletter subscribers will get this blog post as a newsletter. Apologies for any duplication, but I think it’s the best way to ensure everyone gets everything.

Housekeeping

First of all, a bit of housekeeping. I think it depends on your country of residence but, in general, we’re apparently not allowed to say ‘get my *free* newsletter’ any longer. This is because we’re not *giving* the newsletter away for *free*. We’re giving it away in exchange for data: your email address.

So, I can honestly assure you all now that the *only* thing I will use *your* data for is to send newsletters to. You can unsubscribe at any time.

What we can do, however, is include free content otherwise only available elsewhere to purchase.

The other thing I can assure you of is that you won’t be inundated with newsletters on a daily or even weekly basis. Subscribers to the blog posts already get all of that direct to their email inbox. I don’t want to add to that deluge by adding hundreds of newsletters too.

Subscribe to the blog

If you haven’t already subscribed to the blog, you can do so by filling in the form that can be found at the top of the home page or at the top of the sidebar on any post (the sidebar appears at the bottom of posts on mobile devices).

Once you’ve subscribed, you’ll get an email every time I publish a blog post.

Subscribers to the NEWSLETTER

Right, so what do subscribers to the NEWSLETTER get for signing up?

New subscribers get a free short story, currently The Girl on the Bench. But don’t worry, I’ll send that to existing subscribers too.

Then you’ll get a free short story with each newsletter. I publish a lot of short stories throughout the year, many are from the archives but some are completely brand-new – and as the archives start to dry up, there will be more and more brand-new stories. I might even start to include serials.

If you’ve been following me for a long time and have bought stories by me in the past, or even read them on the blog, elsewhere online, or in a magazine, then you *will* see some duplicates, especially if you bought any of the Twee Tales volumes, the Ten Short Stories volumes, or any of the Five Short Story collections.

I’m going to aim at a newsletter at least once a month, and probably on the last Friday or last Thursday of the month, or something like that. If there’s anything pressing, like a special offer or urgent news, then I’ll send out an extra one.

Once I’ve worked out how to do it, I’ll start to run the occasional contest or ask for feedback in return for an actual ebook in the format of your choice (but only epub, mobi, pdf or Word until I learn how to make others).

If I’m working on something longer, I may ask for beta-readers in return for a copy of the book I’m working on, or I may share some background not included in a story.

Sometimes I post stories on Medium. Non-members can view up to 3 stories or articles per month on Medium before the paywall comes down. However, I can add a friend link to the newsletter so that any subscribers can view any of my stories on top of those 3 free ones per month (I think – let me know if you can’t).

Apart from that, there will be a quick update on what I’ve been doing for the past month, including perhaps photographs by the poet from some of our outings.

So that’s:

a FREE short story every month (otherwise only available elsewhere to purchase)
urgent news
special offers
background to stories I’m working on (long or short)
prizes for contests
thank-you gifts for beta-readers or other feedback
a FREE friend link to any Medium stories I think might be interesting
occasional illustrated updates on our travels

Over to you

Of course, as subscribers, you may already have some idea of what you’d like to see in return for signing up. Do feel free to drop me a line, either by replying to the newsletter or by dropping a comment on the blog. I’ve had to remove the contact form from the blog for now as I was getting far too much spam, and some of it both questionable and inappropriate.