October Housekeeping!

Get in the know with some general updates

Hello everyone! Extending a warm welcome all new subscribers both free and paid — I’m happy to have you all here and I hope you’ve been enjoying the content so far!

Today’s agenda is a just bit of housekeeping. I’m very proud of everything that’s been happening this past month, and there’s a lot more still coming. Let’s get right into it!

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Schedule

It’s about time I started posting at regular intervals! The general schedule will be as follows:

Free content will be available every other Monday @7AM.

Paid content will be available every Wednesday @7AM.

The Cardinal Directive will come out every Friday @7AM. Occasionally, there will be additional materials related to the story, like art. When these are available, they will be posted on Wednesday @7AM, in place of regular paid content.

Finally, from now on, on the first Sunday of each month, I’ll be releasing a housekeeping post like this one to summarize the past month’s activity and what to expect from the future!

Here’s a link to my google calendar, if you want an up to date, better look at how this works: Author's Notes Release Schedule

7 Day Free Trial

I’m now offering everyone a seven day free trial to check out my paid content and see if it’s something they’d enjoy! Unfortunately, the way substack sets up this promotion seems to require you to “sign up” for a paying subscription (including giving cc info), and cancel before your seven days is up if you don’t plan on paying.

I don’t know about any of you, but I always get nervous when websites require my card for a free trial. SO, to anyone that either doesn’t see the option to redeem the free trial, or doesn’t want to give out their credit card information unless they’re sure they want to pay, you are more than welcome to reach out to me here or on social media via comments/DMs and I can grant you a free trial manually. This way will not require you to input any personal information other than your email.

Sections and The Cardinal Directive

If you’ve been accessing the substack site at all, you may have noticed that there’s now a link in the top left corner that reads “The Cardinal Directive”. By clicking this, you can sort the feed so you can see only posts about/from The Cardinal Directive!

I don’t know how large of a project Cardinal will end up being, but I wanted it to have its own space so people can easily pick it out from my other content.

This “space” is called a section and does not change anything about how your current free or paying subscription works. However, you should notice in your account settings, where you manage your subscription, you now have the option to unsubscribe from Author’s Notes or The Cardinal Directive if you don’t want to see content from one or the other.

For example, unsubscribing from The Cardinal Directive means you won’t recieve any emails or notifications when the story or art is posted. However, if you are a paying subscriber you’ll still be able to find it on the site if you ever do want to read it!

Coming Soon: Audio!

I’m still working on getting a mic setup, but once the parts come in I’ll be recording audio versions of all the content on Author’s Notes both past and future! There will be audio versions of all the articles, as well as The Cardinal Directive.

These audio versions will be restricted by the same parameters as their written counterparts, so all free articles will have free audio versions, and the same follows for paid content.

Like The Cardinal Directive, the audio versions will have their own section, so you will be able to choose to opt out of receiving emails if you aren’t interested in the audio versions.

A follow-up post will explain in more depth how it works when I get everything set up.

Social Media

I’m very new to social media! A lot of things are practically magic to me still, but I’m learning! Follow these accounts for general updates and more.

Twitter: @MMDunsmoreBooks

Instagram: madelinedunsmorebooks

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And that’s all for today! For free readers I’ll be catching you all next Monday, 10/18, and paid readers should keep an eye out for another article this Wednesday, as well as Mission Log #2 for Cardinal this Friday!