bus kids [retro]

meta

Hello PNP’ers, and welcome to another entry in my retros series, in which I revisit past stories, share inspirations, influences, choices, and—sometimes—brutally criticize myself. These are a way to realize the ‘meta’ content of the Clancy Steadwell character in a way I hope PNP’ers will find intriguing, satisfying, and—most of all—honest.

The story subject to retrospection in this edition: bus kids.

It’s been about a year since I’ve done one of these, but figured I’d get back to it as a little insight for my paid subscribers; after all, they are probably the only folks invested enough in my fiction to care about my process and the stories behind the stories. Probably strikes everyone else as a little vain.

I think I’m skipping a few stories to get to bus kids, but it was on my mind lately because it was a little over a year ago I posted it. I only know because it was around the time of the Kentucky Derby, and when I saw some coverage around that pop up, I went through my old posts to have another re-read. It holds up well— mostly—but I am a little surprised it went over like it did.

The fiction community seemed to really dig it. At the time, what is now the Substack Post was something like ‘Substack Featured’ and they were in the process of having select Substackers curate the weekly featured newsletter. PNP subscriber

Ika Wright

posited the story to a thread

Madeline Hill

, that week’s curator, had posted seeking suggestions. I guess she read it and liked it enough to send to the masses.

I’m forever grateful for the confluence of these two peoples’ enjoyment of this story—it really was a turning point in my Substack career that moved me to tears. 3.6k people looked at this story. Imagine how many might have read it! Never, ever could I have imagined so many people reading my fiction. I was writing and posting because I could, because I wanted to, for myself, then somehow this incredibly fortuitous thing happened and I was writing for an audience.

And how did I follow the success of bus kids up? Let’s get to that later.

For now, let us retrospect…

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