End of an Era

It's that time of year again, the end of an old one and the beginning of a new one. I tend not to 'celebrate' as such because really it's just another day, just another acknowledgement of time passing. Mostly I find myself wondering what I achieved that year, and feel like I've lost another year towards achieving my dreams - yes a little maudlin, a little bah humbug, which is why I tend to prefer to pretend it's not happening. I'll just be home, reassuring my cats - cuz the country I am living in likes to set off bombs - sorry fireworks - everywhere. Something I detest and taints this time of year too.

But this year's ending will have a bigger impact for me as I will be deactivating my twitter account. Yes I know, it's my second home, this is huge for me!

I will still keep my hand in on another account that will be for book promotion, but I intend to step away for the most part and on a daily basis. I can neither tolerate the new owner or the silence on there as more and more of my friends leave. I've spent all year debating this, since the awful news in April, but it was brought more into focus once the inevitable happened. It's created such a distraction for me this year I decided enough was enough.

I came to twitter in 2011, initially to follow a friend who was on there, and after a couple of months not really knowing why I was there, I discovered the Writing Community. At that time it was all about engagement and exchanging ideas and experiences, and full of people running Flash Fiction competitions. Every day there was a different one, and it was a heady, joyful time as I felt connected finally to people that I could relate to. It started me on the path of making my writing a priority. Something I hadn't really done, even though I'd been writing since the early 90s, and even sent a novel round publishers at the end of the 90s. I finally felt supported and got vital feedback I needed. 

It saw me deciding to self publish in 2016 - my now permanently free book Mostly Dark - as a sort of trial run, as I ramped up finally getting my novel, Sleep, ready for publication. A book I had started in 1991 and lived with for 27 years, before publishing in 2019. I have since gone on to publish 7 books - a mixture of short stories, novellas and novels, stretching across genres, from Horror, Psychological Thrillers, Sci-Fi Fantasy, to Dark Paranormal Fantasy - but everything with a dark touch, of course. 😉

But eventually the world politics started to dominate everyone's timelines, and the toxic events that have taken place since 2015 onwards. My circle of friends became small and tighter and I tried hard to keep curating my timeline to stop the toxic trolls infilterating it - and for a while it worked until twitter got sold off. I have spent the year deciding and the last month preparing. 

This will be a difficult period as I cleanse myself of the addiction of logging in 16 hours a day! And should the new owner finally either crash it or sell it on and it gets resurrected, I will no doubt be back! But I already have two books I am working on and a couple of others vying for attention, so I hope this year to finally get my focus back and spend my time on more worthwhile pursuits rather than caring about what dreadful thing alt-right white men in power are planning next for our world. 

You can still find me in various locations online (you can find a list on the right hand column), but I plan to have my head in my books - writing and reading - far more often.