Xplisset Substack Sunday Rollup
What you missed. What it meant. What’s next.
This is the weekly reset.
A quick, readable map of what you might’ve missed, what it actually meant (without the cable-news haze), and what I’m building next.
Why there were no Blackout Briefs or Spin Spectrum pieces
Let me name the gap, because I know at least some of you noticed it.
Blackout Briefs are my “don’t let this disappear” posts: tight, fast, and focused. The story the public should have gotten, but didn’t. What happened, what it means, and the receipts.
Spin Spectrum is the opposite kind of work, slower and more psychological. It’s where I track how narratives get manufactured, what gets highlighted, what gets buried, what gets laundered into “common sense,” and why.
This week, both of those columns got pushed aside for one reason.
The Harvard piece took more time than I expected, and it changed the standard
The post “Harvard’s New Feminism” required a level of research and formatting I underestimated.
I’m talking clickable hyperlinks you can actually open, no more cutting and pasting.
And embedded citations that let you verify claims without doing a scavenger hunt.
That kind of work takes longer. A post I expected to go live late Tuesday didn’t publish until late Friday.
And yes, ironically, the piece I’m most proud of, the one that’s now the new gold standard for how I plan to write going forward, got buried in a classic Friday evening news dump.
Right as the Justice Department released the (heavily heavily heavily and did I mention heavily redacted) Epstein files.
So if you missed it, I’m urging you: go catch it now.
Read it here: Harvard’s New Feminism
A quick note about the chat and the noise problem
This publication has grown fast.
That’s a blessing.
But it also means some Substackers have started using the chat like a billboard.
And I know for a fact it’s created confusion.
Even my wife asked me, dead serious, “Did you write this?”
My concern is simple: people will bolt and unsubscribe because it starts feeling like constant noise.
And that’s the opposite of what I’m trying to build here.
So I want to ask you directly.
Poll: What should I do about the chat?
Keep it as-is (open chat, open promotion)
Keep chat but no promotion posts
Promotion allowed only in one weekly open thread
Turn chat off entirely
Record your vote below 👇🏻
(And if you’ve got a better idea, tell me in the comments, briefly, like you’re texting a buddy.)
What I’m reading right now, and why it’s messing with my novel
I just started a new book that, no exaggeration, has already forced an inventory of things I thought I understood.
Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation by Bennett Parten.
Most tellings of Sherman’s March keep emancipated Black people in the background.
This one flips the camera.
It asks what happens when you treat those people not as “extras,” but as the centerpiece of a mass movement toward freedom.
And it’s already hitting my work in a very specific place.
The War After War (quick synopsis)
My novel The War After War is historical fiction, and I’ve been carrying it for nearly a decade.
It follows two childhood friends raised on the same plantation. One is born into slavery. The other is the plantation owner’s son. The Civil War tears their shared world apart, then throws them into the violent reordering that follows.
After the war, they do not just walk away and call it peace. They join forces during Reconstruction, fighting to preserve freedom in the moment the country starts trying to take back, through terror and law, what it could not hold onto on the battlefield. The story lives in that tension. Liberation promised. Backlash delivered. The human cost of freedom when a nation tries to make it conditional.
It’s also a battle over memory. Whose memories get archived as “history,” whose get dismissed as rumor, and who gets punished for remembering out loud.
And Parten’s book is forcing me to re-check the camera angle. If the frame is wrong, the whole story risks becoming a lie I never meant to tell.
If you want to watch this novel get built in public, excerpts, research receipts, and the decisions that make it hurt and hold, The Author’s Room is where I’ll put the pages.
And a quiet thank you to Diane Love (St Petersburg FL) and Deborah Hyppa, the first two Author Room signups. That early vote of confidence matters more than you know, because it’s not just support, it’s proof of readership. When it’s time to approach literary agents and publishers, that kind of visible early demand helps me show this book isn’t a private obsession. It already has an audience waiting for it.
If you want a front row seat, imagine being able to subscribe to a Substack style newsletter while George Lucas was still wrestling Star Wars into existence, the drafts, the choices, the false starts. The Author Room is open to everyone, but the excerpt pages live behind the paywall for paid members.
The plan going forward
Starting this week:
Spin Spectrum returns.
Blackout Briefs returns.
And I’m also committing to at least one post per week tracking the progression of The War After War, what I’m learning, what I’m changing, what I’m discovering.
Author Room
The Author Room itself is open to everyone, but the direct-excerpt section will be paywalled, so paid members get the draft pages, rewrites, and the behind-the-scenes choices that turn history into narrative.
Don’t let the Friday dump bury the best work
One more time, because I mean it, y’all.
If you haven’t read “Harvard’s New Feminism,” please do.
It’s the standard I’m holding myself to going forward.
Read it here: Harvard’s New Feminism
Thank you for being here.
If this Rollup helped your nervous system relax a lil bit, pass it to one person who’s been drowning in noise.
And if you’re able, go paid. Not as charity. As a trade. You buy me time to keep doing the receipts work, and I keep this place open for the people who cannot.
Either way, stay close. Clarity is contraband now.
I think you should do what you're comfortable with. I would hope that readers respectfully take what they desire, and leave whatever they're uninterested in behind. That's the beauty of scrolling. It's your column. But, I strongly feel that if we don't read uncomfortable truths, we're really not learning or broadening our scope of understanding. The reason I am here is because I'm interested in what you have to say. Not because I simply “approve” of your thoughts and ideology.
I'm grateful for the knowledge you possess and time you take to compose and share it with the rest of us. I feel smarter after reading your Substack. 🤔
When it comes to Substack, this quote best describes me, so consider the source:
"I don't know sh*t about f*ck". -Ruth from "Ozark".
You can't turn off chat. Not a good look conducive to open debate or discussion.
But you can't have promoters or trolls running the rails either.
Good luck with your choice. I enjoy your work.