Six Months of Swords and Sandwiches
Edited by David Swanson
Dear readers! (Swordsmen? Sand-Witchers?) Because this week marks half a year of this newsletter being in existence, I thought I’d hit pause for a moment and both reflect on the work so far, and to ask for your feedback. I really value the lively, funny and adroit community in the comments, and wanted to elicit your feedback more explicitly.
Over the past six months I’ve covered child abuse, war, neo-Nazism, school board extremism, and lots and lots of sandwiches—from the existential horror of bologna salad to the simple joy of a banh mi. I’ve also published more than half of a gay Jewish novella set in nineteenth-century Ukraine for paid subscribers. It’s an eclectic mix! Sometimes chilling, sometimes poignant, always sincere and strange, which is more or less the guarantee.
I’d like to open the floor to y’all to let me know in the comments or in replies what you’re feeling about this accumulation of obsessions in your inbox. Is there a topic you’d love to see me to cover? A story you can’t stop thinking about? A sensible adjustment you’d like to suggest—what you’d want to see more of, or less? Before I progress into the next six months, I’d love to take this moment to hear about what moves you, what’s working, what could use improvement. You’re the strop to this steel, the whetstone to the blade, the mustard to my sandwich, and without you this publication would not be: after all, what’s a writer without her readers?