X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter *MEGA EDITION* (7 Jul 2025)
IN THIS =BIG= ISSUE:
* CRUCIAL POLL
* Status: AotF
* NEWS: SAA-PI (+poll)
* ‘Like/Subscribe/Share’ (+poll)
* Status: CotF Audiobook
* Poe Poem; Phone Addiction
* Cosmos Pt1 w/Intro by Ann Druyan
* Std stuff - how you can help
Greetings Dear Subscribers,
If you’re here via the web site and would like to subscribe, this link takes you to the subscription box.
If you’d like to UNsubscribe, hit reply and say as much. Easy peasy, no judgment, no problem.
IF YOU’RE NEW and want to catch up, after finishing here click on the “Older Posts >” link at bottom (web newsletter only) to read a few newsletters back.
NOTE: Having finally and happily abandoned “social media”, I’ll be sending newsletters slightly more often. But I’ll try to keep them somewhat entertaining.
My substack articles & youtube channel replace social media, and contain fun and/or thoughtful material that would never fit into tiny SM posts. :)
If you like this, or just want to help, please forward/post the link!
https://XHoYenAuthor.com/newsletter
=== CRUCIAL POLL ===
There are other mini-polls below, but this is the big, crucial one. As always, it’s about DISCOVERY, the #1 challenge for any indie.
Should I switch from a push-delivered text email newsletter to a follow/subscribe-delivered method? Is text acceptable, or must it become video?
FACTORS TO CONSIDER:
This email newsletter is not growing in readership. Let’s ignore for now all factors related to my being an autistic weirdo and occasionally, inevitably annoying. After all, if that were the real problem, one would have expected occasional new subscribers followed by occasional unsubscribes, especially back when I was actively trying to engage with new (albeit ultimately poorly targeted) groups on social media, and after announcements here of big milestones, like awards or great reviews. But it’s just flat. That would strongly support the notion that email and friendly forwarding of email newsletters simply isn’t a method of growth.
I’ve asked around, and have learned that this is because email is problematic for many people, especially anyone younger than 40 (or even 50? a decade makes a difference when the internet is concerned). There’s so much spam that it’s now the norm to not use email for human communication. Nobody wants to wade through dozens of spam messages and transaction-related emails to find one newsletter they may or may not have noticed came through. Someone at work told me this directly. He isn’t interested in email for anything, and managing these things using multiple email addresses is not something he does. He asked family members about this, and they all seemed to suggest that follow/subscribe-based delivery is preferable.
Even follow/subscribe-based delivery has that “lost in the feed” problem, same as stacks of emails. But with follow/subscribe, users seem to be okay with scanning through their feed knowing it’s all stuff they subscribed to. Maybe neurotypicals and those under 40/50 have an easier time organizing their feeds while scanning it just because of that. (?)
Plus, the follow/subscribe-based delivery approach seems to involve apps that push a notification to your phone (if you allow such notifications).
Substack is a follow/subscribe-based delivery system, and perfectly suited for newsletters. It feels like the world is pushing me to switch my newsletters from siteblog+email to Substack.
Both this blog (which I manually copy to email and send from home, because Squarespace would charge me money to send it from the website) and Substack have RSS URLs. I port this blog to Goodreads via its RSS URL, but Substack also supports RSS, so that feature would not be lost by switching to Substack.
But switching to Substack by no means guarantees more exposure. Sharing and cross-stacking won’t increase compared to email forwarding just because it’s Substack and not email. The only real difference is that Substack is follow/subscribe and email is pure push.
Youtube is also follow/subscribe-based, but ultimately has the same “lost in the feed” problem as anything else. And videos are far and away more time-consuming to create.
Best I can tell, BlueSky is structurally no different from Twitter/Facebook. If it hasn’t become enshittified yet, I suspect that’s more a selection effect than anything else. In any case, I simply can’t use SM, by psychology, by temperament. No, social media, even BlueSky, simply is not for me. I rely on the kindness of strangers (and not-so-strangers) among my subscribers to cross-post to their SM.
Catalog expansion and receiving lauds also have had no effect on subscribership.
What do you think of all this? Is switching to follow/subscribe-based delivery valuable (enough) in and of itself? Or is this a non-problem, and I should just keep doing what I’m doing for outreach? Would you be okay with subscribing to my Substack in order to receive my “author newsletters”? Or would making that switch ultimately decrease my subscribership? Would that be problematic if it also included my other substack articles, which often are very Op/Ed? Would it be preferable for me to start a second channel on Substack solely for my “author newsletters”, to isolate those from my other Substack content? Would that have a better chance of cross-pollinating? Or is text itself just dead and should I switch to video? Or what? I definitely don’t have the temperament or energy to do multiple outreach media, like text, podcast, and video.
Please send me your thoughts/opinions/expertise, Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope!
