Brief Update from the Home Office

The entire population of Shaker Heights?

(Molly helps Barbara make my celebratory key lime pie)

As usual, I published my weekly 5 a.m. Stories piece on Sunday evening, and I hope you enjoyed it: Care for a Drink? Name Your Poison!

Today, I’m doing a brief midweek note so you can track the growth of my little project, which is now just a few days shy of its six-month anniversary. You don’t need to read this.

This week, I hit my 30,000^th visit. That would be like if the entire population of Shaker Heights, Ohio, all came by to read one of my stories! Even the little babies! I didn’t see this coming back on March 19, when I introduced myself to you with Haunted, But Undaunted…

To commemorate this milestone, Barbara made me a key lime pie, from scratch. I think Jimmy Buffett would have approved.

On Monday, the Substack people informed me I’ve now published for 25 weeks in a row, putting me in the top 11 percent of their writers. This figure has nothing to do with the quality of my stories, it just means I show up for work regularly and don’t cause trouble.

Substack sends me maps showing where my subscribers live. In the beginning, there was an embarrassing concentration in Indiana, where I live now, and New Mexico, where I used to live. I can thank my good friends for that.

But now, thanks to my friends having other friends, and people recommending my stuff and sharing it across state lines, new patterns are emerging. New York and California now have big concentrations of subscribers. I even got a sudden blip in Utah, where I have friends of friends of friends. Welcome, Utah!

So, please keep sharing my stories. As I said in my first post last March, “If you like them, please subscribe and share them with your friends. Or even strangers. Do not be afraid to bother other people with them, that’s what they’re here for.”