Gen x Watch has existed since January of last year. In all but two months it has grown in readership and clicks month after month. I hope that continues to happen, but I will be reducing the content to one article a week starting this week.
Monday’s we will be starting off the week with a beautiful dose of healthy nostalgia. There will be room for guest columnists, so consider this the official call for writers!
Why would someone let the gas off the pedal on something that is growing? How does that make any sense? Was there lead in all the hose water I drank?
Hearts of Glass is my Other Child!
Book one of the Hearts of Glass Trilogy has launched! The book series would never have happened without the lightning in the bottle that was the Fem Friday stories that changed our audience.
70% of the readership are now women. Most of them are Gen X and Millennials, but over the course of this new year something amazing has happened. Gen Z has grown from a smidgeon to over 5% and closing up on the 10% mark! And something else has happened at the same time. Women with disabilities have become a significant part of our audience! It is hard to crunch those numbers, but these amazing women are a strong part of our audience. Part of that has to do with the other child, Hearts of Glass!
I have not had a book published in 11 years and the world has changed in that decade. The work to get into bookstores, podcasts, and other spaces is a lot different.
Anyone who has more than one child or fur baby knows that when another little one comes into your life there has to be division of time. Just as importantly, there has to be time for you.
Hearts of Glass is a newborn and Gen X Watch is a toddler. They are both a lot of work. Anyone who has had a newborn or a kitten or a puppy knows that there is attention needed to that.
Hearts of Glass is a fun story. Historic fiction for some, beautiful nostalgia for others, and an entertaining story of how powerful friendship and love is. But it also deals with some serious shit. DV, SA, Religious Trauma, bullying stalking, life with a disability, and being neurodivergent. That is a lot and it has to be a story of hope and not shame!
These three books and collection of short stories for a fourth book needs the proper time to grow and find it’s audience. Getting into bookstores, coffeeshops, conventions, farmers markets, and anywhere else I can meet people takes time. So does finding amazing content creators, podcasters, and other spaces to ensure more people read it, review it, and are inspired by Ford, Cassie, and Jenny!
Patreon Growth is Essential to Make this Possible
Patrons offset the costs of this and make everything that happens here possible. They pay the bills and keep the lights on. I have refused corporate sponsors despite invitations. In prior writing gigs I have seen how they can constrain creative freedom. Patrons give me the freedom to give you the content you want and I love to create.
They need to get their money’s worth. By writing only once a week I can give them bonus content that makes their investment in all of this worth their time.
I appreciate every click and every read, but I also need every dollar. That is just the reality. Over the last few months some of my Patrons have faced job loss and other harsh financial realities and have needed to tap out. I have made sure many of those who had to tap out still got a compy of the book and their names were still listed in the book as a Patron.
But this is the juggling act. The column needs attention, the books need attention, the Patron retention and growth needs attention.
Growth of Gen X Watch as a Brand!
Sometimes what appears to be a step back, is actually a step forward. Gen X is here to stay, but it has evolved into something different than the original idea. The original plan was an online magazine with a quarterly retro physical mag. Other writers would come in and I would step back and be the best Editor in Chief anyone has ever worked with. The guest writers experienced my ardent support and encouragement. The guest writers also received your love, comments, and encouragement.
But as we dug in some other amazing things happened besides the Fem Fridays that gave us Hearts of Glass. The articles that are our anchors.
Right now what is sustaining the clicks and engagement of Gen X Watch are some articles that refuse to have an expiration date that I wrote last year. They are being read as resources for school papers, sourced in other articles, and touching on what healthy nostalgia is and being a bridge to other generations. In other words, the most heartfelt and most researched articles I have written. The ones curated are the ones that connect.
I have not done the in depth articles in the manner I want to. They require time, research, vetting, conversations with experts, and curating. That takes time, vulnerability, and the journalistic skills I have spent decades learning and refining.
