Has It Been 15 Years?

Around this time in 2008, right around when I thought it would be a good idea to jump on every social media platform that had cropped up at that point, I published Flagrant Foul. This, of course, was the updated version from what I had originally sent out into the world in 2006, which was kind of silly because at the time, the story wasn’t really finished and I didn’t have any kind of way to promote it.

My original site, then FlagrantFoul.com (which I can’t tell you how dumb I feel for letting that domain name go), was basically a static set of pages. The Quest, which was the name of the blog I had created, was on Google’s Blogger platform.

It’s amazing how much time has passed and you don’t even realize it. I had ambitions to complete what I called the Stories From the Forester, and had put Dilemma out. But I’ve never really gotten around to finishing the rest of the stories and instead focused on The Gray Summer. I’d eventually get that out in 2017 after spending nearly as much time as George R. R. Martin has on the Winds of Winter, then subsequently pull the e-book version because I realized that people would need a spreadsheet to keep track of the stories.

The whole time, I’ve messed around with a hodge-podge of story ideas that haven’t really progressed in a while. Meanwhile, whatever I’ve done as an author has been washed away by my primary social media platform, Twitter, turning into a place that I should have permanently left a long time ago in not for my podcast, the HoriZone Roundtable. Most of the people I interacted with back in 2008 have either left the platform or turned into people I didn’t really want to talk to all that much. Such is the nature of things, I suppose.

Ironically, I find myself in the same spot I was when I started my author site back in 2006. Twitter has chosen to make us all manually tweet our posts because they’re stupid and greedy. I’ve been off of Facebook since 2011, which was before it became terrible. And the flux of new social media platforms has be scrambling to create accounts that I may or may not use, depending on whether or not they’ll be around in a year. That’s kind of my speed, though. Anyone even remember Ello or tsu.me? How about Google+? Does Ning even exist anymore?

So realistically, the only people who will read this particular post will, in all likelihood, be the 20 people who currently follow me on Mastodon, unless I get around to writing a tweet about this. In effect, I’m pretty much just talking to myself.

What’s next? Who’s to say? I tweet a lot less, mostly because we pretty much witness the same circular arguments over and over again, and only the assholes really ever think they win in this scenario. Writing hasn’t been much of a priority lately, but I do poke my head out from time to time (like now, for instance) to jot down my thoughts. Podcasting remains my thing, which for anyone that knows me kind of tracks.

As for Flagrant Foul, well, it’s still available and for sale on Lulu. I’d rather you go there than Amazon these days, but that’s only because I want you to avoid the toolbox who gave me a one-star review. Also, I only get 11 cents a book from there now. Ouch.