Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 20

Should You Pay For Twitter’s New Blue Check?

No.

…

Wait, you want more than that?

Umm, how about, “fuck no?”

…

Shit no? Hell no? Oh god no, and why the absolute crap would you bother?

Okay, that’s not helpful.

In case you’ve been hiding under a social media rock (which would actually be very wise)… Twitter finally, after what felt like decades of threats, removed the old-school Verified Blue Checks (which were actually white, btw) from us Fancy Verified Blue Check People. They did so on what seemed to be the basis that those with such checkmarks were corrupt corps d’élite who had — I guess? — bullied their way into the limitless power that the Blue Check afforded. This was of course nonsense; verification was literally what it said it was, a badge verifying that the person you were talking to was the person they said they were. That’s not to say Twitter didn’t fuck that all up before Musk Melon came along. They did, in that they were erratic about who got them, how you got one, and so forth. It wasn’t a corrupt system, but it was certainly an inept one.

Orlon Husk then instituted some kind of pay-for-play verification badge that… provided dubious benefits? It gave you algorithmic value, supposedly, though some people have suggested it didn’t really do anything. It was supposed to give you priority too in what might’ve been the FYP, but again, not sure that actually happened. Is there an edit button? And “long” book-length tweets? I guess. Whatever. Point was, it’s eight bucks a month, which is to say, the cost of some streaming services. On the one hand, you could pay that amount to consume content from NBC. On the other hand, you could pay that amount to be content. Which is what Musk seems to gravely misunderstand about the platform: it is made of people. It is not of value by itself. It is only of value when people are on it, and if people have to pay to be on it, then its value shifts — the value becomes access to all the people, but that only works if all the people pay for it.

It’s a huge gamble based on a very bad understanding of social media. In part because it is the contributions to that social platform in the form of content that provide value — it’s not the dollars, it’s the sense.

The other irony is, the blue check was valuable because it (ostensibly, falsely) marked you as the aforementioned elite — but if anybody can pay for it, and the people who got it before are now getting them taken away, elite isn’t elite anymore. You’re not the band, you’re just wearing the t-shirt.

Twitter was able to for free attract huge celebrities to its platform and for free have those people provide for free content to that platform. That cannot be understated — authors, actors, politicians, journalists, all part of the feed, heaving up free content on behalf of the feed.

And now, Musk wants to charge them for the privilege.

Which, okay, whatever. The notion here is, I guess, “they aren’t special, they’re just like everybody else,” except of course now Musk is paying for the blue checks of some celebrities anyway in the hopes you’re convinced that Stephen King and LeBron James are paying for theirs. (And they aren’t.)

It’s all very goofy.

So, should you pay for one?

Well, obviously, that’s up to you, but why would you?

Let’s unpack the reasons you shouldn’t.

First, Twitter fucking sucks right now. It wasn’t amazing before? For real, it’s been getting wonky for years. But now, the wheels are rattling off the thing, and it’s turned into a Nazi Bar. It’s not great. Nobody’s having much fun. It’s mostly just doom and weird ads running on an infomercial scroll. It’s buggy and inconsistent. Musk gets priority. Weirdos show in your feed. It’s ass. It’s a boat that may not be sinking, exactly, but it’s taking on water and there’s norovirus in every corner, so being on that boat for free is already a dubious proposition. Paying for it feels like hitting yourself in the nuts with a wrench.

Second, I’m not sure Twitter Blue is even helping anybody. Knowing a few folks who experimented with it, it didn’t seem to provide much value. Engagement is still throttled, and even if it’s boosted, it’s boosted into the existing dumpster fire that is Twitter. It’s like buying billboard advertising space in the middle of the apocalypse. You’re not getting a deal.

Which is to say —

Ennnh I really don’t want to judge the Twitter Blue folks but I’m gonna judge you a little bit. And so is everyone else. There’s a stink on it. Some people will think you’re a Musk Fanboy or a Nazi, which, hey, I understand probably isn’t the case. But in the probably best case scenario, they’re going to think you’re a bit of a chump for kicking in to help fund Musk’s Ongoing Embarrassment Parade. It seems like a bad idea and so, paying in feels like a chump move.

Further, and arguably more important than the optics, are the ethics. Is it… good to fund this? Musk is currently shepherding a platform that is becoming even more hostile to trans people and to other marginalized communities. He’s taking personal requests from the worst people, some of whom apparently are named after pet feces. He’s inviting Literal Actual Nazis back in, letting them have blue checks, letting them advertise right into your feed. Hate speech is up — way, way up, in fact. I’m not suggesting this means you should abandon the platform — more on that in a moment — but it certainly feels a little weird to give them money to continue doing this.

Listen, there’s definitely no ethical consumption under capitalism. You are inevitably giving money to awful people and helping to make the world worse when you spend money. You put gas in your car, you buy plastic bottles, whatever. Anybody who watched The Good Place (which you should do, if you have not) gets the sentiment: the point system is rigged and our actions have endless unseen consequences. We buy a Nestle Crunch on Tuesday, and a megadrought ravages California on Thursday.

That said —

There are also foreseen consequences, the kind where you just give money to an awful person to allow them to promote more awfulness. It’s the JKR problem — sure, you may really love Harry Potter, you’re Team Hufflenuts or whatever, but the money you give to her is going into her pocket, then out of her pocket, and potentially into helping boost or even fund anti-trans voices and efforts.

No, we cannot With Individual Actions save the world, but one might argue we also can at least withhold those Individual Actions from making things worse.

Is this that? Does contributing to Twitter Blue make the world worse? I don’t know. I certainly think it elevates Musk and his profile and helps him make a little hay off a platform he’s actively shitting up. I think it rewards that behavior. I’d personally not feel comfortable giving him that money, just as I’d suggest you should not give money to JKR. But your mileage may of course vary, and maybe for you Twitter Blue is a survivability factor. Maybe you think you need it to stay relevant and be seen. I’d argue it won’t help as much as you think it will, and I’d also suggest that the vibe around the blue check now is that it’s going to create visible stink vapors around those who use it — but maybe it won’t.

For my mileage, I’m not paying for it.

I’d say I won’t judge you for paying for it, but let’s be real, it doesn’t matter. Someone is going to judge you for it, for better or for worse.

Also, eight bucks a month could buy you ice cream, or you could give it to a charity, or whatever. Better spent, I suspect.

(The other question then is: should you leave Twitter? I’m not, but I’m also not really using it to provide content. Mostly, it’s an apocalyptic stock-ticker, and an effective one. I see news there and advocacy/activism that I don’t really see anywhere else, as yet. But it’s also not fun. I do not enjoy it. For enjoyment, I go to Instagram or Mastodon currently, and am at the other platforms too, less so. For doomscrolling, though, you still can’t beat Twitter. Midnight inches ever closer, and Twitter offers us the best seats in the house.)

Announcing: Monster Movie!

MONSTER MOVIE!

(The exclamation point is important.)

