Newsletter #1

Here’s the contents of the first newsletter I sent out to my first couple of subscribers :)

If you’d like some of this in your inbox occasionally, you can sign up via the link above!

The future is quieter.

I’ve set up this newsletter primarily so that I can keep in touch with anyone who gives a shit about what I’m up to with my writing, principally, but I’d also like to include things I’ve come across that I think you’d find interesting, or I find important and want to share. Let me know if the content of these newsletters is or isn’t what you want in your inbox. I’d hate to lose you!!

Well, it’s been a few weeks since I dropped off Facebook and Twitter (@adrianlselby (the latter I’m checking only for DMs and to be able to sign up for the Super Relaxed Fantasy Club)). You may have read about my decision here.  You can still DM me therefore on Twitter if need be. I have to say it’s been quieter, quite isolating too. I miss Facebook. I just wish it wasn’t so evil. I’ve since been sent two cracking articles that explore the problem of the current internet ecosystem, and it’s pretty horrifying. I’d like to think there’ll be a backlash, like there should be against this new ‘gilded age’ kleptocracy. But I worry we just won’t care enough, because social media is our crack cocaine and we aren’t rational about its funding model. I recommend this much talked about piece. This article then takes a look at the problem of scale and automation in our social media more generally. If you’re disturbed by these, I urge you to share them.

It’s been interesting to see just how many hours a week I get back. You don’t think you check it more than a few minutes a day, but when my ‘muscle memory’ reached for my phone, or opened a tab in my browser just to check Facebook updates, I was surprised at how many times a day I was thinking about it or doing it. It’s obvious really, I know lots of great people I care about.

When I posted that I was leaving Facebook and offered my deets to anyone who wanted to stay in touch, only six people requested my email, including yourselves who signed up to the newsletter to stay connected. I had over two hundred contacts. I imagine most didn’t see my two posts about me signing off. It’s definitely boosted this sense of my cutting myself off from people I’ve been happy to follow and who have been happy to ‘like’ me back and give me lots of thumbs up as I’ve described my writing and other milestones in my life. I hope we rediscover each other on different channels going forward. I’ve found one that seems really interesting. It’s basically instagram/pinterest, it’s called Ello. It looks like it’s mainly for creatives to show off their stuff but it has a legal obligation as a ‘Public Benefit Corporation‘ to never sell your data or show you ads. I’ve not put anything up on it yet, but it seems like a great platform to do some flash fiction and poetry, as well as share some blog posts to. There’s also some amazing work on there in all media.

At last month’s Super Relaxed Fantasy Club had readings from two very interesting books, neither of which were in my usual reading sphere but both of which I’ve bought. One’s ‘The Silent Companions’ by Laura Purcell and the other is ‘The Last Namsara‘ by Kristen Ciccarelli. Both sounded really good – the former because it riffs off of the existence of historical dummy boards used to fool and frighten guests at houses and the latter because it was about storytelling being a forbidden magic used to summon dragons. Enough said!

In other reading I’ve enjoyed Mike Brooks’s ‘Dark Run‘. If you like Firefly, you’ll love Dark Run. I’ve also just finished Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale‘. Good bloody god it’s amazing. I’ll have to write up my thoughts soon. Ditto Westworld, though these days it’s so hard without spoilers.

In authorial news I went to Bristolcon for the first time a month or so back, which was an absolute riot. So many lovely people. I can’t wait to do it again next year. Who needs the panels though, the bar was where it was at! It is a small and definitely very friendly convention.

Also I’ve submitted my second novel to my editors at Orbit. This is the first of a two book deal, so I’m beginning to sketch out the third novel. The slopes of it are wreathed in mist; I’m hoping I can blow it away and reveal the mountain fully in the next couple of months. Then it’s to be climbed, and my muscles already ache.

Thanks,

Adrian