Yesterday I posted here for the first time in years. I noted that, to my great surprise, I supposedly have more than 5K followers. (!) Subsequent to that post I received two e-mail replies from readers who encouraged me to resume. Checking the Dashboard I am told there were upward of 2K “opens” and no “comments.”
I am torn. Publishing my short stories here is a little complicated because all of the stories in each of my books are inter-referential. Story lines and footnotes, even comments by characters, often depend on previous (or even upcoming) tales. A reference on page 113 of one collection may include “See Footnote #19.” But when published on Substack the footnotes renumber story by story. So each tale would include Footnote #1, #2, etc. To make sense of these as “stand alone” situations requires extensive editing.
For example, Footnote #167 in the original (Say, indicating that the reader should see Footnote #23 on page 19) might appear in the stand alone version as Footnote #7. That would make no sense since in the present case there is no Footnote #23 and no pagination. Hence, in the Substack version Footnote #7 would have to be amended to read something like: “See Footnote #23 on page 19 OF SEIZE YOU ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOO, (BRAVE ULYSSES BOOKS, 2019), FROM WHICH THIS GRIPPING TALE IS EXCERPTED. SUBSTACK READERS CAN REFER TO MY POST ON (SAY) FEBRUARY 2, 2021 AND FOOTNOTE #3 IN THAT ASTONISHING METAFICTIONAL REALM, WHILE NOTING THAT FOOTNOTE #3 IN THE FEBRUARY 2, 2021 STORY, WHICH REFERS TO A CHARACTER ON PAGE 13 OF THE AFOREMENTIONED BOOK, IN TURN REFERS TO MACALLAN, A TALKING ANGUS STEER—THE “MOO” ON WHOSE DARK SIDE THE READER HAS BEEN SEIZED.
With hundreds of footnotes in each of my collections, this rapidly becomes untenable … unless, of course, the beleaguered author has A LOT of paid subscribers.
Poor, poor pitiful me.