Anyway, hey! I’m writing more middle grade! And it’s coming out next fall! Exclamation points ahoy! Thanks to my agent, Stacia Decker for brokering the deal with Deirdre Jones at LBYR, I’m excited to have this out in front of readers young and old. It’s the story of a boy who is frightened to go see what he’s heard is “the scariest movie ever made,” even though his whole class is sneaking out to watch it — and it turns out, he has good reason to worry, because the movie is the monster.

No pre-order link available, and cover won’t be out for a while — er, honestly, I still have to finish up the book.

I’m also currently finishing page proofs for Black River Orchard, but the ARCs of that have started to go out and I think are appearing digitally on NetGalley, so that’s nice. It’s a big scary book about evil apples taking over a small town, and hopefully people dig that, too.

That’s out 9/26, and you can pre-order in all the places you’re able to, and you can be sure I’ll do signed copies through Doylestown Bookshop.

Also out (even sooner!) is Gentle Writing Advice, also available through Doylestown if you want me to SCANDALIZE your book with my HERETICAL YET ENTICING SCRAWL. I mean, I can also be encouraging, I guess. Pssh.

ANYWAY, them’s the news. Gotta get back to the word mines. Bye.

The Pixel Project: Five Really Good Reasons to Give to the Read For Pixels Campaign this Sexual Assault Awareness Month

*steps into Chuck’s Terrible Minds blog. Chuck gives the thumbs up signal to get started*

Thank you, Chuck! *clears throat awkwardly* Greetings, everybody! Can y’all hear me? Yes? Right – let’s get this started:

The Pixel Project, a 501(c)3 anti-violence against women nonprofit, has been running our Read For Pixels program since September 2014 when Chuck himself, Joe Hill, Sarah J. Maas, and nine other award-winning bestselling SF/F, Horror, and YA authors helped us reach out to their readers and fandoms about violence against women (VAW) and raise funds to keep our anti-VAW work alive.

Little did we know that that inaugural Read For Pixels livestream series and fundraiser would be a resounding success. Now, over 220 author livestreams, 80+ AMAs, 19 fundraisers, and 1 Shirley Jackson Award-nominated short story charity anthology later, we are continuing to build a trove of accessible resources about VAW for geeks, book lovers, fandoms, parents, teachers, and kids worldwide as well as leveraging the power of genre fiction and storytelling to educate people about VAW. Authors, editors, publishers, and agents have also helped us raise approximately $10,000 per year by providing exclusive goodies as giveaways for readers, fans, and book collectors who donate to support our work.

You’re probably thinking: “Ooooh! I’ll go check it out. So why the guest post on Chuck’s blog?”

The short answer: “This [insert expletive of your choice] year called twenty twenty-three”.

Like many small nonprofits, we are continuing to fight the good fight while navigating the ongoing fallout from the pandemic and spiraling global inflation in 2023. Women’s organizations have experienced decades of scarce funding for the overall women’s rights movement and women’s human rights are often one of the first casualties in turbulent times such as these. So, with our current Read For Pixels fundraiser progressing at a snail’s pace like Grogu toddling along attempting to keep up with Mando (it’s been a month and we’re stuck at $3,175, which is only part of the way to our modest $5,000 goal), you can imagine our growing concern. While we are 100% volunteer-staffed, we do have bills to pay so we can keep our campaigns, programs, and services running.

Chuck being the kind soul that he is, received our call for help and basically paraphrased “Mi casa es su casa”, then published this blog post to boost the signal for our fundraiser.

So here I am, as Sexual Assault Awareness Month 2023 kicks off, presenting five really good reasons why you should consider giving to our fundraiser to help get us to our $5,000 finish line by our extended deadline of April 30th 2023:

Really Good Reason to Give #1: Support access to life-saving information for victims and survivors of VAW… while slaying your summer reading list

One of the core services that The Pixel Project provides is bridging the information gap that victims and survivors encounter when trying to get help. Programs such as our daily helpline retweet session on Twitter, which tweets out domestic violence and rape/sexual assault helplines for women in 205 countries worldwide from 8.00PM to midnight Eastern Time, 24/7, 365 days a year.  We also respond to individuals contacting us for help, doing the research legwork to provide them with information about specific victim assistance services in their part of the world.

THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: When you donate to us, you can also start adding to your summertime TBR pile. From signed rare or 1st editions from authors’ personal stashes to mystery book boxes by publishers large and small, we have bookish treats in various genres for every donation level. And while you’re trying out new authors or appreciating your acquisition for your book collection, also bask in the glow of knowing that your donation will be going towards keeping our programs and initiatives that connect victims and survivors of VAW with the help that they need.

Really Good Reason to Give #2: Support resources for educating folks about VAW… while getting your WIP workshopped

We have built an ever-expanding archive of over 200 resource articles to date about everything from how to stop street harassment to lists of organizations tackling everything from child marriage to MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women). Additionally, our website has beginner-level primers about different types of VAW, including violence against trans women and obstetric violence and our Facebook page is an excellent just-in-time source for the latest headlines and articles about VAW.

THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: If you are a budding author who is thinking of making a donation, we have a stellar line-up of Read For Pixels authors offering critique bundles for WIPs (works-in-progress), including Adiba Jaigirdar (Contemporary YA), Chloe Liese (Romance), Karen Odden (Historical Mysteries), Kathryn Purdie (YA Fantasy), and Romina Garber (YA Fantasy in English or Spanish). Some have a post-critique video chat bundled in; some welcome writing pairs; others allow for up to five questions via email from the donor about the critique. Enjoy knowing that while you are getting expert help for your WIP, you’re also supporting the creation and growth of online resources for educating folks around the world about VAW.

Really Good Reason to Give #3: Support online platforms for people to speak up about VAW… while shooting the breeze with your favorite author

A key pillar of our activism and advocacy work is providing digital platforms that are safe spaces for people from different walks of life to speak up about VAW. In April 2022, we hosted the Giving The Devil His Due blog tour featuring book bloggers using our first charity anthology to speak up about VAW during Sexual Assault Awareness Month. We also offer VAW survivors and dads who are male allies opportunities to speak up via blog interview initiatives such as the Survivor Stories blog interview series and the Voices of Dads Against VAW interview series.

THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: While your donation keeps our platforms available for folks to speak up about VAW, you can enjoy a chat with your favorite author in the name of supporting a good cause. For this fundraiser, Swati Teerdhala (YA Fantasy), Kimberly Belle (Crime/Thriller), Karen Odden (Historical Mystery), and Liz Williams (Fantasy) are all happy to have a video chat with donors to natter about everything from books and writing to furbabies and geeky hobbies. These video chats are open to individual donors and groups – fan friends, book clubs or library groups are also welcome to pool together the donation to get one or more of these chat sessions. 

Really Good Reason to Give #4: Shine a light on anti-VAW activists and advocates worldwide… while surprising your geeky loved ones with cool treats

Part of our work involves shining a spotlight on how anti-VAW advocates, activists, and organizations worldwide are changing the world for women and girls, as well as their ideas about what people can do to help stop VAW in their communities and countries. Our Inspirational Interviews series has been running for a decade and counting. We also run topical sessions with anti-VAW advocates and activists speaking about their work and educating people about VAW.

THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: If you have a geeky friend or family member with a birthday coming up and you see a Read For Pixels goodie offered by their favorite author available on our fundraising page, donate to snag that unique treat and delight them while supporting signal boosts for anti-VAW activists and advocates. BONUS: You’ll have an interesting story to tell them about where the gift came from. It might even be a great opener for chatting with them about VAW.

Really Good Reason to Give #5: Support the right of women and girls to live a life without VAW… while your donation benefits TWO anti-VAW nonprofits

Nearly 1 in 3 women and girls worldwide experience some form of VAW in their lifetime. In terms of domestic violence alone, over 1 in 4 women under 50 have experienced physical or sexual violence from a male partner. So donate to our fundraiser because you believe in supporting efforts to prevent, stop, and end VAW. Whether you can give us $5 or $500 to help us reach our $5,000 goal, every dollar counts.

THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: If you choose Mystery/Thriller author Carol Goodman’s THE NIGHT VISITORS $50/$50 Matching Donation treat, your $50 donation will not just support our work but Carol will make sure your impact is doubled by donating $50 in your name to the domestic violence shelter run by Family of Woodstock in Ulster County, New York, USA where she volunteers.

(And even if you don’t choose Carol’s treat, when you donate to us, please also consider donating either cash or supplies to your local rape crisis center to honour Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Like us, they need all the help they can get.)

It’s time to stop violence against women. Together.

***

Interested in checking out The Pixel Project’s anti-violence against women work? Visit us at https://www.thepixelproject.net/

Interested in checking out our Read For Pixels fundraiser and making a donation to help keep our work alive? Go here .

***

Regina Yau is the founder and president of The Pixel Project, a virtual volunteer-led global 501(c)3 nonprofit organization on a mission to raise awareness, funds and volunteer power for the cause to end violence against women at the intersection of social media, new technologies, and popular culture/the Arts. A Rhodes Scholar with a double Masters in Women’s Studies and Chinese Studies, she has a lifelong commitment to fighting for women’s rights. In addition to running The Pixel Project, Regina also teaches English to middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, writes stories about cheeky little fox spirits and terrorist chickens, and bakes far too many carb-and-sugar-loaded goodies.

Montana Book Company Is Fighting The Good Fight On Trans Visibility Day (And Every Day)

Hey, so here’s a cool thing: Montana Book Company, a truly excellent bookstore in the heart of every LGBT-centered fight in the state of Montana, is marking today’s Trans Day of Visibility by donating a portion of today’s profits into a pot to continue the fight against discrimination in their state.

To quote the store directly —

“…during these legislative tough times we’re going to do what we do best…GIVE MONEY AWAY!!! A portion of Friday’s entire day of sales will go into a kitty that we will dole out to the appropriate organizations who take these anti-trans bills to court here in Montana. So come down and help us help the amazing people who are going to take these terrible laws on.”

Will they ship? They sure will.

Check them out here and please order something.

Do preorders count? WHY YES THEY DO. And here I casually note that you can preorder my upcoming books from them, should you so choose —

BLACK RIVER ORCHARD, and GENTLE WRITING ADVICE.

Might I also recommend buying books from Hailey Piper, Cassandra Khaw, Eric LaRocca, Charlie Jane Anders, Jadzia Axelrod, Mags Visaggio, Caitlin Kiernan?

Also give the store a follow over on Instagram.

TERFs can walk into the sea.

Support and love your trans friends and the trans community.

Donate to trans and LGBT charities. (Trans Lifeline, Trevor Project, Transgender Law Center, for example.)

Protect trans kids, and while we’re at it, protect trans adults, too, k?

James Bennett — Not All About Arthur: A Most Pleasant History

It befell in the days of Arthur Pendragon that there lived a thief and a lover of men called Tomas, the Red Rose Knight… When Tomas O’Lincoln, half-fairy and outlaw, learns that knights from Camelot hunt him in the forest, he fears he must pay for his crimes. Desperate for shelter, the Enchantress sends him on a reluctant quest to find his way to the Fortress Impenetrable, deep in the darkling heartwood. Only behind the high black walls of the Archimago’s castle will Tomas learn a Truth Most Vital and come face-to-face with his destiny… But is it a destiny he wants?

Bawdy, humorous and magical, ‘The Dust of the Red Rose Knight’ is a queer Arthurian romance from the acclaimed author of The Ben Garston Novels, in the finest tradition that never was.

‘A stylish Arthurian romp offering swords, sorcery and witches seen through a contemporary comic prism.’ — Juliet E McKenna

‘A joyous romp of a thing that will no doubt annoy all the right people. A most excellent addition to Arthurian legend.’ — James Oswald author of ‘The Inspector McLean’ novels

***

King Arthur never died. Oh, I know that the myths said he did, fallen to his bastard son at the Battle of Camlann and sleeping somewhere in a cave until a time when Britain needs him again. I explored as much in my post-Arthurian trilogy The Ben Garston Novels, published worldwide by Orbit Books. There is still so much to tell in that world, if not directly connected to those stories, and I thank kickass writer Chuck Wendig for letting me waffle about the subject here today.

As I prepared to release my sort-of-spinoff novelette The Dust of the Red Rose Knight, I considered the long history of Arthurian retellings and it was plain to see that, no, Arthur Pendragon, Dux Bellorum, the Bear, Subduer of Giants, Conqueror of Saxon and Pict, the King of All Logres, has been with us the whole time, one of our most abiding mythographies. These stories have always struck me as an example of the noblest heights of human endeavour, along with the peril of pursuing perfection, the poison of betrayal, and eventual downfall. All heady stuff!

Where did you first find Arthur? In the hills? Under a mountain? Travel in Britain and you’ll find Arthur everywhere, from old stones to pub signs to theme parks, each laying claim to our cherished national tradition. For me, I found Arthur in the pages of Susan Cooper’s seminal The Dark Is Rising sequence. Or perhaps in the tales of Roger Lancelyn Green. These tales themselves are retellings, of course, going back centuries to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859) and back again to Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) and again to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain (1136) and then spinning on into the mists of Welsh myth and who knows how many previous iterations? Arthur has paraded on screen, in music and in comic books throughout the modern era. Hell, you can buy tea towels that feature Arthur. Some historians even suppose that Arthur was a real person, a Romano-Celtic war leader who inspired all of these stories, which Monmouth greatly embellished to give the English nobility some form of numinous and indisputable source.

Yes, King Arthur has always been here, threaded in various shape and form through the famous works of Mark Twain, TH White, Mary Stewart, Rosemary Sutcliff and others. Innocent, martyr, tyrant, zombie (yes, I went there) and more… Visit any bookshop and you’ll find Arthur, most notably in recent times in Bernard Cornwell’s grounded outing The Winter King, Lavie Tidhar’s grimdark take in By Force Alone, the upcoming The Cleaving by Juliet McKenna and the magical gender-swapping of Nicola Griffth’s standout 2022 novel Spear. Fair to say that Arthur is hardly dozing under a rock somewhere. Nope. Our particularly British adaptation of the Bible myth (messiah, betrayal, reincarnation – it’s all there) has remained a central, vital and possibly immortal part of our collective cultural consciousness for age upon age.

