A Quick Update for Subscribers

Without doubt, the most unimportant email you’ll receive today.

Hello everyone,

I hope that Wednesday – if indeed it is Wednesday where you are – has been treating you well.

As the subject line suggests, I am sending you this email in order to let you know about a little rejiggering I’ll be doing to the schedule here at Midnight at the Matinee. You see, whenever I first started writing this Substack, specifically its ‘About’ section, my daughter was still just a couple weeks old and, to all intents and purposes, an infinitely precious Tamagotchi. If I’m honest, I rather suspected I was knocking this whole fatherhood thing out of the park, but as the weeks turned into months, my wife and I have been forced to conclude that our child has not only inherited our combined lung capacities, but has also evolved beyond the human requirement for sleep.

I guess what I’m saying is, for the next short while at least, I’m going to have to be a little more flexible with when I send out my newsletter. I hope you can appreciate (even if you don’t necessarily agree), that I try my best to make the articles I write worth your time. It means a lot that you ever read my work, much less expressed an interest in seeing more, and I would feel it a disservice to us both if, for no other reason than my own self-imposed deadline, I presented you with anything less. Don’t worry, you’ll still be receiving at least one article a week, the next of which will be with you either tomorrow or Friday. After that, I’m going to bust my ass to have another ready by Monday or Tuesday.

I hope you understand and once again, thanks ever so much for subscribing.

A Message to Paid Subscribers.

I’m kind of glad I have reason to write this email, providing as it does, the opportunity to say a special thanks to you guys, as well as to let you know about a few plans I have for expressing this gratitude in the form of exclusive content.

Truthfully, I’ve had a little trouble pulling the trigger on this front. To date, I have started three separate articles that were supposed to be shorter, snappier exclusives but, very much like this ‘quick update’, my fingers just kept typing. On top of that, right before you hit “publish” on Substack, you are presented with the option to ‘send to paid subscribers’ or ‘send to everyone’. Maybe it’s just me, or perhaps it is true of writers in general, but after putting the effort into something I think people might like, it kind of feels a dick-move to artificially limit the number who get the chance. I totally understand if you feel shortchanged by this but please know that it is my intention, whenever my daughter at last succumbs to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, to start a paid subscribers-only series which I’ve tentatively titled “The Dissidents’ Book Club”.

I sincerely hope that is something you will enjoy and once more, thanks an awful lot for reading.

Carson J. McAuley