The Alchemy of Language

A VIP Readers Club Bulletin

Hello there,

I’m trying an experiment this week, but there are no fuming flasks nor bubbling beakers involved.

Instead of trying to brew up a magical potion that will make me twenty years younger or turn base metals into gold, I’ve been posting on the VIP Readers Club substack almost every day, using the headings from the ordinary newsletters as a guide: a quote, featured photos, book news, personal news and thoughts.

I’m trying this because the last newsletter took me three hours to prepare, and I’d rather spread that effort out over a week. As well as sending out newsletters, substack serves as a blog (referred to as a publication), a chat forum, a social media replacement (known as notes), and it also works as an app.

So this newsletter has links to the recent posts from our publication, and you can choose which ones you’d like to follow up. My hope is that this gives you control of the content you get from me while being smooth and efficient for all of us.

Personally, as a reader, I use the substack app to follow a range of writers. It works well on my phone and on a tablet. It’s worth trying it out yourself. Here’s a link:

Behind the Scenes Discussion

A short free preview of a much longer behind-the-scenes video I recorded for paying members.

Thank you for reading this far.

I hope you found it easy to navigate to the pieces you wanted to see. We are all sometimes resistant to change, but my plan for this format is to offer more content, more choice and more control over what you read and how you read it. Compiling one long newsletter was becoming a clunky process, so let’s see if we can make this new format work.

Thank you for giving it a go.

I’d better get back to work. The days are getting longer at last, but I have lots to be catching up with, so I’ll wish you all the best.

Happy reading and take care,

Mikey

PS

I’ve switched on comments for everyone on this post, so that’s the best way to respond, either in the app or on the website. I’m finding that when people reply to a newsletter by email it is misidentified as spam and is easily missed.