We all know Arthur, don’t we? As a character, he’s impressive, a Chosen One from a backwater briar who pulled a sword from a stone and rose to a shimmering throne, but he’s perhaps too well-trodden to write about distinctly. Thankfully, there were offshoots from the central saga that have gone overlooked, forgotten, dusty and lingering on the fringes of classical literature. One such figure is Tom a Lincoln, that ‘ever renowned soldier’, the Red Rose Knight. The Most Pleasant History of Tom a Lincoln was an Arthurian oddity written in two parts in the late 16th and early 17th century by a (then) well-known Elizabethan writer called Richard Johnson. Johnson himself became more obscure than the character in question and not much is known about him these days. We know he lived in London, an apprentice and later freeman who was the author of chapbooks, almanacs and devotionals that featured the Nine Worthies and the Champions of Christendom, the fantastical adventures of the saints who served as the superheroes of the day. It seems that Johnson, popular at the time, is rather eclipsed by Shakespeare when it comes to our historical regard.

During the upheaval of the 17th century, the Arthurian tradition fell out of favour, with the notion of kings and queens itself coming under attack (and some overthrown and beheaded to boot). Back then, Arthur became more of a political device than a romantic one, the followers of James I heralding him as the ancestor and heir of the legendary king, a dubious claim at best. When James made a bid for absolute power, his fabled origin got trashed as a result with many insisting that Britain was in fact a Saxon nation, founded upon the ancient laws of those people, and thereby distancing themselves from a perceived Welsh and Celtic threat. As the dispute exploded into civil war, Arthur got ‘cancelled’ and all but vanished from the literary scene, sinking into the smoke and mists of history. Ironically, after 1634 saw the publication of Sir Thomas Malory’s weighty and tragic epic Le Morte d’Arthur, Arthur himself didn’t fully re-emerge from his cave for two whole centuries.

And Tom a Lincoln was politely forgotten. When you consider Johnson’s bastardisation of the original text, a winding yarn about a low-born hero, plus the non-canonical mash-up of mythical figures ranging from Prester John to Robin Hood (not to mention the themes of theft, adultery and cannibalism(!) in the tale), it isn’t hard to see why his prose was popular at the time, challenging as it does the divine right of kings and poking fun at the nobility. Nor why the prudish Victorians coughed behind their handkerchiefs and swept poor Tom under the rug. The grand revival of the myth in those times left the Red Rose Knight in the dust.

Today, scholars regard Tom in less than glowing terms. Seen through the lens of a modern perspective, The Most Pleasant History of Tom a Lincoln is admittedly critical of aristocracy, a misogynistic and staunchly anti-romantic outing that while reprinted several times in its own era was never going to make the cut in a more forward-thinking and inclusive world. But the figure of Tom himself remains fascinating nonetheless. If one were to draw on the essential threads of it, rework it into a modern retelling and naturally, queer it to kingdom come, then surely one might redeem the character – after a fashion – and present him afresh for today’s audiences.

Have to say, the idea appealed. When Alistair Sims of Books on the Hill contacted me about his ongoing ‘dyslexia-friendly books for adults’ campaign, I fired up my chaos engines and decided to have a crack at it. Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects reading and writing skills. The NHS estimates that up to 1 in every 10 people in the UK have some form of dyslexia, while other dyslexic organisations believe that more than 2 million people in the country are severely affected by the condition, from children to adults, and ostensibly many more worldwide. To call on major publishers to consider releasing dyslexia-friendly books struck me as an inclusive, progressive and noble cause, and the campaign has garnered much praise in the national press, attracting works from bestselling authors such as Peter James, Bernard Cornwell and Gareth Powell (Further information can be found here: https://www.booksonthehill.co.uk/dyslexic-friendly-books-for-adults-/)

And now it’s my turn with Tom a Lincoln. As a lifelong sufferer of dyscalculia, the numerical form of dyslexia, and with a love of all things Arthurian, I put my mind to writing something for the campaign. The result was The Dust of the Red Rose Knight, a fairy tale romp for adult readers in which I was able to retain Tom’s wayward, raunchy and fiercely independent character and send him forth on a brand new adventure. The historical resonance that Tom is doing so in a slender volume much like an Elizabethan chapbook isn’t lost on me. Our dubious hero gallops out of the past in red leather armour with a macaw feather stuck in his cap, mischief in his heart and an eye for the knights. At heart, this is a tale of gay emancipation, high adventure and derring-do, and it’s as gleefully anti-romantic as it gets in these terms. But what fun! And it’s such an honour to add, in my own small way, to the long, rich history of Arthurian retellings.

You see, Arthur isn’t dead. Far from it. Nor is Tom. Nor is any old story that finds a reader, brought back to life whenever we crack open a book.

I hope readers enjoy The Dust of the Red Rose Knight. Perhaps, if fortune is kind, then Tom a Lincoln will ride out again.

***

James Bennett is a British writer raised in Sussex and South Africa. His travels have furnished him with an abiding love of diverse cultures, history and mythology. His short fiction has appeared internationally and his debut novel ‘Chasing Embers’ was shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the British Fantasy Awards 2017. His latest fiction can be found in the well-received ‘The Book of Queer Saints’, BFS Horizons and The Dark magazine. Novella ‘The Dust of the Red Rose Knight’ comes out in March 2023 and a short story collection ‘Preaching to the Perverted’ is set to follow next year from esteemed publisher Lethe Press.

James lives in the South of Spain where he’s currently working on a new novel.

James Bennett: Twitter

The Dust of the Red Rose Knight: Amazon

Holy Crap, Kevin Hearne And I Are Coming To Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs, 4/28!

Psst. You wanna hang out with me and Kevin Hearne? Welp, we’re coming up to Saratoga Springs on April 28th to give a talk at Northshire Bookstore. (Details here.) We will chat, and then answer questions, and then sign some books, birds, babies, anything you bring that starts with the letter ‘b.’ It’ll be great. You should come by! We put on a whole show, and by “whole show,” I mean, we’ll probably talk about tacos and cocktails? Whatever, it’ll be great.

So, nab your tickets now. Five bucks goes toward the price of one of our books. They will have books for sale, and you can also bring books from home because, well, we know we’ve got a lot of them out there.

SEE YOU SOON, FRANDOS.

No, I Still Don’t Have Anything To Do With The Publisher Lawsuit Against The Internet Archive

Given recent news, and given that any time such news tends to surface, it feels like it’s time for my semi-annual reminder that I have nothing to do with the lawsuit against the Internet Archive, which I said last year, and also, a whole bunch of times before that. To reiterate what I said then:

I am not leading the lawsuit.

I did not inspire the lawsuit.

I am not its ringleader or its kickstarter.

I did not influence the lawsuit.

I have never been a part of it. At all.

