welcome to my corner of the internet
a guide for new subscribers and the future of this newsletter
Hello! I’ve been getting a lot of new subscribers in the past couple months, so I thought it would be a good idea to re-introduce myself and my publication. If you are considering subscribing, please start here. If you are already subscribed, thank you, and please read until the end to see some of my plans for the future.
About Me.
My name is Maria (duh). I’m from Venezuela, but I’m living in Brazil due to reasons you can probably guess if you know anything about Venezuela. I speak Spanish, English and Portuguese, in that order of proficiency, and I’m currently halfway through getting an English Teaching degree. As you can tell from this newsletter, I like reading, watching anime, and writing. My favorite genre is fantasy, but I consider myself a very diverse reader. That’s all you really need to know!
What I Do.
To put it simply, I write about things that are interesting to me. I try to post every Sunday, and my posts can be:
Reviews: At the end of every month, I do a big round-up of everything that I read and watched during that month and write short reviews for them. I use a 5-star rating system. Besides my monthly wrap-up series, I sometimes write longer reviews for a piece of media if I realize that I have a lot to say about it. I also write separate reviews when I finish reading a book series.
Essays: This is for media analysis and for organizing my thoughts on a variety of topics. These take more time and research.
Other: Anything that is neither a review nor an essay. Character playlists, rankings, listicles, deep dives into a specific piece of media, etc.
Here are some of my most popular posts, and some that I love even if they aren’t quite as popular:
Most of my content is free, but some posts are paywalled, like my reviews of completed book series. You can become a paid subscriber for only $5 per month, and there’s a special discount available until December 31 for the annual and founding plans.
I also have a section called The Shadowhunter Chronicles Explained, which you can subscribe to separately if you are interested in me ranting about Cassandra Clare’s YA fantasy series. This is very different from everything else that I write about, and it’s just for fun, because I have a weird love/hate relationship with the Shadowhunter Chronicles. I haven’t updated it in a while, but I’m planning to get back to it soon since the goal is to cover all the books in the series before the next one comes out.
Plans for the Future.
At the moment, I’ve been sticking to posting at least once a week, and randomly posting throughout the month whenever I have the time. Starting next year, I’m planning to arrange my schedule to have one post every Sunday and one extra post every other Friday. I also want to expand the benefits for paid-subscribers, and I have a few ideas. Please, let me know which of these sounds more appealing to you:
Fantasy Book Club: There are plenty of book clubs on Substack, but most are focused on literary fiction and classic literature, rather than genre fiction, so I wanted to do something special for my fellow fantasy fans. Each month we would pick one book to read, and then we would have biweekly discussions. We could take more weeks if necessary. There would be a final discussion once we have finished reading and then a post summarizing the experience and our major takeaways. This book club would mostly cover stand-alone novels, but I’m open to doing series.
Subscriber’s Chat: I’ve been thinking of how to use the chat function, and there are a few ways we could go about this. I would like to talk about post ideas, let you tell me what you would like to see on the newsletter, and also see what you guys are working on, everyone could share their posts there and we can support each other. I may still do this for free subscribers if there’s enough interest.
Anime Club: Something like a book club, but for seasonal anime. Every season we are going to pick some shows to keep up with, then we would have discussions to talk about these shows, perhaps once every three weeks. Once the season is over, we will have a final discussion and there will be a wrap-up post with our thoughts and with our ranking of the season.
Thanks!
It’s been over a year since I started writing on Substack and it’s been a wonderful experience. It got me back into the habit of writing and it has made me think more deeply about what I read and watch, and I feel like I’ve gained more confidence in myself thanks to everyone’s support. I hope you guys stay around, and see you on my next post!
Ayy shout outs to us writers with english as their second or third languages!