250 Subscribers Celebration!
Thank You + Gift + Recommended Reading+ Poll
Dear Substack Readers,
Recently, I reached 250 subscribers on Substack. So first of all, thank you. 250 people may be a small following compared to a lot of Substacks, but it’s more than I’ve ever experienced on any platform. I’m grateful to each and every one of you. In this age of massive barrages of information and limited time to spend browsing everything available online and in print, I’m very appreciative that you choose to read my work.
As a thank-you, I’m offering you the eBook versions of my novels Hologram and Song of Spheres for free, tomorrow and the next day. You can find them here and here.
Next, I’d like to share a recommendation as well as my own “currently reading” list. A friend recently introduced me to a journal about ideas, art, homesteading, and homemaking called Hearth & Field. They have some fantastic content over there for free on their website, as well as a premium subscription where you get a mug and a beautiful, full-color, quarterly print journal full of artwork, essays, poetry, recipes, and more. And it’s at least 100 pages. It’s like getting a full book every quarter. I recommend checking them out if this type of content is up your alley.
In addition to browsing places like Hearth & Field, I am also currently reading:
Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Mystical City of God by ven. Mary of Agreda
100 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Gary Provost
And I dipped my toes into Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy, though I don’t know if/when get around to finishing it.
I’m enjoying all of these so far, although I think Provost is too influenced by the post-Hemingway minimalist prose style. Not all writing has to be as simple as possible in order to be good writing. Those long, elegant, multi-clause, 19th-century sentences had a lot going for them.
Now I Need Your Input
I’ve recently taken the plunge to become a full-time writer. I quit my teaching job and launched out into the deep with only the little boat of my writing to keep me afloat. I’m currently writing for The Epoch Times, Intellectual Takeout, LifeSite News, and, soon, The Daily Caller. I’m also hoping to do more with this Substack, including finding ways to make it more useful to readers and more helpful in supporting my family.
So I have some ideas for projects I’d like to work on and share with you via Substack, but I need to know, frankly, if they will be of interest to you and/or profitable enough to justify.
Possible projects for the upcoming year(s) include:
Creating a reading journal for people wanting to study the classics more in-depth, complete with questions for reflections, quotations, book lists, ways to track your reading, etc.
A literary novel about three generations of a Polish Wisconsin farming family, detailing the joys and sorrow of an “ordinary” human life (though no human life is actually ordinary), as well as the confluence of modern developments and how they affect the family over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st.
An online survey course of English literature in which I provide video lectures on the major works in our English tradition.
A podcast where I interview interesting people about literature, education, homesteading, etc.
Hopefully, I’ll get to all of these at some point. But I want to know which one is most appealing to the majority of you, because that’s what I’ll likely focus on first.
Even then, I can’t say when exactly these projects would get off the ground or how quickly. It all depends on how my existing projects go (including a graphic novel I’m currently working on) and how much support I can get for these new endeavors. This post is meant to be exploratory, not a statement that any particular project will happen for certain.
So, with all that said, please tell me via the poll below which of these projects your are most interested in and would be willing to pay a small monthly subscription for (say $5-10). Of course, just as I am not committing to any projects, I’m not expecting you to commit to supporting anything at this point. I’m just trying to gauge interest and how I can best serve readers’ needs and interests.
Once again, thanks so much for your support and for reading my work. I welcome your comments and input. I hope to make The Hazelnut a valuable, delightful, and interesting resource for you.
Best,
Walker