There is something to be said about quality over quantity. The growth of this corner of the web along with the comments I receive show me that audiences are more savvy and hungry for thought provoking content than social media gives them credit for.
The growth of Gen X Watch has defied the norms of the algorhythms and SEO best practices. I have to trust the readers more than I trust the talking heads of social media growth.
That extra time also gives me the ability to fine tune the video talks with the Patrons and slowly incorporate more media into the Gen X Watch vision.
All that to say again. Quality over quantity is my focus.
Room to Live Out That Vision of Helping Others
My columnist journey started in 2004. I won a writing contest and got to be a guest blogger on a popular blogger’s site (blogging was a big fuckin’ deal back then). Within weeks of winning that contest I was invited to a convention in San Diego as a keynote speaker, an author reached out to me and asked me to contribute to his upcoming book, a software company asked me to write content for them, and I was writing for a magazine.
All I needed was that break. That foot in the door. The encouragement.
It is even harder today to get that foot in the door and I want so much to enable that.
My publisher, Barnstormer Publishing, and Tawnlandia have a shared passion for this. We are creating a path for writers to get that foot in the door that, unlike so many programs out there, is not predatory. This upcoming initiative will give people that foot in the door, money for their work, and more encouragement than gatekeeping.
If this works, and I believe it will work, we can disrupt the industry and restore some of what has been lost in the publishing world. It would be lovely to finish the Hearts of Glass saga and spend the rest of my life brining dreams to life!
Stories change the world and make it a more beautiful place!
In the immediate future, there is another opportunity.
Gen X Watch has a sustainable audience with 6 days of available content. On this road to growing Gen X Watch and Hearts of Glass I have gotten to become friends with youtubers, podcasters, TikTokker and Reel influencers, small business owners, artists, and others. I also have a provable upticks in engagement when a guest writer writes.
Content creation regardless the genre is a lonely road and so hard to grow. You want to believe your friends and family will support you and encourage you, but that is not the truth for so many of them. I hear and share their pain of friends and family not sharing, liking, and helping them with things that would literally take moments. Moments they take for strangers as they share memes and tik toks and music and art and books from others.
They share these other things from other creators with enthusiasm and then, if they share or like the loved ones creations at all… begrudgingly say…my relative or friend made this. But that is not an endorsement or celebration. It does not say it is good, and it does not affirm their skill, tireless work, and beauty.
I can be that friend. I can give all these beautiful creators access to my audience numbered in the thousands. It is not the level that an influencer has, but it can be a boost. I will be sending messages to all the new friends I have made over the last year, along with a few old friends, and have them write about their shit here! Show others what they got!
My Dreams and My Life!
I have not allowed room for dreams in my own life for a very long time, but they never went away. I just never gave them room. While I enjoy my day job and am good at it, it is not the dream. If I stay there until I retire I will be grateful and have no regrets, but the dream is some of what I described here and some of the things Ford, Jenny, and Cassie are seeking in Hearts of Glass.
I want to be fully self employed again. I want that vision to be with creatives and making other creatives! And I want time to be together, to have friendships that not only pierce the darkness, but shine brighter than the sun. And love. Love. Love and friendship and chosen family are everything. So is art and creation!
Thank you for being part of this road. Help me help others and for fucks sake, if there is a creative in your life, celebrate them, and share what they are doing and tell people more than they are your friend or relative, tell people that what they made is beautiful and amazing. If you take the time to see them, you will become a fan… I promise.
Get Your Copy of Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World!
Ford is a traumatized former child model. Cassie is the epitome of DIY punk with a life full of poverty and pain serving smoothies at the Orange Julius. Finally there is Jenny, a young preppy with talent and dreams held back by a society not designed for women like her.
As their lives intersect in the late 1980’s at the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora, Illinois, there will be love, confusion, and dangerous adversaries with wealth and power. Ford, Cassie and Jenny just have each other. Will it be enough? How do fragile hearts of glass survive in the real world?
Get the paperback version here!
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