Originally posted on the legacy site on October 1, 2024:

Update

So, things have been a little quieter lately, I know. This summer was...busy. 

I spent a lot of the summer prepping for, running, and fulfilling my Kickstarter campaign, which was honestly a lot of fun, but boy howdy, a ton of work.

Then I took a sailing class in late August at the Wooden Boat School in Maine and learned to sail these lovely little 15' Haven sailboats. It was so much fun and I learned so much and two of the gals in the class with me and I are already planning to take the level 2 class together next year. 

We went paddle boarding several times, though not as often we should have, considering we own two paddle boards, a pickup truck, and the beach is about a mile and a half from our Maine house. Still, there were several outings and we took some visiting friends out with us too.

And there was the day job, of course. Which I don't talk about much but sucks up a lot of time I'd rather spend paddling, reading, or writing. One of my colleagues just took an early retirement and I am so freaking jealous!

So, here we are and it's October already and I honestly don't understand how that happened. It's past time to start a new book for the book club and if you're on my newsletter, you may have seen the three suggestions I sent out last night.

Another reason I've been a little quieter than usual is that I'm planning to move this community to a different host and that's required a lot of behind the scenes research and planning. I won't bore you with the details of it, but suffice to say that there apparently is no perfect way to host a community like the one I want to create and some of the trade-offs for some of the more common options are kinda no-gos for me.

So, I'm planning to host the Eight Arms Reading Room on my own website, where I'll have more control over things (and be less susceptible to getting shut down for pearl-clutching, Puritanical reasons). I think I've figured out how to do it and I'm in the middle of migrating as much of the content here over there as I can.

I can't promise the transition will be completely seamless but folks who are currently on an annual plan will keep that, at least through the end of their current plan (I'm not 100% sure yet whether I'll be able to offer annual plans along with monthly plans but the base tier prices will stay the same), and I *think* it should be easier to change tiers on the new site.

This is all just a heads-up for now. I'll give plenty of notice when the new site launches and will probably simultaneously post in both places for a while.

I hope you all have had a great summer! Am I the only one who feels like fall is more of a 'fresh start' season than even the New Year?

❤️

Updated Tue, October 1