Hello friends!
I am very excited to announce that while I will continue to share plenty of writing for free across platforms (Facebook, Instagram @cosmogny and www.sophiestrand.com) I am beginning a subscriber based newsletter Make Me Good Soil. And I’m even more excited that the first newsletter (of the paid tier) will be an excerpt from my Mary Magdalene novel The Madonna Secret!
When I first started sharing work publicly it was a lifeline. Life was very strange and very lonely. I’d seemingly hit a publishing dead end with my historical fiction book. I was a year into quarantine-ing alone and very ill. I had little expectation that my work would be shared and read widely. But I knew that if I could create a little connectivity, tie my roots to some other roots, it might help me think better, write better, and to put it baldly, keep me alive. Much to my surprise the work took off and I found myself, in real time, writing a book (and then another book) in dynamic conversation with my audience. It was electric. My thinking was more fluid. It felt good to change my mind. To hear directly from people what they connected with or what they hated. Dumbfounded and saved by this feral and loving community I felt connecting me into a greater mycorrhizal system, I knew it was vital that I respond to every message, every comment, every response. I know intimately how important it is to feel heard, to feel seen, and to connect with someone who might understand your weird little prism of existence. I am deeply inspired by Amanda Palmer and the ways she has created a tight-knit, joyful, and collaborative community around her work. What does it mean to share your work as you are making it, destroying the idea that authorship is a solitary event? Inspired by the fungi that are my muse and often my subject matter, I realized I had to let my work flow into other species, other people, other ideas. I had to get involved and risk being changed in the process.
But fungi teach something else: adaptation. They are constantly breaking down dead matter, ferrying bacteria along their filamentous highways, changing course in the soil as their hyphae look for food. They keep moving. As I approach a year of sharing my writing publicly I have to keep moving, keep adapting. And I have to admit I am hitting my upper limit when it comes to responding to messages and comments on public social media. I am also wanting a way to share writing that is more personal with a readership that want to see the behind the scenes. The real compost heap. I also want a place to share longer format pieces that don’t translate to social media, in particular, excerpts from my upcoming novel The Madonna Secret. And other upcoming books and novels!
Make Me Good Soil will have two subscriber options. One free, one paid. And most of my work will, as always be available for free. I am a starving artist, and I want my work to be available to other starving artists. I will, once a month, repost an older essay in this new format for free. However, if you choose the paid option you will receive two additional newsletters a month, on the first and third Sunday, with excerpts of my upcoming novel The Madonna Secret, personal essays, historical research for my next novel on proto-Arthurian myths, Tarot musings and spreads, playlists, book reviews, in process essays, zoom invitations to occasional conversations, reading lists, and generally a whole lot of dirt, texture, and general funkiness. The real purpose of this is to find a way to keep interacting in a dynamic and collaborative way with a readership while creating boundaries about how much time I can spend responding. On my paid subscriber newsletters, I will respond directly to all comments and hope to continue a new version of community building. On the flipside, as I finish a new book of essays and juggle about ten different projects, I will pull back from answering messages, DMs, or comments on public social media. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t send them. I love, love getting involved in conversation. But don’t be surprised if I don’t respond. Chances are your message was lost in the deluge. If you’d like to keep chatting more directly, or if you’d like some sneak peaks of my upcoming Mary Magdalene book, I invite you to sign up here where I will make a concentrated effort to keep thinking and becoming alongside you.
Thank you for the invitation...Just joining in here Sophie. wooHooo...sensing your fecundity....and cheering the fertile fitness you carry. Yum, spirit and sacred animal food, is your writing.
The three items I look forward to the most are the Tarot musings, the proto-Arthurian material, and the Magdalene material. That is because those have been passions of mine for years. But perhaps other material of yours will stretch me a tad more, so I will be open to that also.