Too Many Doors

Back in July I promised you a post every week. Then I went quiet. Let's try that again, starting with a confession.

A while back I had a tidy idea. Give every kind of story its own home. Ghost stories over here, comedy over there, love stories in a room with softer lighting. You'd walk straight to the shelf you wanted, and nobody hunting for Mark Twain would trip over Bram Stoker in the dark.

So I built the rooms. FRIGHTLY for the scares. HumorUs for the laughs. Love Lit for the romantics. New Tales Told for my own originals. Count Readastorus for the kids and Season's Readings for the holidays, and LitReading, where all of this started, suddenly had six siblings.

It looked terrific on a whiteboard.

Then I had to run the place. Every feed wanted its own cover art, its own preroll, its own music bed. A horror story belonged on FRIGHTLY, but it was also a new tale, so it ran on both, with an intro for each. A few stories lived in three places at once. My website, trying to be helpful, announced those twice. That's a lot of hellos for one story.

Here's the arithmetic I should have done first. I put out one new story a week. Spread that across seven feeds and each one gets a trickle. You'd subscribe to FRIGHTLY and wait a good while for something to go bump.

So I'm folding the rooms back into one house. FRIGHTLY, HumorUs, Love Lit and New Tales Told won't get new episodes. Their stories are moving to LitReading. So is every other story I've recorded, except the ones for kids and the ones for the holidays. Readastorus keeps the kids, because they deserve a feed with no ads and no ghosts at bedtime. Season's Readings keeps the holidays. Christmas only comes once a year, and I'd like to keep it that way.

The originals keep coming, too. I'm still writing them, and they'll land on LitReading right beside Chekhov and O. Henry.

One small favor. Find LitReading wherever you listen and tap Follow. If a story lands for you, leave five stars, or a review if you're feeling chatty. Every podcaster on earth asks for this. Now it's my turn.

One story a week, one place to find it. If you followed one of the old feeds, thank you. Come on over. Same guy, same booth, fewer doors.