An upcoming hiatus

It's time for everybody's favorite sort of post: a short piece on the State of the Newsletter.

In this case, the state of the newsletter is strong. Subscriber numbers have ticked up steadily all year long, and I'm finally at a place where I might think about hiring an editor to take over freelance pieces (something that has bedeviled me lately).

But! Life is about to get in the way.

Somewhere in November, my wife and I will have our first child. We're excited about this, to say the least, and I also want to spend as much time hanging out with the kid as possible, even though I understand all they will do is eat and poop and stuff. Somewhere between now and then, I owe a substantial portion of a book that I was contracted to write in early 2020 when 2022 seemed so very far away. (I signed the deal for this book pre-pandemic. That's how long ago we're talking.)

As such, I'm going to put the newsletter on hiatus for at least six months, beginning November 1. If you aren't a paid subscriber, you have nothing more to know. You just won't get newsletters for a while, and I would guess you'll barely notice.

If you are a paid subscriber, I am going to pause your subscription on November 1. If you subscribe month-to-month, you will stop getting charged. If you are a yearly subscriber, your subscription will pause at that point and resume when I start things up again. So if you've subscribed for three months when Nov. 1 rolls around, you will still have nine months to go on your subscription when I bring things back in May 2023.

If you decide, "No, that sounds awful," you can, of course, always cancel your subscription. If you're an annual subscriber and want a refund, let me know, and I'll prorate that subscription to pay you back for the months you have not yet gotten. If you're a monthly subscriber, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do the math to prorate your $5 across an entire month to pay you back $2.25 or whatever.

Until then, we have one month left of excitement and fun! I'll drop another Kirsten and Natalie installment later this week, and in October, we'll see everything from the end of the Our Flag Means Death recaps to a Halloween adventure for the Bake Sale Bunch. In the six months I'll be away, if I have an idea that simply must be a newsletter, I might pop in here and there, but don't count on it.

Thank you, as always, for reading. When I started this newsletter all those years ago, I didn't expect it to be quite as widely read as it has become. Thank you, too, for letting me take a little break to spend time with my family.

—Em