Substack 1 Year Anniversary Post - Thank you Everyone
A rambling essay on the history of our time here
If one looks through the history of Dan & my posts hereon Substack, you’ll find that the earliest written post dates back to September 22, 2023. Certainly we had earlier posts before we truly understood what Substack was (those posts have been deleted and were made to market our yt channel).
Yet just as we reached a certain point of despair at the time and were looking for some means to crowdfund to pay for the publication of Brotherhood of the Gemstone,
came through and recommended coming to Substack to gain popularity as writers and to try to convince people to fund the story that way.However along the way, we found we couldn’t canvass enough money, but made other equally important discoveries in our journey; 1. that we could publish other side-stories or alternative stories and that people liked those. 2. we could publish serial fiction here.
But most of all we discovered that there wasn’t an ‘evil’ confusing algorithm that sought to screw us over and that drowned and otherwise killed our videos more often than not.
What we discovered was that we liked it here. You see, when we first started out here, Richard from Iron Age Media told us; ‘try to make it to 200 subs, you’ll know you’ve got what it takes if you can do that.’
Sound advice, though in the first month or two we were discouraged; we had only reached something like 50 or 60, but pouring more energy, more effort, we eventually did reach 100.
In time thanks to the likes of
and we won our way onto their lists of weekly readings, and as said reached 100, but thanks to them and many others we eventually came to reach 200.The Development of Warrior Wednesday and Sword & Saturday began a little before we hit 200, and was a project we didn’t originally plan to host due to not being particularly confident. Yet
encouraged us, and so we did host it, and have loved hosting it ever since, with Dan & I often consulting with Man on various aspects of the Themed Day.Quite frankly there were others who gave amazing advice on how to grow our Substack, at that time. People like
whom we discovered by accident and was quite charming, there was who gave advice on tags, there was someone whom I had followed for some time, reading his posts, listening to his reviews and otherwise being a big fan of. Morgoth was not only encouraging, and kind but also restacked some of our posts (even as I tried to annoy him by tagging him in Notes once or twice, and yet he always shrugged and tolerated it, for which I cannot thank him enough). and both recommended, and gave advice, and debated and mentored us from around that time. Honestly, we never could have written much of anything without them. John encouraged us to post our fiction, encouraged us to challenge his perspectives in many of our essays and encouraged us like Morgoth to find our ‘niche’ just as Celaeno encouraged us also in the same ways but also debated philosophy and otherwise mentored me into rethinking a LOT of positions and stances I once held almost sacred and got me to think, and decide to go back and read the writings of certain ancient philosophers.Can’t thank any of these writers and thinkers and fiction-writers enough. I must confess that I still don’t know why they helped Dan & I, other than they are incredibly kind, and genial.
Brothers Krynn at first had some slow but steady growth, but in the last 6 months growth suddenly picked up and we’ve somehow reached around 1150 Subscribers, and 20 Paid-Subscribers (most of whom paid into the 8$ discounted Year-Long Subscription which is still ongoing).
The original aim was 200….. I have no idea how we reached 1150, more than 5 times the original intended number.
Most of our essays were originally Chivalry centred, then we moved on to writing about Fantasy, then actual Fantasy stories which pleased me enormously.
Since that time we’ve published Crown of Blood (which can be found here and for our European/British Isles audiences, here), it has received positive reviews by the eminent
and both of whom have been very encouraging about the project, and eager to encourage Dan & I to get started on Part II (which we’ll be starting an outline of to-day).Our essays in time came to include History essays (which I plan to continue), Conan/Howard, and Tolkien, and other fantasy writers and also essays more recently on Archetypes and Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces.
What is more is that we’re now doing a number of podcasts on history, on Campbell’s work, but also more recently on Star Wars with the amazing
(whom we owe a massive debt towards).So it has been an amazing ride, and a strange one. We’ve experienced ups and downs and no one is more amazed than we are to have reached this point.
I still scratch my head at seeing how much people have enjoyed our essays, have enjoyed our fiction stories, and how many are still subscribing.
All I can say is; thank you.
Dan and I have never known online success. Our youtube channels were an energy drain, and our Storyfire account was more or less mildly popular on that site but nothing too remarkable.
Yet the moment we entered substack expecting more failure on our part, and found the opposite we were astonished. And we still are.
Every once in awhile when out for one of our walks herein Quebec (yes we’ve moved), we laugh or we comment in amazement on how we’ve met with success hereon Substack. We’re proud but also humbled and don’t know why we of all people have been so blessed when there are so many better writers of essays or fiction on Substack.
So all we can say once more is thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. We’re very much moved and we could not have made it this far without you all.
Thanks to you all, we’ve found a publisher for Darkspire Conspiracy. Crown of Blood has been well-reviewed, we’ve gone back to writing poetry, publishing my French stories here. And what is more, we’ve now with a little luck hold hopes of publishing next year Brotherhood of the Gemstone, and to most of all once more for the first time in many years, dream.
You’ve all done this for us. Thank you, we can never repay the debt we owe you, or properly return the kindnesses shown to us. We can only say, you rock guys and gals. Thanks so much.
You've more than earned it. I'm glad that we all helped in some small way.
Here's to the next year—may your success continue to snowball!