We Meet At Last
Believe it or not, Amy and I (Shelli) have been working together for over six months, corresponding on an almost-daily basis, but we had never met face-to-face! (We have talked on the phone a couple of times though!)
Well, that has changed. This past weekend I was able to meet Amy and her husband, Jason, at the National Alliance for Secular Homeschooler’s conference in Atlanta, Georgia. We were there to promote home / school / life magazine, and it was fun to watch people flip through the print copies of home / school / life and tell us what a beautiful resource it is – chock full of information for homeschoolers and other conscientious parents!
We were asked what set home / school / life apart from other homeschooling magazines, and Amy said something that I think is important to impart. Not only do we offer lots of useful lesson ideas, how-tos, encouragement, first person narratives and interviews with other homeschoolers, we offer real reporting on subjects that are important to homeschoolers, such as how to cope with loneliness, financial stress, or what steps one needs to take for a certain career path. We do a lot of research and interviews to write our features. In short, we offer real journalism. And it’s in a beautiful format to boot!
I love meeting new homeschoolers, but yesterday, I had even more fun meeting and chatting with Amy and Jason. They are incredibly sweet people, and it was a pleasure getting to know them a little better. I already know they are hard-working people, and it’s great to be part of this team.
We enjoyed talking about home / school / life and its future, and I thought I would share some of that with you.
First, we congratulated ourselves for putting together such a beautiful magazine with such a small staff! Amy does most of the writing and all the layout and other nitty-gritty details, and I do a lot of writing, proofreading and the social web stuff. We also have a few columnists whom we rely on, and their work makes the magazine sparkle. If you look at any other masthead on another magazine, you’ll see they have much bigger staffs! (So now you know why our Facebook and Twitter page is very quiet, especially while we’re in production. It’s hard to do it all!)
Jason is our advertising and promotion man, and he’s been working hard recently to get the word out about the magazine. For example, members of N.A.S.H. will be able to subscribe to home / school / life for a discounted price -- that should be available soon. We are reaching out to other associations and conferences as well. If you want to partner with home / school / life, Jason is your man.
Our fall issue is turning out to be another great issue. We’re going to tell you what the best cities are to homeschool in in the United States, how you can become a better photographer, and give you some important questions to ask yourself about your homeschool journey as well as lots of unit studies and inspiration to get you through your day.
We had a few print copies of the magazine, and oh my – they are beautiful! But we need a lot more subscribers before we can make them available to you. If it’s something you would like, please tell us. Of course, we don’t have to have a print magazine – being able to click on all those links in the digital issue is pretty cool too – but if the demand is there, we will make it an option!
Pretty soon we’ll be introducing you to some new staff writers! It’s very exciting to bring new people on board with their fresh ideas, but I’m going to save those details for the newsletter and future blog posts.
After the fall issue comes out, there are a lot of things Amy and I want to turn our attention to. One of those is revamping our website. Though we plan to keep it as simple and beautiful as possible, we want to be able to do more with it. For example:
We’re going to have a store! We will be selling home / school / life magazine issues and more….
And that’s the other exciting news: we’ll be working on some extra resources that we think you will find useful on your homeschool journey.
With such a small staff and budget, we can’t do everything as fast as we would like, but I am like that turtle in the story – going slow but sure can yield the best results! This is only the beginning of home / school / life. I know it will take time for us to make the website, store, hire more staff, and get more resources out to you, but it will happen. I hope you will join us for the journey.
We always welcome your ideas and comments. E-mail us.
And if you like what we do and want to support us, please consider subscribing, renewing or giving a subscription for a gift for only $15 a year. That’s not much for four awesome issues, coming straight to your inbox every season.