How We're Going to Help People Overcome Destructive Media Lies in 2025

A recap of 2024 and what you can expect from this newsletter in the new year!

Hello Friends!

I hope you’re all managing to have a wonderful holiday season despite all the uncertainty that we’re facing. We’re certainly living through a unique period of history. I remain hopeful that if we stick together and we cling tenaciously to common sense, we’ll manage to survive.

Today is Monday, that means this is my writing review day. I wanted to give you some updates on how things are going, a kind of year end review, and what I expect to happen in 2025.

I’ve been chatting with

Kristina God

about some opportunities and I expect to partner with her soon. This will include a video meet that will be open to all subscribers. I’ll publish the link when the details become available. I still plan to do my 2 monthly video chats for paid subscribers. I enjoy those because it gives me a better sense of where you’re all at in your writing journey.

2024 recap

Had it not been for the election, I’d be celebrating. This has been a very good year for me as a writer. Though it’s true that my Boost rate has gone down over the last few months, I’ve been growing on Substack in a way that’s just wonderful.

I’d been on Substack for all of 2023 too. I’d been posting 3 articles a week. Then I decided to join Kristina’s community and she gave me a huge bump. Kristina is a marketing expert, so she provided a lot of tricks to help get more eyes on my work.

I know a little bit about marketing, but I’m more focused on the writing end of things. Everybody talks about a writing “niche” but I am kind of all over the place. “Culture” is about the biggest niche you could pick. But even if you think of yourself as a writer first, you have to dabble in marketing. It’s simply unavoidable. There’s also some overlap. For example, chasing Medium’s Boost is more of a writing objective, but it serves a marketing purpose. So, it’s been a very productive partnership with Kristina, and I’ll be happy to continue that in 2025.

I’ve also learned a lot from

Jason Provencio

’s growth strategies. That guy hit the ground running and I’ve been astounded by how he’s managed to take Substack by storm. I believe he’s still posting 3 or more posts per day. I tried to do that for a while, but I found it’s just too much for me. I feel better with a text post and a podcast per day.

Jason proved that your email list grows when you give them a lot of content. I was concerned that I’d wear the list out, but that hasn’t proven to be the case. I’ve been posting 2 things a day since about October and you can see how it’s going (it looks like I missed the 2nd post on November 11th):

Podcast

I’ve really been having a lot of fun with the podcast. I’ve been reading to my kids from the day they were born and it brings me great comfort. So, I’ve been very appreciative to get a nice response from my voice recordings. My wife likes them, and that usually means I’m on to something (after all, she has to listen to me all day).

The voice recordings are such a nice way to connect with you all, and I really enjoy making them. I’m kind of settling into a routine with it, but the whole process is becoming kind of complicated. I’m still experimenting and trying to create something that’s efficient and sustainable, so bear with me. I think it will keep getting better as I continue to figure out what works best.

For example, I’ve been doing chapters of my novel Beyond Birkie Fever. The chapters do stand alone, but I think it scares readers to see “Chapter 6” when they haven’t listened to Chapters 1-5. I’d been tempted to give each chapter a title and not mention that it’s part of a book, but I’m not going to do that. This story was conceived as a book, so I’m going to release it as a book here on Substack.

However, when I finish BBF, I might offer chapters of my Zebra Unicorn story without using the chapter designation. That book is up to 32 chapters I think, and it’s the kind of anti-patriarchal fantasy novel the world needs right now. Speaking truth plainly no matter who it offends is what our society needs… so that’s what I’m going to do (until I’m arrested for it—truth is a dangerous thing).

But I’m getting ahead of myself, we’ll see… we’ll see.

My publishing schedule

Here’s a spreadsheet I set up in order to keep track of things, I’ll go into some details about my choices and explain why I made them.

First of all, I’m mainly publishing on Substack, Medium, and the Podcast. One way or another, most of what I write is going to appear on all three of those platforms (but not always).

At first, I was worried that I’d be dumping too much stuff on my email list by giving them both the text version and the podcast version of my articles. However, I discussed it over with my writer group (which consists of

Jason Provencio

,

Robin Wilding

, and

Ben Ulansey

), and we concluded that it makes sense to follow the practice of

Heather Cox Richardson

. If she does a text version of her articles followed by a podcast version, then it must be the right thing to do :) (her work is fantastic by the way).

The one little wrinkle I added is that I try to stagger the publication dates. Some articles start as a podcast first and then go to text. When that happens, I publish the text version a couple weeks or a couple months later. That way it goes out to new subscribers, and the existing subscribers might not remember it (or maybe they didn’t open it the first time).

Please, I’d love to hear any feedback on how you think I should handle this. I want you to enjoy this newsletter, not be overburdened by messages. That’s why I added in all the sections. Here’s a reminder of how you can unsubscribe from sections if you want to:

Anyway, the above spreadsheet is to help me keep track of what has appeared where. I also have audio files to keep organized (and my wife will tell you, organization isn’t my strong suit).

Here’s some more podcast data in case you’re curious:

Post scheduling

I’m also trying to be more efficient and post things into the future. I’d like to have my 2 offerings per day (3 when I release a chapter of BBF), so I use my spreadsheet to keep track of scheduled articles. I might start featuring the upcoming article list every Monday. Here it is for this week:

Most of these are things you’ve seen in one form or another, but you get the idea. I’m writing this article on Friday the 27th, so I don’t have my schedule set for the week of December 30. Everything is wonky because of the holidays. I’m currently sitting at 16 scheduled posts. Just for efficiency, I’d like to get that at 100 or so. That way I can take a day off from time to time :).

I like to have a good mix of evergreen content, and comments on current events. If something newsworthy happens, I can adjust my publishing schedule and take advantage of whatever is trending.

I also have a TON of recordings to rework and redo. My walks with my dog have become very productive (for both of us). I’ll record 10-15 minute voice notes, then create a transcript and turn them into a podcast and article.

It’s a new process, I expect I’ll continue to perfect it.

Thanks for your support!

I’d like to offer a sincere THANK YOU to everyone who subscribes to and supports this newsletter. You’ve been a shining light for me over the last few months. We’ve got a fight coming as the criminal administration is set to take over the US, but our children deserve the hope of a prosperous future, so we can’t allow the billionaires to have their way with us.

Already I’m seeing an increase in lies in the mainstream media, and I didn’t think that was possible. I consider you all to be my “accountability buddies.” It’s easy to get caught up in mainstream propaganda, but we can’t allow it to happen. If we take a scientific approach, and remain grounded in verifiable facts, we should be able to navigate these tough waters.

I’m relying on all of you! Thanks again for your support and your kindness! As always, leave your questions and comments below:

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