Poe Fortnightly One Year Anniversary!
It's been a whole year!
Shawn, the Poe Fortnightly guy, here.
One year ago today, on Friday, May 13th, 2022, I posted the first Edgar Allan Poe Daily story!
Back then, Poe Fortnightly was Poe Daily, and existed to fill in the gaps in Dracula Daily, to send out Poe emails on the weekday dates that Dracula Daily didn’t update.
(This year I decided there are plenty of classic literature mailing lists to fill anyone’s week, so sticking to the new Fortnightly schedule was better than tying into Dracula’s schedule again.)
It’s wild to me how early into May that I was laying in bed reading Dracula Daily memes on Tumblr and thought “How hard is it to make a Substack? It would be fun to send out Poe stories on the days Dracula doesn’t update.” And then I looked and it’s easy and so I did it!
Here we are a year later! There are a lot of you, and I am still sending out Poe stories and poems every other week, and will continue until I run out.
—
First of all - thank you to everyone who has read Poe Daily or Poe Fortnightly! It’s been a lot of fun to share all the Poe with you! You are awesome, keep it up!
Second - I am celebrating the Poe Fortnightly anniversary today by cheering on Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest grand finals!
Teya & Salena’s “Who The Hell Is Edgar?” is a song about how the singer is possessed by the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote this pop song that’s gonna make her rich. (The bridge then laments that as Certain Unnamed Streaming Services only pay out $.0003 per stream, even the ghost of Poe won’t actually make her rich.) The chorus of “Poe Poe PoePoe PoePoe Poe (edgar allan edgar allan)” is extremely catchy.
Despite being an American, I have been a big Eurovision fan for a decade now, and I think it’s hilarious that someone did a song about Edgar Allan Poe.
Third - Poe Fortnightly will continue for the foreseeable future! The plan is to keep sending out stories and poems every other week until I run out of stories and poems.
Now that we’ve hit one year, I’ll run the occasional repeat. I shared all of the famous stories during the Poe Daily era (deliberately), but don’t want to deprive newer readers of favorites like The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, the Raven, A Dream Within A Dream, etc. Repeats will only happen a few times a year.
Fourth - Poe Fortnightly will always continue to be free. I spend a couple hours a week on this, for the most part just because I enjoy doing it. That said, if you appreciate the care and dedication that goes into delivering Poe Fortnightly, you have a few ways to throw dollars at me.
You can become a Paid Member on Substack! For $5 a month you get absolutely nothing except the satisfaction of supporting the arts. (I wish I could set that lower, but if you have $5 a month to spare and want to leave a “tip”, that’s an easy way to do it.)
You can pledge to my Patreon! The lowest tier is a bit cheaper than Substack, so it may be an option if you’d like to send a regular thanks but not really $5 a month thanks.
You can make a one time anniversary tip on Ko-Fi! This is easiest if you appreciate Poe Fortnightly and want to throw dollars at me, but just the once.
You don’t have to do any of the above. Poe Fortnightly will continue, and will continue to be free for everyone.
Fifth - the Poe Fortnightly Discord Server is a small and inviting group of Poe fans who have some fun chats when a new story is posted. Join us if you are a Discord person!
Finally - The next Poe Fortnightly story is “Von Kempelen and his Discovery”, starting on May 22nd!
Have a great weekend everyone, good luck to Austria in Eurovision, thank you all for a fantastic year of the macabre and mysterious, and I’ll see you all for at least another year!
— Shawn, the Poe Fortnightly Guy
Coming Next to Edgar Allan Poe Fortnightly:
The Week of 05/22: Von Kempelen and his Discovery
Poe Fortnightly has a Discord server! Join to chat with other Poe fans!