A 40-hour Countdown
with an added slice of social media serendipity!
‘Track 6’ is now locked and loaded, and pre-scheduled for release at 9am on Thursday 10th (an hour earlier, for now, to stay true to the book’s BST timing quirk.)
Normal ‘C69’ rules will apply, with the first post pausing at the point the story’s latest ‘Challenge’ is issued, followed twenty-four hours later by the concluding part of the chapter (to unveil the ‘answer’).
While it’s definitely not easy (where would the fun be in that?), and it may still be advisable to sharpen your cryptic pencil in advance, I do think this episode’s ‘clue’ is more solvable, not quite as convoluted as last time’s ‘nightmare’, where, in the end, I did receive one correct answer (from an admirably persistent Brendan). Good luck in advance to those who enjoy engaging with the ‘challenges’ and, as always, please reply by email if you think you’ve cracked it.
Subscriber numbers have now reached 98, frustratingly just 2 short of my ‘three figure’ goal, but with a few promotional irons still in the fire I’m hopeful of reaching that milestone shortly. I’ll keep you posted.
The heartening recent influx of new readers, via Substack and Instagram, has also ensured ‘C69’ can’t, any longer, be accused of being just a ‘friends, family, and people who know me’ thing. Almost 50% of my subscribers are now people I’ve never met (and probably never will). This confirms there’s a wider potential market for my novel and should help the ‘phase two’ efforts to find a traditional publisher.
Before this exercise I was a confirmed social media sceptic, convinced there were way more important things in life than posting and ‘liking’ (a term that still grates) random things I’m not much interested in, and no real benefit to be gained from engaging with people I don’t know (and didn’t need to know!).
My efforts to promote ‘C69’ via Substack, and latterly Instagram, haven’t entirely changed my mind (there is still a lot of ‘garbage’ you can’t avoid wading through), but I do now accept, if you employ a judicious filter, it is a way to connect, productively, with an interesting like-minded set of people, in my instance with fellow music lovers.
One of the things I’ve tried, to maintain regular Instagram presence, is to send a ‘C69 Recommends’ post each day, with a ‘rule’ set this must be either a new song or one I’ve never heard before (or at least forgotten if I have). Initially I thought this would prove a big challenge, but thanks to a widening reach of Substack/Instagram music contacts it has proved remarkably easy. For example, my current ‘favourite album’ is ‘Cub’ by Wunderhorse, a new UK group I had never heard of, and may never have found were it not for a recommendation from a US based Substack writer.
I’ll leave you today though with the timeline of my biggest social media win/win/win to date, which means I’ll never be able to go back now to dismissing the whole thing as ‘nonsensical charade’ ever again!
I subscribed (for free) to ‘Small Ears’ an interesting music orientated newsletter on Substack, run by Ben Kryze, a computer scientist based in France, which centres around interviewing new/emerging artists - smallears.substack.com
Then I got a new reader, Phoebe, via my Instagram promotion, who turned out to be a great new singer/songwriter from London who performs as Samfire and had just released her debut EP,
Knowing Ben was always on the lookout for new ‘subjects’, it was then easy to make an intro, as a result of which Samfire was last week featured as ‘Small Ears’ latest interviewee - Small Ears/Samfire
Ben won as he got a new interesting subject, Phoebe/Samfire won with another new channel to promote her music, and I won from the satisfaction of making the intro.
Back to where I started though, there’s now just 40 hours to go now until ‘Track 6’ is released, I hope you enjoy it. Why not fill a bit of that time by taking a listen to a couple of my favourite Samfire tracks (you’ll find more on Spotify etc.)