With the rights to the website in place, and working frantically as often as I could in my spare time, I was making headway.
But how should I release it? I didn’t want to just say “hey, check this out!” and send a mass email. I had to create suspense and intrigue; enough to keep people engaged but not so much that they felt like they were wasting their time.
As I continued working a few things started lining up. It was early 2003 and in April a couple of things would happen.
- April 13 would mark the anniversary of the “death” of Maid Appleton, or the loss of the original juice box
- I would be travelling back East to spend time with a friend
- April 15 – Tax Day
I decided to use all of these together and create a series of emails that would inform people of the unveiling of a big “secret”. Some people knew I would be spending time with a female friend back East and so they might think some relationship reveal might be coming. Only Tom knew the date of death of Maid Appleton since she was with him when it happened. I was relying on the fact that he wouldn’t remember it as it had been a year before. The last would be to hope people would think it was something to do with Tax Day.
The only problem was Tax Day is on the 15th and Maid Appleton died on April 13. There was a difference of 2 days. The way around this would be to release “Email # of 15” instead of “Day # of 15”.
Within each email would be a “hint” or a reference to some travel that I had done. Of course I would realize what was going on, but I figured no one else would have any idea.
Click a link to see each of the 15 Emails I sent out leading up to the announcement release of MaidAppleton.com.