In my last email to new release mailing list subscribers, I asked people to email me if they’d be interested in a chattier newsletter — like a blog post, but sent direct to their inbox. (I only send out emails about new releases to the new release mailing list and given what an enormously long time it takes me to write anything decent and get it published, it does not get a huge amount of action … )

It turns out when you ask people to email you, often they do! There was enough interest that I...