There’s been a lot happening since we last spoke. Let’s get the pleasantries out of the way, then. How the heck are ya?
If you’re curious as to why the Drescher Drop disappeared, and then suddenly reappeared in your inbox, there’s a simple explanation. You see, I was locked out of my Substack account for six months.
You read that right.
What happened was this: I had originally signed up for Substack several years ago with a custom domain email. But then in January that domain expired and was quickly snatched by scammers trying to sell it back to me for a million dollars. Considering I make exactly $0 from my domain, I decided to let them keep it.
Substack, however, didn’t like this. Getting into Substack is simple. Enter your email, and they’ll shoot you a login button. Except I no longer had access to that email. It took many months of back and forth with an extremely slow Substack customer support system before they were able to authenticate that I was, indeed, Nathan A. Drescher.
So they said “Great, we reset your account to xxxx@xxxxx.com (my custom domain I had lost). This case is now closed.”
Groan.
So I had to spend a few more months until finally someone over there actually read my support request and set me up with my trustee old Gmail account to login.
So, here we are.
But it gets better.
A new vision for the Drop
I’ve taken on a few new goals and ditched a few others in those intervening months. For starters, I’m absolutely committed to getting books traditionally published. Not one, but many books.
I’m about halfway through writing my first book, which happens to be the first book in a series about Canadians in the Second World War. It’s about Number 242 RAF squadron, aka “The Canadians” which was commanded by double amputee fighter ace Douglas Bader during the Battle of Britain.
You can read more about this over at my other substack, Battlegrounds+.
And while I write about history, I’m also still obsessing over the future. You can’t have one without the other, after all. I’m slowly assembling the plot and characters, and doing lots of note-taking, for a dystopian cyberpunk series involving a detective in a futuristic city locked inside a dome following a cataclysmic environmental collapse.
So The Drescher Drop will pivot to be more about the future, and specifically about my writing about the future, than it was previously (which was strictly journalism).
So what is it now?
It’s like an author’s blog, but without the blog bit. I’ll keep you updated about book progress, share insights into the writing and publishing process as I learn them, and discuss topics of futurism, humanism, technology and society.
Schedule
Every Monday morning, you’ll receive the latest Drop, with the aforementioned articles. Things such as:
Updates on my works in progress
Insights into the writing and publishing process
Interviews with other sci-fi and cyberpunk authors
My research into the future of cities
My musings about the future of politics, religion and society
Personal updates from an author and journalist’s perspective
Once a month, I’ll publish a short story of futuristic fiction.
Utopian stories of what life could be like in the future
Dystopian stories of what could go wrong based on the decisions we make today
Eventually I plan to include a podcast. I’ll let you know as soon as I know more!
That’s it. Thanks a bunch for being a subscriber. It means a lot to me and I can’t wait to see you around your inbox in the near future!
Remember to visit The Drescher Drop to catch up on articles you’ve missed, chat with me on Substack, and discuss with the community using Substack’s new Notes feature (aka Twitter-lite).