=== Status: AotF ===
I continue to work on AotF. Lately, I’ve been thinking about and researching world elements that both set the realism tone and support and inform later story events: looking into the physical conditioning requirements on the Moon, modeling the Sun’s location in the time frames of the story using a tool called Celestia, using lunar topography maps as a way to estimate terrain on the horizon (yes, I know precisely where the story takes place on the Moon), calculating resultant lengths of shadows, that sort of thing.
Don’t worry, these kinds of technical elements are background elements. But getting the background right is crucial, especially early on. This work has already revealed some important things about the characters! It also just about has its own momentum (in terms of the writing), except for the CotF audiobook project (see status below) which tends to interrupt me. One of my autistic things is having a strong need to finish one big thing before moving on to the next…
=== NEWS: Space Autistic Author’s Puzzling Innerverse (+poll) ===
"Puzzing Innerverse" has another 5-star review on Amazon, this time from world famous author, space artist, and recent Antarctic science data collector, Michael Carroll. That’s wonderful! I know Michael, but he did this on his own. (and then at lunch he asked for my autograph on the copy he bought for his neurodivergent grandson…damn!) Here’s his fb page about his latest book, which is about Artemis.
There are reviews, and then there are reviews.
In response to submitting the book to their awards contest, Literary Titan wrote a review of “Puzzling Innerverse” that’s astoundingly and unequivocally positive, and very well written, too. It’s crystal clear that the reviewer truly dug into and dug this book, i.e. did not merely skim it in order to write a first impression review.
Check it out! https://literarytitan.com/2025/06/18/space-autistic-authors-puzzling-innerverse/
See what I mean? It’s hard to beat that line about C&H and CJ, but there are so many deeply complimentary turns of phrase in this review, I can’t decide which is most impactful. So, on the book’s website page I’ve quoted two of them, while letting readers discover the C&H/CJ one for themselves.
As always, I include these kinds of things on my /lauds page on my web site, which is starting to look impressive for a new writer. I might make that one my web site’s landing page instead of the /about page. Poll: Should I do that? What say ye?
= THE EVEN BIGGER NEWS =
Puzzling Innerverse also won a Gold Award at Literary Titan!
Click to visit the award announcement page, look at Row 4, Column 2!
=== ‘Like/Subscribe/Share’ (+poll) ===
You know how youtubers always take a moment to ask you to like/subscribe/share? It’s a human nature thing. The rule about discovery on the web is to proactively request help. And it works. Nice people want to help, but sometimes need that request. Otherwise, us little guys are just posting in cul-de-sacs in small neighborhoods somewhere off the information superhighway.
Please help with discovery by posting this week (maybe set reminders in your calendar for July and November?) something like the following:
Know someone who likes irreverent, inclusive, hopepunk sci fi? Check out this award-winning author: XHoYenAuthor.com/lauds
That /lauds page is a good one to share!
Amusingly (?), I saw someone skim those descriptors and read that first one as “irrelevant”, at least in scan. Zowee! Should I change my web site and outreach branding graphic to use a different word? Which word? Sassy? Subversive? I think “sassy” isn’t quite apt. And I had intentionally chosen “irreverent” over “subversive” to avoid the latter’s negative connotations. Am I being too prissy about that? What say ye?
It goes without saying that if you’ve read one of my works and it worked for you, but you haven’t yet posted a review, please do so. Every positive review helps, both the legitimate pro reviews (like that Literary Titan one) and reviews by readers like you. A nice person named Daniel posted this one shortly after SAA-PI was published:
=== Status: CotF Audiobook ===
Here’s my wonderful, brilliant team! You should hear them!
I’m pleased to report that we have completed production on chapters 1 through 3 and have our sea legs. Chs.4-6 are almost done. Tomorrow, the world! (When Amy and Dan become famous, I’m hoping they’ll drag my books along in their wake after attaching their names to the CotF audiobook. :) )
We’re making…
=== Poe Poem ===
This poem speaks to me profoundly. EAP went through early life trauma, too.
Analysis of “Alone”, via shadowofiris.com
I urge anyone with a few moments of time to look up a brief biography of Edgar Allan Poe (e.g. wikipedia’s). His short life (<41 orbits) and unexplained death were quite, eh, gothic.
“After Poe's death, Rufus Wilmot Griswold wrote his obituary under the pseudonym "Ludwig". Griswold, who became the literary executor of Poe's estate, was actually a rival of Poe and later published his first full biography, depicting him as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman. Much of the evidence for this image of Poe is believed to have been forged by Griswold, and though friends of Poe denounced it,[3] this interpretation had a lasting impact.” — wikipedia articles
Illustration by Édouard Manet for a French translation by Stéphane Mallarmé of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". (1875, public domain)
=== Phone Addiction ===
I accidentally ran across this video while researching a tech tool and felt it had a smart approach to life management worth sharing.