I do not support the lawsuit.

I recognize the convenience of having a single person to place at the bottom of the shit-funnel. But despite that convenience, I am not the person behind any of this, in any way. And as I’ve noted before, you’re helping publishers by making me the face of this. They skate. I catch hell. I recognize that it’s a lot easier to blame me, and that schadenfreude is a helluva drug. But I assure you, my Bad Tweet — which I posted during a very bad time, which is to say, at the start of pandemic lockdowns, when everybody felt like yellowjacket wasps at the end of summer — was not in any way a contributing factor to the publishing lawsuit. We were trapped in our houses. Things were weird. Everybody was nervous. Writers and artists and freelancers had no idea what was going to happen next. We were bleaching our broccoli and washing our hands bloody. It was fucked up. Sorry.

As such, there is this continued assertion that I somehow campaigned against the IA, or that I led this charge, and I assure you, I didn’t. I didn’t email my publishers. I didn’t “get the ball rolling.” Publishers don’t listen to me. My impact on their decisions is zero. I don’t control them, don’t influence them, don’t even factor into their plans (and if I was that powerful, I’d have a very different career right now). I joined a chorus and tweeted without thinking, because writers were upset and so I got upset, too. That’s sometimes how social media goes. I said it was a mistake a long time ago and I continue to say it was a mistake now.

Here, you’ll find Chris Freeland of the Internet Archive kindly noting that, again, I’m not involved.

Or, Jason Scott, also of the IA:

I understand you want this invaluable resource to remain, and the good news is, there are ways to continue your support of the Internet Archive that don’t involve me. You can find the full text of the Fight for the Future letter here, and you can also go to where the Internet Archive lists ways to help. One of those ways is donating, as I have done before and have done again, today, to support them. (And while we’re at it, support your local libraries, who are under assault from conservative forces in this country, same as schools are, for supporting LGBT folks and other marginalized communities. Further, libraries are also often quite fucked by publishers, so they need that help as often as you can give it.)

Anyway, if you support this IA?

Then this is how you help them. Signal boost them, give them time and, when possible, give them money. Going after me is the opposite — as Jason Scott notes, it does not make you an ally to the IA. You’re doing work for the other side. Go and support the archive. They are appealing, and need your help.

So, go help if you can.

Black River Orchard Preorder Deal Plus Other Sundry Shenanigans

Right now, the lovely Gibson’s Bookstore is running a pre-order sale on books — which means you can in fact get BLACK RIVER ORCHARD from them at 25% off. Which you should do. Because otherwise you will make the apples MAD.

BIG MAD.

Click here to pre-order. They will send directly to you! It’s like magic! BOOK MAGIC. And the goal too is to do an event at Gibson’s for this book in the fall, by the way. No dates or anything concrete as yet, so more as I know it.

SPEAKING OF COOL EVENTS

Hey, who’s going to be talking with Lucy Snyder at Doylestown Bookshop on Monday, March 13th? It’s-a-me. We’ll be talking her newest, Sister Maiden Monster, out from Tor. Event details here.

(Also, though it’s not confirmed, I maaaaayyyyy also be doing an event there with Clay McLeod Chapman in June. More as I know it.)

And did you see the cool panel I did with P. Djeli Clark, Delilah Dawson, CJ Leede, and Jonathan Sims? Moderated by our collective Horror Mother, Sadie Hartmann? Go watch!

Finally, hey, the Italian-language edition of Wanderers is out, cover here:

A.I. and the Fetishization Of Ideas

In writing and in dispensing my (very dubious, probably shady) writing advice, I am often keen to note that ideas are bullshit. Most writers treat them like precious gems when really, ideas are like costume jewelry: it’s all about how you wear them. It comes up because a lot of younger or untested writers I meet are all about The Idea. And they ascribe failures to finish with failing to have a Good Idea. They sometimes don’t even start to write because they cannot even summon a Good Idea. And the reverse can be true, too: sometimes, The Idea feels like enough. These writers have An Idea, and they’ll tell it to you, and then it’s like — well, they’re done. That’s it. They have ideated. The cool part is over. Lightning struck! They are complete.

But again, the idea is a seed, that’s it. Ideas are certainly useful, but only so far. A good idea will not be saved by poor execution, but a bad idea can be saved by excellent execution. Even simple, pedestrian ideas can be made sublime in the hands of a powerful craftsman or artist. Not every idea needs to be revolutionary. Every idea needn’t be that original — I don’t mean to suggest the plagiarism is the way to go, I only mean in the general sense, it’s very difficult (and potentially impossible) to think of a truly original story idea that hasn’t in some form been told before. The originality in a narrative comes from you, the author, the artist. The originality comes out in the execution.

It is there in the effort.

(And any writer or artist will surely experience the fact that the execution of an idea helps to spawn more new ideas within the seedbed of that singular garden. Put differently, driving across country is so much more than plugging the directions into Google Maps — when the rubber meets road, when you meet obstacles, when there are sights to see, you change the journey and the journey changes you, because choices must be made.)

And herein lies the problem with the sudden surge and interest in artificial intelligence. AI-generated creativity isn’t creativity. It is all hat, no cowboy: all idea, no execution. It in fact relies on the obsession with, and fetishization of, THE IDEA. It’s the core of every get-rich-quick scheme, the basis of every lazy entrepreneur who thinks he has the Next Big Thing, the core of every author or artist or creator who is a “visionary” who has all the vision but none of the ability to execute upon that vision. Hell, it’s the thing every writer has heard from some jabroni who tells you, “I got this great idea, you write it, we’ll split the money 50/50, boom.” It is the belief that The Idea is of equal or greater importance than the effort it takes to make That Idea a reality.

AI-generation relies on the idea, and executes upon it. (Often poorly — it can’t draw hands, it can’t help plagiarizing, it can’t not spit out the biases of its makers. Though note: it’ll get much, much better going forward. Its errors will become more invisible, and thus, more pernicious until it’s too late.) This sudden interest in AI has no interest in work. It has all the interest in doubling down on the fetishization of idea — like Tony Stark or Shuri in the MCU, all you have to do is — y’know, besides being rich — tell your free-roaming artificial intelligence friend to simulate a wormhole or design a new weapon, and it’ll do it. Who needs actual science? Who cares about effort? Just give Ultron the instructions and he’ll make it so. Who needs execution? Who needs institutional knowledge? Who needs hands-on experience? All you need is A GREAT IDEA and COOL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and you’re off to the races, baby.

When it comes to making art and telling stories, the working writer and the working artist know the idea is really just a phantom. It’s something under the floorboards or behind the drywall. Present, yes, maybe even foundational, but the idea isn’t the house. Further, it’s certainly not the home. It’s more than just the keystone, more even than the structure you build around it. It’s in the choices made, it’s in the people who live in that house, the stories they experience inside it, and though this metaphor is definitely running away with itself, hopefully my point is clear — storytelling isn’t just a structure. It isn’t just physics, or a spreadsheet to fill out, or a series of data points on a graph.

