I’m Shutting Most of This Down
I apologize in advance if you receive this message multiple times today, in multiple ways. That’s actually what I’m here to address. It seemed better to write one clear, concise message and put it out across all channels.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been experimenting with different formats, platforms, and approaches to publishing. Some of that was an intentional exploration, but quite a bit was throwing mud at the wall to see what stuck. I now have a clearer sense of what people are responding to and where the kind of communities I’ve been looking for exist.
So, I’m simplifying things. There will be fewer projects, and each will have a much clearer identity and a dedicated platform. Here’s the new direction going forward.
The Lightspress website will remain the permanent storefront and catalog. It’s going to remain the anchor, and the place you can navigate to other projects and platforms from. As part of this restructuring, the following is happening:
New ebook releases will be available there exclusively, along with legacy roleplaying titles. You can support a small creator by buying directly from them.
The Lightspress Newsletter is being shut down. It costs money to operate, and as I’ll get to in a moment, it is redundant to Patreon and Substack; I encourage you to go join those if you haven’t already, as either a free or paid member.
The Lightspress blog is shutting down for the same reasons as the newsletter.
Story at the Table is the Patreon and the dedicated home for narrative roleplaying content: articles, downloads, and the growing archive of narrative roleplaying material. The articles are free; the downloads are included in the paid tier. To keep this tight, the Story at the Table mirror on Substack is being shut down in a few days; if you subscribe there, I hope you’ll follow me over to Patreon.
The Narrative Core is my Substack publication, and has quickly become my central writing space for books, movies, coffee, culture, creativity, and the broader intellectual life. That’s where the essays, reflections, criticism, and personal writing will live going forward. You’re most likely to find me hanging out there on Notes.
Other places that I’ve tested, including Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, and Facebook, will be shut down in the coming days.
The goal here is clarity. Overlapping newsletters, duplicate posts, and multiple places doing roughly the same thing were confusing for some of you, and an unnecessary amount of extra work for me. Each platform now has a clear purpose, and you can follow me on one or all of these platforms.
To recap:
Lightspress: The shop and permanent home base at lightspress.com
Story at the Table: Narrative roleplaying on Patreon
The Narrative Core: Books, movies, culture, and personal writing on Substack
If you’ve been following along during this experimental phase, thank you. A lot of this only became clear through actually trying things and seeing how people responded.
