Why should I subscribe?
Because fun!
Here are the levels and what comes with each one:
Free subscriber -
Most of the poetry
Episodes 1-3 of my current work-in-progress
The first few paragraphs of subsequent episodes
Comment capability on the poems and episodes 1-3
Monthly/annual paid subscriber -
Full access to the work-in-progress as it's released and for as long as it remains on the site.
Any super secret-y poetry that I don’t feel like putting up in the freebie section.
Post comments on subscriber only posts.
Founding member -
All of the above
The satisfaction of knowing that you've helped a writer whose work you like be able to continue writing well.
Why is the playground purple?
Because purple feels like play to me, an out-of-the-lines color for a playground or an elephant. Because when I was young, play was less exploration and more rule-based, and goofing off in a way that feels like adventure and abandon is hard for me, but I’m practicing. Because someone once told my very young daughter that she shouldn’t color her elephants purple because elephants are not actually purple.
What a strange thing to tell a child, don’t you think?
You know what? I can color my elephants whatever color I want on my own purple playground. This is my experimental space. Does a piece work? Awesome. Is it jammed up somewhere? Useful information, too. Let’s play together.
About Me
Hi, I’m Rachel! I’ve written forever. When I was eight, my best friend and I decided we were going to save our allowance for the next ten years, move to Australia when we turned eighteen, capture brumbies, and sell them. Mostly, we had watched The Man from Snowy River too many times.
I decided we needed to do a detailed report on what part of Australia to live in, the climate, the population, the people, etc. You know, basically an elementary school report. I assigned my friend half the report. She was six. My half was very thorough and assembled into a plastic report binder. The operation sort of fell apart after that.
Throughout high school I wrote incredibly terrible poetry, some of which I recently found in our barn (!), and also terrible short stories.
In my twenties and early thirties I wrote a subscription ezine on how to sell Gymboree clothes on eBay. Yes, this was actually a thing. It went out every single week for six years, and I wrote all the lead articles as basically family humor blog posts. Then the economy crashed in 2008. Oops.
After that I dabbled in screenplays and discovered that I hate writing screenplays.
During the last half of the 2010’s and first half of 2020’s I ran our family real estate photography company and did the same sort of blog post intro to our weekly marketing email for eight years.
In between, I put together a 500-page report on sex abuse cases in our old denomination (pro tip: don’t do that) and drafted an entire first draft of Book 1 for a book series which is now in revision here.
I’ve always written and have spent almost fifteen years now writing weekly newsletters, but this is the first spot that is just for me, just for my work and not for for hawking someone else’s. My sandbox to practice, to play, to improve my craft, to connect with you. Because you know what? Slow progress is still progress.
Magic.
Why subscribe?
We covered this. Still because funsies.
