Hi friends,
I received a rather exciting email yesterday!
I started Compendia just over three years ago. It took me a while to find my feet — at first I was just posting about my upcoming events and activities, and summarising the Twitter Book Club events. But I eventually decided I wanted to embrace Substack’s algorithm-free way of publishing direct to readers, and began first to share my thoughts about writing fiction in The Writers’ Lodge, and then to share my more personal musings on anything and everything (with ‘creativity’, I suppose, being the umbrella topic).
I work hard on Compendia, and it takes up a good chunk of my writing time. And, since I believe writers should be paid for their efforts, I launched a paid tier a couple of years ago.
Even though I deliberately kept the price as low as possible (you may not realise that Substack won’t let you go below a certain price) I’ll admit I was worried no one would find enough value in my writing to want to pay even a meagre amount for it.
But I was wrong, and it’s been astonishing, and very gratifying, to see my hundredth paid subscriber sign up over the weekend. Hopefully they’re all finding value in my weekly issue, and enjoying the mix of essays, humour, opinion and memoir.
If you’re a paying subscriber, I’d like to thank you for all you've done and your contribution to the Compendia community.
To celebrate this landmark and say thank you…
I am offering the below discount on annual subscriptions. This celebratory offer is available until November 17th. Enjoy!
I am posting (below) an exclusive ‘deleted scene’ from Before I Go to Sleep for all my paid subscibers. This is a short scene that didn’t make it to the final draft of the book and I’ve never shared, anywhere, before. I hope you like it!
Before I Go to Sleep - Deleted Scene
I remember the smells of that school the most; the rubbery stink of our elasticated pumps, the undercurrent of sweat in the changing rooms, the sweet smell of the play-doh and paint, the giddy stink of the glue that we used to make our collages, the subtle, musty tang of the books in the library.