Baird,

There is no subscriber base at Substack. But give it time--these things take time to build, and I am just starting this.

You're right that this is driven by an intrinsic love of what I'm doing. When I started up Exploration Phase the goal was to try vehemently to resurrect an incarnation of myself as a writer that I enjoy a lot. It runs parallel to the part of me that loves the therapeutic writing that I was doing in The Affirmations (which, by the way, I haven't given up on. You can expect more in the future, and more pieces on Medium that are topically similar even if they're not house in the Affirmations publication).

But I do hope to eventually reach an audience. You'll see that the fanfiction posts really quickly veer into some surprisingly serious territory, and also, the fanfiction data is just my first project. The next one will likely be something that is immediately relevant to many people -- election polls.

I've actually written about those before, in 2020. Here's the link, if you're keen on it. It was one of my very first posts.

https://c-james-horton.medium.com/the-illustrated-guide-to-polling-error-eafc8a5ef672