First of all, thank you guys for being so excited over this little experiment of mine! (If you’re joining the party late, I’m releasing the third Sucks to Be Me book as a kind of crowdsourced Choose Your Own Adventure style thing — I send out chapters to newsletter subscribers and end with a few possible paths and then write the next bit based on what people have picked)

It’s been great hearing from all of you and I’m really glad you’re enjoying the story so far.

I can tell already that there’s going to be a huge Cameron vs. George battle going on this whole book.  The voting so far has been incredibly even on two of the options given at the end of chapter 4 (with the third option not getting a single vote so far). It’s interesting to me, (as the author) knowing what my chosen option would have been and seeing what you guys are picking. Not sure if what I would have done is going to be the one that winds up going in or not!

Now, for some important notes about the newsletter system:

If you recently signed up for the newsletter and weren’t in time to get the chapters sent to you yesterday (8 February), please send me an email and I will send them to you directly.

If you signed up for the newsletter (either recently or a long time ago) and haven’t received it, please check your junk/spam mail folder for a verification message. IF YOU DON’T VERIFY YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS, YOU WON’T GET ANY NEWSLETTERS!! I can’t stress this enough. Looking at the list, there are about 60 email addresses sitting unverified right now and I can’t verify them for you (my newsletter list is managed through VerticalResponse and they (quite rightly) want to make sure anyone sending messages isn’t a spammer and is only sending them to people that want them).

If you know you have already verified, check your junk/spam folder anyway as the messages might have been delivered there. If you have a way to do it in your email program, consider adding my email address as a “safe sender” (or whatever the equivalent is in your email program)

If you can’t find your verification message or are simply unsure what your status is, go to the newsletter sign up page and re-enter your information. You’ll get a pop-up window that looks like the one below. If it says “Single Opt-In” that means your address is unverified and you’re not going to get any newsletters.

Simply click the link in the pop-up window (the one that says “please click here”) and the system will send you an email with a link to your personal profile page. Click the link to go to the website page. It will look something like this (though, obviously, with your email address instead of Mina’s).

Click that Sign Up Now! button and boom bada bing bada boom! All done! If you want to check your status again you’ll see that your status should now say “Opt In” which means you are, indeed, verified and one of the very special people getting to read this story for absolutely free. Heck, helping write this story!