About GraciePress and This Newsletter
About GraciePress and This Newsletter
A briefly condensed history of where we have been and how we got here
Our beginning
August 2022 was our 4-Year Anniversary Month! We started drawing pictures and writing stories to go with them as My Life With Gracie, a blog on WordPress, four years ago in August 2018.
We now have readers and fans on every continent and around the world. This is amazing! We never imagined that stories about chickens would ever be so popular.
Below you will see our first illustration and story. At the time, these blog posts were simply a way to share the joy Gracie and her friends brought to my life. Our first post was 121 words. I didn’t think people would want to read much more than that about ordinary chickens. But I was wrong!
Our first move: from WordPress to Revue
After about a year and a half blogging with WordPress, we moved from a blog to a newsletter because we preferred the security provided by an email newsletter. It also let us share our stories and illustrations outside a social media setting. The newsletter platform we selected was Revue which had been purchased by Twitter. At the time, it was a positive move for both companies since Twitter expanded access to a potential new audience.
Unfortunately, in December 2022, Twitter decided to shut down Revue. So now my chickens and I are “homeless” with no free platform to share our stories with our fans outside of our published books. From the beginning of our writing and illustrating adventure, we have relied on our readers for feedback about what works and what doesn’t work.
Our next move: from Revue to Substack
We can’t imagine doing anything creative without contact with our valuable fans, and so we are trying a different newsletter platform, Substack.
Substack gives readers the opportunity to receive and share our newsletter in a safe email format. (No questionable advertisements.) It also gives readers the opportunity to engage online like with a blog. So we are hoping that Substack will provide the best of both worlds. As a bonus, there is no cost for writers like me or readers like you!
All of our stories are based on real chickens who have called the author’s backyard garden their home. The stories we write fall most comfortably into the category of “magical realism” because things like chickens talking to people or dancing ballet are treated as common, everyday occurrences.
Until next time…
Thanks for reading. We are looking forward to sharing our stories and illustrations with you!
John, Gracie, Bessie, Blanche, Pearl, Emily, and Amelia