Merry Christmas

I wanted to take the time this holiday weekend to write a short expression of gratitude to all you who have been reading.

Since I started this site in May, I've been able to stick to a regular schedule of publishing a new article every two weeks (give or take a few days, from time to time!). I'm really happy with how it has turned out so far.

This time last year, I had not expected to be doing this. But in April I started figuring out how to operate Ghost--the blogging platform for this site--assuming that it would be an important thing for me to have, at least in my back pocket, as a (relatively) young writer.

But I got suddenly forced into action by that viral tweet about ChatGPT, in May. The site had actually only gone live at all about 2 days before that tweet took off. I didn't have any new material or any blog posts ready to go when that happened. It caught me completely by surprise. But despite that, I hurriedly threw my CV on there and invited anyone who was interested to subscribe that I would soon start writing. The whole thing was basically a promissory note.

Many of you who have subscribed did so that point. I wanted to thank you for being interested in what I was going to write about, without having any sort of indication of what it would be! That was quite the leap of faith!

And, in addition, I also wanted to thank those of you who have joined up since then. It's been a pleasure to see growth. It's been slow growth, but it's there. And beyond that, it's been fun to work on this site the past half-year, and seeing what articles trigger more response on Google and so on. I don't know most of you personally, but I am flattered that you would take an interest in what I have been writing.

Plans for More Writing

In the next year, I aim to keep doing similar pieces. I will continue my "Reading C.S. Lewis's Academic Books" series--and in fact am currently reading the new HarperCollins publication of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama). I'll also continue to write about religion, science, and technology, as I have been the past few months. Despite diversions into other topics, that will always been the main focus.

(That said--the next article in the docket focuses on something even I didn't expect: Godzilla).

Of all the things I've written so far for this site, I think I'm the most pleased with my Gene Wolfe essay "The Book of the New Sun Is The Dark Souls of Books." This has proven to be probably the most popular thing I've published here, and has drawn the most organic traffic through Google. In fact, if you search for "The Book of the New Sun" on Google Image Search, it's one of the first things to pop up.

Given the interest in Wolfe, I'll probably revisit him this next year too. I have a copy of The Book of the Long Sun waiting on my shelf, so it seems a natural next step.

I also have a few pieces in the works for some magazines, and we'll see what comes of them.

But anyway, all that will come later.

In the meantime, I hope you have a Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a Happy New Year as well. Thank you for reading!