And this is where I point you to Lincoln Michel’s very very good “The Unnecessary Is The Only Thing Necessary In Art” — while not about artificial intelligence, I think it plugs in a bit in that there is this occasional and maybe even increasing view that somehow there are Essential Components to storytelling, that if you plug in the right Plot Variables that is how the Art Calculator makes narrative. But story is far deeper, far stranger than all that, and it is certainly more than just Canonical Information or a Sequence of Events. Artificial intelligence, though, would view storytelling through this lens: it would distill it down to wires and pipes. It wants very hard to generate a house, but has no idea how to make it a home.

Michel correctly notes: “But the best way to experience art is to experience it. Not to spend your time debating if every shot or sentence or lyric is necessary. What is the point of a flower in a painting? What is the necessary number of verses in a song? What is the utility of the archaic torso of Apollo?” And again, he’s talking about a whole different situation — this puritanical (and if I may note, fascist-adjacent) notion that sex in storytelling shouldn’t be present unless it’s necessary. (And how often do fascist-flavored critics also say this about LGBT content in books, or quote-unquote “woke” content in stories, where they say something like, Oh, I don’t mind seeing gay [or transgender, Black, etc.] characters in a story, but only when it’s necessary. As if there exists a plot equation that can be balanced and answered by the inclusion of certain diverse content and without that particular equation such content is now “unnecessary.”

As this is a post apparently in love with digression, I also make note of the great effort that is going into Book Banning across school districts nationwide, even in the blue-ish area in which I live, where the once-vaunted school district Central Bucks is now reviewing a number of sex- and LGBT- and POC-positive books to pull them out of school libraries so kids cannot access them. This shitty toxic pissypants Moms-For-Liberty-fed bullshit will harm students who need to see themselves represented and who need other kids to see them represented in books, and you’ll note that there is a similar puritanical vein shot through all of this, wherein it is believed that sex is not “necessary,” that LGBT content is not “necessary,” that reading about racism is not “necessary.” Or they use that most common of words — this material is (gasp) inappropriate. (I also note that Nazi efforts to ban and burn books began in part with the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a Berlin-based institution of sexological studies that was LGBT-and-intersex-positive and that also offered access to contraceptives. The attacks on LGBT citizens, on their rights, on drag shows, on abortion, it’s the same fascist playbook run by the Nazis. Just so y’know.)

(And if you don’t think artificial intelligence couldn’t become very fascist, very fast, well, you’re not paying attention.)

To loop this all back around — because, oof, I didn’t necessarily expect to land on NAZIS in this post, though I suppose in our current climate I probably should’ve figured on landing there eventually — there exists this core notion that art and narrative are just numerical expressions, that they begin with an Idea and that storytelling is just stringing yarn along a series of thumbtacks on a board, and that there’s only value in having the idea and no value in learning how to tell the story you want to tell. We can cut out the unnecessary parts, we can let artificial intelligence handle the rest, and all we have to do is feed it our Very Good Idea. We don’t even have to split the profits with some stupid fucking “author” anymore! We can just have ideas and that is all that matters! We’ll burp them up into the world, and an AI will run with them, creating only Necessary Fiction that has the Proper Ratios in it. A perfect narrative gumbo, every time. (Admittedly, with too many fingers and too much plagiarism.)

WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY.

Except, of course, you and me, we know that’s all bullshit, right? We know that stories are more than just their inception. Stories are the author. Stories are the execution. Stories are in the human experiences, the unexpected parts, and as Michel notes, the unnecessary portions. They’re the most flavorful bits. Everything isn’t just pure protein. The flavor is in the fat, okay?

So, fuck off, AI.

Fuck off, AI storytellers.

Fuck off, AI generated images.

We must be shut of the obsession with Idea.

It’s just idea, small-i. You’re not done when you have an idea. You’ve barely even begun. The wonder is in what comes after. The wonder is in the work.

(Related: Clarkesworld post — “A Concerning Trend” — about how they’re suddenly deluged with AI-generated bullshit, which is, I fear, only going to get worse from here.)

(Also, read WANDERERS and WAYWARD, because hey, they’re both about artificial intelligence. Also, pandemics. But definitely AI, and what happens when you give AI a whole lot of power and rely on it to solve your problems! Oops!)

The State of Social Media (As It Pertains To Writers In Particular)

This is a post about social media, which is the most boring kind of post. But for writers in particular, it’s an essential one. And here is why: we are at a time when traditional media is a fucking shitshow. In general, sure, but also, specifically as it relates to book stuff. You’ll find far less book coverage than you used to in years past, in part because — at least, as I understand it — a lot of outlets have reduced the staff dedicated to book-related and publishing-related topics, sometimes cutting down to the bone. Unless you’re in the one percent of authors who sell a WHOLE LOTTA BOOKS or have a book that meets a particular threshold of that hard-to-define “buzz,” (or you’re “someone who knows someone”), you’re not really going to get out there with book announcements or cover reveals or excerpts. You might hit a few end-of-the-year or beginning-of-the-year lists but… most authors don’t, won’t, can’t.

As such, publishers are leaning harder into social media as an avenue to champion books. Thing is, they’ve already leaned pretty pretty hard into social media over the years, and it makes sense: for a long time, social media has seemed like this fertile ground of virality, right? Authors get on, authors make some noise, they get followers, the followers are readers, the readers buy the books, and holy shit, it’s free? Manna from Heaven, and it doesn’t cost the publisher a dime?

One problem: it doesn’t really work like that.

As I’ve noted in the past, social media doesn’t sell books. Okay, fine, it does, but not at the level we all want it to. It moves a copy here, a copy there, ten copies, hopefully more. And that’s good. Because in a sense, every book is a pebble thrown into the pond, and it makes ripples. Ripples (readers new and familiar) reach farther shores, meaning, those readers tell other readers, and that’s a good thing. It’s not some kind of HOLY SHIT YOUR BOOK HAS GONE VIRAL kinda thing, but it’s a slow and steady and reliable way to earn readership.

But… publishing doesn’t really crave the slow and steady. Some publishers are good with it! Some have a wiser eye and recognize the value of a long tail. But a lot of publishers are just stuffing a catapult full of spaghetti and hoping some of it sticks to some wall, somewhere, anywhere.

I’ve long noted that part of the real value of social media for writers is the community that comes from it — a community not just of readers, but a professional one, too. We’re lonely little weirdos, and it’s nice to have a virtual watercooler-slash-campfire around which to gather. We can hang with other writers, agents, editors, and from there, artists and film people and TV people and comics folk and — well, so on and so forth. A creative community forms from this, not one that’s ever a monoculture, but that’s a good thing. It’s good that it’s this unruly, shapeless thing, because that’s what leads to more interesting friendships. (And community is, ultimately, about these friendships. Fuck anyone who talks about this as if it’s about the “connections.” Said it before, we’ll say it again, but people are not just rungs in a ladder.)

So, does it work this way still?

Is social media serving the writer well? In… any direction?

If I had a button marked “sad farty trombone sound,” I would now press it.

I might even press it two, three times. Shit, I might lean an elbow on it for a few minutes, really let it rip.

