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Greetings from the Xen’in Universe!

This month was a major let-down compared to June, as I only managed 19,320 words. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but I ran into too many snags on both of my ongoing projects. Because of that I’ve fallen behind quite a bit on my schedule, so I had to pause the spy series to focus on the Dragon Dice trilogy.

I’ve picked up some speed in the last few days (I’m already at over 8k six days into August) so I hope I can finish this in a few weeks and get back to work on Book 2 of the spy series.

What's going on with Substack??

In other (and totally unrelated) news…

Some of you might remember that in 2023 there were some concerns about Substack hosting some, let’s say, unsavory content. The press called it a “Nazi problem” and that should tell you all you need to know about it. Many authors left the platform because of this. Others (myself included) hoped some action would be taken and that the issue would be resolved. After that, things settled down, and we heard no more about it…

Until now.

A few days ago, it came to my attention that “Substack sent a push alert promoting a Nazi blog.” You can read all the details about it in this Bluesky thread. If you can’t access that, there’s a lot of information on this Patreon account.

Needless to say, this was very upsetting news.

So the question is: should I stay or should I go?

The answer might seem obvious… but, unfortunately, it is not quite so simple.

Here’s the thing. Substack is unique. There is no platform out there that offers quite the same service. And some of those features would be very difficult for me to do without.

Over the last few days, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. If anything, it has allowed me to identify the specific elements that I would miss:

1. the newsletter / blog duality;
2. the ability to receive likes and comments;
3. the platform’s in-built discoverability features.

The first two are intimately connected, of course. And while I could get likes and comments through a traditional blog (with, say, something like Wordpress) it wouldn’t have newsletter functionality and you can forget about discoverability.

And, honestly, #3 is probably the most vital part of the equation, because building a newsletter—let alone a readerbase—is one of the most difficult aspects of being an author. I love that with Substack, I can passively grow my subscribers without needing to do much else than post on a regular basis. You really can’t beat that. It allows me to just focus on my writing, which is what I love doing the most.

Fortunately, I’m not the only person facing this dilemma, and I’ve been discussing this with some fellow authors. After some digging, we’ve come across a mailing list provider called Kit that seems like a decent fit. It still doesn’t provide all of the above, mind you, but it might make for a decent enough alternative.

While I’ve started setting up an account there, I’ve decided not to switch over immediately. There are several reasons for this. First, I want to test the waters, see how I like the service. Second, running both at the same time would allow me to keep the features here that I’d miss over there.

So what I’m planning to do (as soon as I’m done setting things up there) is provide the link for the new list and let YOU decide which of the two you prefer, knowing that I’ll be posting the exact same content on both sides.

Why? Because my problem shouldn’t be yours. If you don’t want to give Substack views (let alone money) because of their nauseating stance, that’s totally fair and I want you to have options.

It’s quite likely that at some point, I’ll fully switch to Kit, but for the time being… let’s do it this way and see how it goes.

Well, that was much more long-winded than usual! Sorry about that, but it needed to be said.

Coming up this month

The story I’ll share this month is a new adventure of everyone’s favorite sorcerer… I mean Reikk, obviously! Been a while since we’ve seen him, hasn’t it?

In “To Mourn What Once We Had” our hero stumbles into yet another weird village, where a woman spends her nights wailing in the streets…

Now what is that about?

Find out on August 20!

And that’s all I’ve got for now.

See you next month!

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Copyright (c) 2025 by Alex S. Garcia.

[LIKE] - [COMMENT] - [SHARE] NOTE: these links point to Substack!