‘Escape Into History’ Publication Bursts Through Its First Month

What was I thinking?!?

Image by Linda Acaster: part of the Ring of Brodgar prehistoric stone circle on Orkney, UK — complete with hideous title font.

Ever since joining Medium and following Zulie Rane’s how-to YouTube videos, I’ve considered owning a personal publication. Yet I’m not a prolific writer, and for it to work the publication would need a theme. Mmm. Better, I thought, to bide my time and increase my skills set.

It was with the pulling from the platform of History of Yesterday and Time Trekker that the needed theme stared accusingly from my profile list: all those history stories I’d written now had no home. Wouldn’t they look better in one place, separated into historical periods? Of course they would.

Two stories under PreHistory. L: 5,200 year old Newgrange Passage Tomb, Ireland. R: 3,000 year old Uffington White Horse, England

Escape Into History began to take shape, focusing on places I’d visited in the British Isles and its near neighbours. It launched at the beginning of August.

What was I thinking?!? Midsummer is the busiest part of my year, packed with visitors and excursions, holidays and gardening. It would have helped if I hadn’t accepted as gospel various Medium stories extolling ‘create your own publication in less than ten minutes’. It would have helped if Medium’s Help pages had more than a nodding…