It ain’t good out there.

Social media is a fucking turdfire for writers right now.

Why is this? Part of it is what Cory Doctorow brilliantly calls the “enshittification” factor — read about it here. The basic gist is, when a platform needs users, it serves the users. Then the users become the product, and are abused in favor or larger businesses who can use the users in proxy, and then inevitably, the platform fails the businesses along with the users and the whole thing violently diarrheas the bed. It is, one could argue, the core problem of unfettered and unchallenged capitalism: businesses grow like bacteria without competition, and soon they burst free of the petri dish, after which they infect everyone and everything, killing their hosts, and that’s the end of that. Our current mode of apocalyptic capitalism requires unrestrained growth to reward the wealthy at the top, which is ultimately impossible, and it fucks a whole lot of people over. Except the really wealthy at the top, who fuck off to their rocketships and moonbases after they ruin everything around them on Earth.

(That paragraph got a little out of hand, but you see what I’m saying, and more importantly, what the wise Mister Doctorow was saying.)

We are definitely at the part of social media where these platforms have all fully enshittified themselves almost in grand simultaneity.

Which is to say, they are bad for users, and in particular, bad for writers.

Let’s talk about how each platform is doing here.

Twitter

Even before Elon Musk took over, Twitter was a less-than-ideal place to try to hang your creative shingle. From uncharitable misreads to harassment campaigns, the waters were already chummed with blood. Still, Twitter made sense to writers. It was made of words! And we’re very lonely people! So a platform where we were able to microburst our random communiques into the world using words (and occasionally animated GIFs) worked well for us. It was fun, despite descending slowly into horror over the years.

Now, though, woof. Where to start?

First, the site defaults to the FYP (For You Page), which is an algorithmic regurgitate slurry where you can scroll and see page after page of tweets from literally no one you actually follow. It’s all weird promoted accounts, tweets “liked” by someone you do follow, or followed by someone you follow, or weird shit like “because you follow Tom Hanks, here is a tweet by an alt-right hair product influencer because the algorithm probably saw some tenuous digital connection between those two things, so congrats, here’s a stupid tweet.” I follow a lot of writers, but does the FYP give me a lot of tweets about books and writing? It fucking does not. It’s just a river of weird garbage and angry news stuff and not nearly enough WRITER STUFF.

(And of course, this only juices the algorithm further. It serves you a robo-selected slice of this garbage, which you must ingest because it’s all there is, and then the algorithm sees you slurping the twitter-gruel and thinks, AH GOOD, THEY MUST BE ENJOYING WHAT I’VE SLUICED INTO THEIR OPEN BEAKS, and it turns up the Sluice Knob to 11 because surely you want more, more, more.)

(It also seems that posts with links seem to be downgraded in terms of visibility. Which sucks when you want people to click a link to your book. Or, ahem ahem, to your really cool blog because blogs are still totally a thing, shut up.)

Second, Musk’s new “stick-on scratch-and-sniff verification check” reportedly is how you juggle your tweets back into the algorithm’s good graces. Regular blue-checks (aka, the ones that are not a reward but were supposed to tell people you were really who you said you were) have also been reportedly downgraded in the eyes of the Almighty Algorithm. So, if you’re a real person, fuck you. If you’re some jabroni with eight bucks a month (or eleven bucks or whatever it costs now) to spare, congrats, here’s your megaphone. (Also, do not pay for that service. Love yourself more than that.)

Third, you’re of course trying to get traction next to some of the worst people in the world, who have all been invited back to the platform by Musk. Y’know, Musk, who also gladly replies to alt-right weirdos named “Catturd,” taking their complaints and eagerly noting he’ll “look into it.”

Fourth, the platform is starting to break. It’s functionality is erratic as hell — this week has been stable when I’ve been there for the most part, but last several weeks, my mention tabs have been broken to the point where it was only showing me stuff from weeks ago, and wouldn’t update at all. Sometimes I get spinning icons or error messages. I suppose it’s not surprising, given how many people That Dude has fired. I think the janitor runs everything now. *receives note* Sorry, I regret to inform you they fired the janitor.

Just from a personal POV, while I’m not tweeting very much, when I do venture and Tweet Some Bullshit, it’s barely making a dent.

Given that the writer’s greatest challenge is Achieving Visibility, and the writer’s greatest enemy is Obscurity, that makes Twitter pretty shit for creative types right now. And it only seems to be getting worse.

Instagram

Instagram is not entirely terrible.

Obviously I don’t like the parent company, but as a social media site it still brings me a modicum of joy to be there and scroll through photos of books, pets, and food. I can easily turn off unwanted FYP reels (and honestly, I think they made a huge mistake in their “pivot to video,” just jfc, just let TikTok be TikTok). Engagement there is still pretty good — a recent cover reveal for BLACK RIVER ORCHARD had (though it’s hard to measure precisely) roughly four times the engagement at IG than the post rec’d at Twitter, and that’s with a fraction of the followers. (~180k at Twitter, ~14k at Instagram.)

Thing is, though, IG is a visual medium, and we’re word jerks, so it doesn’t feel as natural, and is nowhere near as talky — plus, it’s hard to have actual conversations on IG. You can thread a couple replies but it’s not as easy to read or as encouraging for longer-term engagement. It’s a “drop a post and walk away as the building explodes” kind of place, not somewhere you go to to chat.

And links are hard to post there, and there’s no virality via a “reboost” function — which is probably good in that it cuts down on the total noise, but it’s harder for users to repost something they like without using a separate app for it.

(Reminder: I’m there as @chuck_wendig)

Facebook

Facebook: the OG of toxic social media platforms!

Great for keeping in touch with weird family members, maybe, and also not bad for maintaining some communities, but for a long time it was pretty shitty for writers. You’d make a public page and then they’d want you to pay to boost any of it, so you could only really reach a fraction of your actual followers. (In a sense, the Twitter Blue checkmark bullshit is similar — if you want to reach all your followers, you gotta pay up. “Sure would be a shame if something happened to your engagement,” the digital goon says, slapping a blackjack into his open palm.) I’ve heard that FB has maybe loosened its grip on this a bit? I cannot confirm, but I know some writers who have reported increased engagement with their public page followers again.

Still, FB sucks, and Zuck sucks, so, I dunno.

TikTok

I’m not on there, so I don’t have a good watermark. It certainly seems like it’s good for the book community, what with the existence of BookTok going strong there and helping create displays in bookstores big and small. And some writers have really done well over there. For my mileage it, like Goodreads, is better off serving readers rather than writers — nobody really wants us over there gallumphing about awkwardly to music while trying to shill our books. That feels like a fundamental misread of what makes BookTok cool? I dunno. YMMV!

But I know there are also privacy concerns too, so, shrug. You do you.

Tumblr

Tumblr certainly seems to be a bit resurgent? Also very word-based, blog-based, has an easy signal boosting function. Feels useful for writers but I haven’t been over there and am wary of committing excess text to a space I don’t really own. But maybe a good place for reposted content? Dunno!

