This Thanksgiving article is meant to be a brief retrospective on the site. If you want to skip the navel gazing, scroll down to where it says 'Special Thanks' in big blue letters. Below are some links to the people who are the reason for the site's success
When I first heard Razorfist's call to action in 'Don't Cry About The Culture. BECOME The Culture' which included creating fan sites and news aggregators I perked up my ears, but I expected someone else to step up to the plate. About a month later I rewatched the video, did a few searches, and realized I might as well give it a try. When I realized my initial plans for RSS feeds and scraping other sites wasn't going to provide the kind of content I wanted, I resolved to write articles myself. Something I quickly realized I wasn't particularly suited to.
However, it took almost no time for this situation to change. Matthew Pungitore quickly reached out and offered to write an opinion piece, which I was excited to accept. Then Rob Rimes began tweeting out lists of Iron Age creators along with the website. Through this I found John A. Douglas and mooched a review off his YouTube channel. An acquaintance of mine, Swordrush knocked out an article I'd been dragging my feet on. By then momentum was building. Jake Calta, Katharine Frances, Terry Link, Bryan Asher, and James Krake sent in articles for the site, netting an entire month that I could spend focused on the site rather than tormenting myself and readers. Around the same time I began creating the short story image prompts which have since taken on a life of their own. A special thanks to Daniel P Riley and Swordrush for their numerous contributions.
The rest of September was, in retrospect, fairly quiet as I tried to improve the site and keep up with content. Then one morning I was pleasantly surprised to see messages about a video covering the site. Royce of A Drink With Crazy then reached out to set up a live interview for the following Friday. Before that could happen, Razorfist dropped a video on the Iron Age with a portion of the video dedicated to the site. By the time the livestream went live I'd seen more traffic in the past few days than the entire month, a graphic designer offering a much improved logo, and had another month's worth of articles lining up.
A sense of panic set in as I realized I now had some expectations to live up to, so I set out to update the site to the best of my ability while making plans for a soft relaunch early next year. Meanwhile for some reason Royce offered to have me back on for another Friday discussion with Daniel P Riley, which turned out so well we decided to start a regular Friday night livestream. Iron Age Knights started off with a bang as Bryan Asher, Mike S. Miller and Shad M. Brooks all dropped in for a fantastic stream. I won't elaborate on each of our guests since, but each week has highlighted interesting people and conversations.
Since then the feeling of panic has cooled to a faint sense of anxiety which I use to help keep me nice and productive. I've also started up a YouTube channel for weekly update videos, and a Locals page as a way for people who are so inclined to support the site. When the new site goes live there will be more reasons to engage there. In the meantime I encourage everyone to go vote on the third and final featured story from October.
Whether you read this far or simply skipped down, I encourage you to check out the next two links if nothing else. The success I've had so far has been due to the many great folks below.
All the authors who have written articles to fuel the Iron Age.
The art and literature of those who responded to the Iron Age prompts.
A heartfelt thank you, and I hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving.