First Anniversary on Substack, and Thank You!

Yes, it’s been a whole year since I started Recollections, Reflections, Fantasies, Fictions: Scenes of a Life I Think Was Mine on Substack, with an email trepidaciously announcing my new venture – a test email that went to only ONE recipient – Me!  

Now, just a year later, Substack tells me that I’ve made 150 posts (including a few that are already scheduled for coming weeks), which have been viewed going on 40,000 times, by over 15,000 users, in half a dozen countries.

Some of you have been with me as subscribers since the very first post. Some of you have come aboard later on. I say a big THANK YOU to all. Without YOU, I doubt that I’d have found the gumption to keep going. The knowledge that you might be reading my writing – and the proof, when you’ve commented or clicked a Like – has inspired me to keep trying, even when I didn’t think I had an idea left; and has helped me muster the courage to persist, even when I felt there might hardly be any point.

I made a commitment to myself, and (so I felt) to you, to post the best writing I could manage, on a range of topics that interested me, and that I hoped might interest you. I’ve posted on Wednesdays and Sundays no matter what – through hurricanes and surgeries and bouts of COVID. And you’ve stayed with me, even when I’ve flooded your email with more than you maybe had the time to keep up with. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Some of you may recall that this all started when I received yet another rejection slip (actually, a rejection email – sort of like breaking up by Post-it Note – much better for the environment, if no better at all for the ego – but who really needs an ego anyway?).

I wrote then: “Fifty years on and back to rejection slips. You'd think rejection would sting less after all these years – and with wisdom-of-age. But it doesn't, no matter how glibly you tell yourself: I don't care what editors think; Just what I expected; I didn't want to be in their crappy magazine anyway. Lies. All lies. And you're not nearly a good enough liar to fool yourself into believing them.”

Drawing from that editor’s rejection email (and reading a bit between the lines), I composed my now famous (at least to me) “Rejection Slip Blues,” and began to dream of a writer’s life in which Editors (note I refrained from adding the modifier, “evil”) don’t rule, and have a choke-hold on getting writing out to readers.

A friend suggested I take a look at Substack, then completely unknown to me. I did have a look, and now here we are – all those posts, including two related historical novellas published in parts, Song of the Amorous Frogs and Left Bank on the Bayou (with a possible third in our future, to make for a novel-length trilogy), a fist-full of pieces on Earlier Houston Art History, some memoirs, a look back at the Gay Seventies in St. Louis, and my reflections on birth and death and things in between.

Yes, here we are at the one-year point, which begs the question, “What next?” I have some ideas: That third novella; more memoirs; more reflections (not all on Death), and more audio, which seems to be a hit. But I’d also like to hear from you what you’d like to see in the coming however long we stay at this together. Topics you’d like more of; topics you’d like to see added? Because remember, this is between you and me. No [evil] Editor is going to tell us what we can write, what we can read. We’re free to make of it what we wish. So let’s do.

Thanks again. Leave a Comment if you want. Click a Like if you’re moved to. And share Recollections, Reflections with friends you think might join us. The more the merrier. So long until next Sunday.

PS: I’d like to give an especially big THANKS to my husband, Rick, for his encouragement, patience, and impeccable proofing. Without him it’s/its certain I’d never get its/it’s/it right.

PPS: And, in case you’re curious, here are links to some of the pieces you’ve view most over the years:

Dust: A Texas Panhandle Memory of the 1950s

I Speak It - For Those Who Dared Not: A St. Louis Story of the 1970s

Why Research Houston’s Art History?

Guess Who’s NOT Coming To Dinner: Remembering the Pandemic Lockdown

The First Time I Saw Paris: Letters From 50 Years Ago

The Joy of Cook Booking

Picasso: The Needlepoints

Return To the Locked Psych Ward: Still Crazy After All These Years