Newsletters

Newsletters are great for writers, but only for them to speak to existing readership-slash-fanbases. A good way to let the people who like you know where you’ll be, what you’re doing, what books of yours are coming out, what you’re eating, what cryptid you just summoned to eat your stupid neighbors, whatever. Not ideal for earning new readership and creating public visibility.

(I don’t have a newsletter but this site serves as one.)

Unfortunately some newsletter services cost you money, and it’s hard to know what the return is on that. You’ll also likely find that the “open and read” rate can dip fast and stay low, because newsletters arrive via email, and if your email is like my email, it’s a BIG OL’ SHIT RIVER. It’s a lot of noise, and newsletters tend to get lost there. As such I can only subscribe to a few before it gets overwhelming, but maybe that’s just my completely broken brain.

Mastodon

I think it has a shot, and I know some writers seem to be doing okay there in terms of engagement — it’s a little quieter but fairly easy to use. Less easy to understand, maybe, given that the diffuse nature of the servers is confusing. Further, moderation varies wildly from server to server. Some places seem to have a lock on it, whereas others have users experiencing some pretty heinous shit, often out of nowhere. Hard to judge the entire experience because it isn’t an entire experience — it’s a series of fragmented shards, and you don’t carry your following/followed with you.

Find me there at mastodon-dot-social — @chuckwendig.

(Engagement on that cover reveal was… fine? ~56 likes, ~16 signal boosts, at ~11k followers. Could be better. Pretty quiet, but doable.)

Hive

I liked Hive at the start. Even despite the security concerns it had some stuff I really liked, and the community was peppy, and the engagement high. But then they shut down to fix some stuff, and came back weeks later with lowered engagement — engagement that I think was further hampered by the fact that some of the things that did work and were cool no longer work at all. And they’re things that actually foster engagement, so it feels like salted earth. I hope it comes back and does well, honestly, because it’s a neat platform that has (or at least had) the “stickiness” of Twitter, but right now, it’s kind of a mess, and also has become a ghost town. They also really need a desktop app.

I find I’m checking it less and less. Which is sad! I wanna keep the party going.

I’m there as @chuckwendig.

(The cover reveal over there, posted a week ago, was somewhat peppy, actually — even with quieter vibes, it had ~150 likes with ~6k followers, vs ~370 likes at ~180k followers. So that’s really not bad. Better than on Mastodon, I think. As a sidenote, reason I’m estimating these numbers a bit is because they seem to fluctuate, particularly on Twitter.)

Post.news

Ennnh. Ennh?

If you take Hive and Post, it’s like Twitter bifurcated its psyche into two spaces: the first, the fun fanbasey wacky goodtimes half, and the second, the SRS BZNS news half. Post is droll and dry and all the global misery of Twitter without any of the fun. It’s not a bad place to get caught up on the news, honestly, but for writers I don’t see it doing much. At least not for writers who aren’t writing the SRS BZNS. For us silly story jugglers, I’m not seeing it really catch fire. It’s hard to see engagement and measure it, which is really a death knell for these platforms — we really want to see who’s liking things, who’s reboosting them, and so forth. It should be as easy as possible and not in any way difficult.

I’m there as @chuckwendig.

(The cover reveal over there had little engagement.)

Spoutible

It’s new! It’s basically Twitter! Its tweets are called, uhh, spouts? Which, as a writer, I hate a whole lot because it just sounds weird. But I also get it, okay, fine, spouting off. Whatever, I’ll cope.

It’s very new, so I have nothing to really note here — I’m there @chuckwendig. It’s buggy and sluggish right now. (Or, if you prefer, buggish and sluggy. Which is now the name of my new series of kids’ picture books, look for them in 2030.) Christopher Bouzy is, I believe, fairly trustworthy in that he’s the figure behind BotSentinel, a service known for figuring out who’s real, who’s not, and identifying/tracking harassment on social media.

YMMV, and I know it’s not fully open yet.

The Internet In General

Certainly there are other social media places out there — forums and the like. But the thing that strikes me is, it feels a little like the Internet is breaking. The wheels, coming off. Email sucks. Google results are increasingly awful, full of gibberish, half of which seems generated by some gabbling AI ChatGPT clone. And of course that’s the other thing — the “release the dogs” aspect of AI suddenly intruding all aspects of our digital lives feels like the whole thing is doubling down on Doctorow’s enshittification theory, that it’s all just getting worse and breaking faster. Links going to nowhere, services failing users, hacks exposing massive swaths of user information. It’s not great, Bob.

Conclusions

First conclusion is, this post is way too fucking long.

Second conclusion is, it’s unclear how much of this even matters. I mean, it matters in the sense that our communities are in massive disarray. We don’t have them as writers anymore, not entirely. They’ve been chipped away at, fractured, left in cookie crumbles. There are writers I’m friends with who I haven’t seen online in months. Sometimes it’s because they left, other times because The Fucking Algorithm hasn’t shown them to me, sequestering them to some dark and distant corner of the social media manse. So, it sucks.

Thing is, in terms of actually selling books and earning readership, it’s bad to lose that, but there was always the question of how truly necessary any of this was. It seems to me — and no, this is not universal, but it’s pretty solid — that the books that do well are the books that publishers got behind. Yes, some writers did so well on social media they earned followings and readerships — I’m among them, I think, though it’s certainly not 1:1 where every follower becomes a reader. But you look at some of the biggest books of the year and track the authorial social media presence… it can be low, even non-existent. Books don’t require social media to exist. They require publishers who believe the books and then choose to manifest that belief with effort and money.

Which really, is the tricky part, because a lot of this feels like, “Hey, if you wanna solve climate change, you better do your part, citizen.” Which isn’t wrong. Of course you need to do your part to not fuck up the planet. BUT, it’s also not us individually doing Most Of The Up-Fucking Of Said Planet. It’s giant systems and corporations in place that are very hard to dismantle individually — and with publishing, it’s also very hard for us individually to magically make a book a huge or even moderate success. We can do our parts. We should do our parts. But our part isn’t the make-or-break component. That lies with publishers, and not even publishers on social media, but publishers working the well-trod paths with bookstores and distributors and relying on old-school advertisements and such. Social media in this sense has been a bit of a stalking horse for publishers — something to hide behind without investing in any make or break aspect of it. If it works, yay, we did it. If it doesn’t, well, that’s just social media, man.

So, really, no meaningful conclusions or actions to be had here except — well, shit, it’s hard to be a writer at any time in history and in my opinion it’s only getting harder, because the internet is increasingly noisy and increasingly shitty. Which is also maybe me just getting older and more resistant to new things, but I also don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way? Sound off if you have further thoughts to add to this conversation.

I’m gonna stop typing now because this really has gone on too long. I mean, WTF, Wendig, shut up.

ANYWAY HEY HI buy my books. And leave reviews. Because otherwise I die in the howling pit of obscurity, and that would be sad. For me, at least.

BLACK RIVER ORCHARD, coming 9/26.

And earlier than that, GENTLE WRITING ADVICE, arriving in June.