This gent seems like he might have OCD, and if someone with OCD can cure phone addiction, his approach is worth a few moments, even if on your phone. :)
=== Cosmos Pt 1 w/Intro by Ann Druyan ===
If this isn’t still apropos in every way, if this doesn’t stir in you the joy of intellect and curiosity, then you’re a monkey’s ancestor and descendant!
Gather your kids (if any), allocate 40 minutes of your time with this video set to 1.25x play speed, and bask in the poetry of the original Cosmos! (but prepare for ads, hover over the skip button, lower right)
https://youtu.be/W9dptug4wzY
=== Standard Stuff === How to Help ===
Why help? Since I subvert pop genre expectations instead of pandering to them, and because of my autism and other isolating factors, it’s extremely difficult and expensive for me to reach out into the world to find my audience. I don’t have a team helping me. Just writing newsletters like this is an exercise in self-esteem suspension of disbelief (swirly thing alert!).
I truly rely on word of mouth and grassroots support. In case anyone assumes this is some kind of gravy train side hustle, I’m still thousands of dollars in debt on this, and every convention adds more red to my ledger. I’m in this for the long haul, but I must keep reaching out and pushing. This is not “write it and they will come”, that’s the erotic fantasy romance section (which sells itself).
How to help: Reading my books, writing reviews (if you liked them :), and passing the word would be great. If not that, then one could post my one-page ads (see below, or on each book’s page on the web site) on appropriate billboards and tell people about my web site, https://XHoYenAuthor.com .
Please help with discovery by posting this week (or maybe set reminders in your calendar for July and November?) something like the following:
Know someone who likes irreverent, inclusive, hopepunk sci fi? Check out this award-winning author: XHoYenAuthor.com/lauds
But here’s something very nice that anyone can do to help — request that “Minimum Safe Distance” be carried by your local library!
It’s usually as simple as going to your library system’s web site and searching for “suggest a purchase” or “submit a suggestion”. Usually, there’s a special page for that, and often it’s at the front of your dashboard.
They will want information like this:
Title: Minimum Safe Distance
Author: X. Ho Yen [please get the capitalization and spaces right, one after the period, another after ‘Ho’]
Publication year: 2022
Format: Book/Paperback
# of pages: 396
ISBN: 978-0-9766158-1-1
Publisher: Grand Unification Monastery
Audience: Adult
Language: English
Notes:
Good professional editorial reviews, including Kirkus:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/x-ho-yen/minimum-safe-distance/
“…Ho Yen’s descriptions of advanced technologies should please fans of hard SF, but what really makes the book work are the questions it raises about what it means to be a person and a member of a species.” Our verdict: Get It
Carried in Arapahoe County Library System:
https://arapahoelibraries.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S115C2180350
and the Colorado State Library Book Club Resource (https://csl.catalog.aspencat.info/Union/Search?view=list&lookfor=minimum+safe+distance&searchIndex=Title&searchSource=local),
and Biblioboard (https://library.biblioboard.com/content/a3f3fc17-626b-428b-b6a2-5b5a9a44a494).
Author web site: https://XHoYenAuthor.com
This process usually takes only a few moments once you find the book suggestion/recommendation page. Thanks! Put a reminder in your calendar right now!
I haven’t been emphasizing “Custodians of the Future” as much as MSD, but only because MSD has more kudos (which is because I spent a lot more money on MSD, and that’s unsustainable). I’m hoping that interest in MSD will lead to interest in my other stuff.
Space Autistic Author
If you haven’t watched “Space Autistic Author”, Logs 1 to 3, yet, do check them out. They’re only a few minutes long, but they’re fun! Logs 2 and 3 demonstrate how SAA allows cross-promotion with other creatives without requiring anyone to vouch for anyone else’s work. Pass the word!
While you’re there, check out the other videos on my channel, especially the Galacticon ‘23 video (in 4 parts). That one’s longer, but it shows why my pen name is not cultural appropriation, and gives a fun overview of Mars exploration (since the late 1800s) with details of my participation in it, mostly on the Mars Global Surveyor mission.
https://XHoYenAuthor.com/media
Like, subscribe, and share!
All purchase options can be found here: https://XHoYenAuthor.com/books. Both sites include links showing how several of the big vendors allow you to gift eBooks.
Thanks for sticking with me! I hope it’s at least mildly entertaining to watch this author second career thing come together.
Please do share my page with fellow realism-based sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoys Corey’s The Expanse, Older’s Infomocracy, Card’s Speaker for the Dead, Mandel’s Station Eleven, Suarez’ Delta-V, or movies like “Arrival” and “Don’t Look Up”. I'm convinced my books would appeal to the same audience, because I wrote them for me and I'm in that audience.
Thanks for your support!
XHY
https://XHoYenAuthor.com