I’ve been away from the social media for a bit. There was a holiday, effort around trying to finish my next Lukie book, Feral Night, (Revenant Records #2) book and getting it ready for release this year, getting stuck on a craft post I wanted to write about different fantasy species, trying to figure out how to use social media to connect with others and feeling overwhelmed by it all. And then when I’m overwhelmed by something, I pull back, and focus on other things.

And now I’m all refreshed, and chill, and feel like talking to the internet again. For social media, comes down to, well, not what has good reach and connections, but more like, what is fun for me to use?

So, what do I enjoy doing? Well, writing blog articles, it turns out. I don’t enjoy memes, and if I use cartoons, I’d prefer to draw my own. (I did do some drawing courses this year, and now have Procreate on the iPad and some terrible artwork, so something to try out later on.) The plan is to blog, cross-post, share, see how it goes.

How often can I do it? A weekly blog post is reasonable, so I’ll start with that for now. Social media Sunday! I’ve also hooked up my blog to the Fediverse so you can follow that your favorite fedi platform. I strongly believe in the power of open source social media, especially with the way other platforms are going so I’ve hooked up this blog to ActivityPub protocol, just as another way of getting this out there.

And while it’s different from blogging on my blog and its little downstream sources, I’m going to mess around with Instagram. Basically, after attending a few author conferences, it appears to be ‘where it’s at’ and I’ll give it a shot for a few months to see how it goes. I’ve set up an account over here as well.

Pipeline

This is what I’d like to focus on with coming posts:

• Launching book 2, with a mix of business reflections, and some character updates and reviews.
• Getting my dormant roleplaying game for the Vestiges of Magic in development again. I did a big playtest mid-year, lots of things broke, and I never wanted to look at the draft again. In fact, I was going—perhaps I could rebuild it in another system! Then I used a cut down version of the system for a local game convention and it ran well in that use-case. After a few months off, I’m looking at the draft again and it’s easier to see what to fix and what repair.
• Craft post about fantasy species, racism and so forth. I think I’ve figured out the angle I want to use for this.

Anyway, if this post has a message, it’s about taking a break and coming back to a stuck project with fresh eyes.