ORNA ROSS READER CLUB: What You Need to Know
Join my club for readers: Beta reading, advance editions, discounts and specials, monthly live salon with me and other authors, community chat... and more.
Welcome! Pull up a chair by the fire in this corner of Substack for people who love creative living and books—especially fiction and poetry.
Embers & Ink is not a ‘content drop’, or a ‘keep up or fall behind’ subscription. I write in forms that reward slow reading—serial fiction, inspirational poems, reflective essays for readers and writers—and the reader club is where we enjoy a multi-layered conversation about it all.
Conversation between you and me. Between you and the work. Between you and other readers and subscribers. Between you and yourself.
Think of this space as one of those old English clubs with marble fireplaces and cushy armchairs and shelves of well-read books, but with all of us welcome within.
Or a quiet, creative centre, with empty wooden floors, candles alight, and a bell calling you back to yourself.
Or a fire-pit gathering under open sky, a ring of faces watching a dances to ancient music.
Visualise Embers & Ink as any kind of fire that feeds our flame… so we can make a positive mark on the world, together.
What you receive as a reader club member
Welcoming reading room with exclusive specials
Monthly creative salon with other readers and writers—ask me anything.
Advance reader copies (ARCs) of all my books before publication
Weekly fiction episodes
Paid subscriber chatroom full of movers and groovers
And, for Deluxe Members:
A special deluxe edition of each new book
How to Join: Click here and choose paid or deluxe
Then do three things:
Introduce yourself in the chat: tell me and the other members what you love to read, what you’re trying to create in your life, what brought you here.
Manage your subscription in your account settings to choose your preferences.
More details below but whatever lights your fire, however you’ve arrived, and however long you stay, please know that you are so very, very welcome.
A Club for Everyone
You don’t need to be an author, or a creative or creativist, to join the reader club. Though there are lots of writers and other creative types here, and I write a monthly post for authors, the bulk of my members are readers.
This is a welcoming and easygoing space. There’s a lot going on but you’re invited to pick and mix, focus or wander, at will.
You don’t need to attend the salons, or read the serialised novel, or join in the chat, if they’re not your thing. You don’t need to read every book, or every post.
One of the things I love most about Substack is how it lets readers pick and choose— follow the fiction or poetry, essays or advice, podcast or salon, whatever suits best.
So follow the thread of a serialised story, dip into an essay, let a poem land, join a live salon, drop a comment in Notes—whatever your spirit fancies in that moment.
And leave the rest.
My Themes and Sections
Serialised fiction: Read my next novel, now
I’m publishing my next novel in instalments here on Substack, with an episode or two delivered each week, giving you that old-fashioned pleasure of delayed gratification. Also behind-the-scenes context: research notes, character dilemmas, and the occasional ‘how on earth am I going to land this?’
If you fancy being close to a work as it’s being made, not just reading the finished product, you’ll love this.
Poetry Picks: One of mine and one of yours
Each week I bring you a reading of a new poem from me and one from another Substack poet.
Poetry is where I go to tell the truth without explaining myself to death. If you’re willing to be moved by a few well-placed words, this section’s for you.
Articles for authors: My publishing life
I also write posts for authors from the perspective of a proud indie author and founder-director of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).
What I offer here is not advice (find that through the ALLi Member Desk and Forum and in the Self-Publishing Advice Centre and Store). Here it’s my personal experiences and opinions, inspired by my ALLi work, of course, but through the lens of my own writing and publishing experience, across fiction, nonfiction guides for authors and creatives, and poetry books.
For you, if you’re a writer as well as a reader.
Notes: More, more, more
I use Notes—Substack’s social-media stream, the more informal, in-the-moment space—to offer more. More motivation, more magic, and more about me and my books. Notes that are more personal, more reflective, or too tender for the big wide world are subscriber only.
Chat & Monthly Salon: Creative community
Reader members get access to my chatroom where we can talk together, in text and live audio, about books and poetry and what it takes to create them. And what it takes to create any good thing in this world. Some people are chatty. Others lurk. All are welcome.
I also run a once monthly creative salon, where we explore some aspect of creative or creativist living in depth.
Extras, early releases, and member offers
Members also receive subscriber exclusives, early releases, offers and discounts on my books, first notice of events, launches, and special editions and more.