STEP ONE: Read this awesome story I wrote.
STEP TWO: Notice some "typos," which we may call "bugs" if we are feeling whimsical. It is easy to deduce what letters the weird digits and punctuation are replacing. They spell out "BUG-SIZED CHARACTER IN TH." So this is not the complete message, probably.
STEP THREE: Read up on the real story "The Gold-Bug" by Edgar Allan Poe. It features a simple substitution cipher that uses a bunch of digits and punctuation. Use this to decode the "bugs" in the story and get "E DEATH-BUG BY RYAN VEEDER."
STEP FOUR: Find the story "The Death-Bug 💀" by Ryan Veeder. It is difficult to google, for some reason (maybe because of the emoji in the title), but shouldn't be impossible to find. The fake URL at the top of the puzzle text is supposed to be some sort of clue.
STEP FIVE: Read this frankly inexplicable story that I wrote eight years ago. Oh my gosh, it's almost exactly eight years to the day! How do you like that? Well, the bug-sized character is TINKERBELL.