It’s Alive!
A new website, finished fiction, and current WIPs
My new website is finally live! Although there are still some things to add, the most important parts of the website are done.
Where the Stars Used to Sing is finished and published
One part of the website now also contains the completed Where the Stars Used to Sing!
It sounds strange to say that it’s a relief to have finished editing these stories, but it’s been on my plate (and then put aside, and then on my plate again, etc.) for so long that it seemed as if I’m never going to be able to finish it and start something else.
Part of the reason for putting Where the Stars Used to Sing on the website, is that I’m trying to gather together all my writing in one place. At the moment it’s quite scattered around and I’ve lost track of a lot of it. Rather than patching up the website I had been using on and off,1 I decided that it would be easier to just start from scratch in order to really build it the way I want to.
The website will serve as a place in which I gather all my writing (fiction and non-fiction), my portfolio2 and links to my published writing, while the Substack newsletter will serve more as a type of blog.3 This does mean that I’m also going to review the Substack page layout as well so that it aligns with the website.4
As I’ve wandered around the internet5 to look for my fiction and articles, I was struck at sites which had disappeared completely or had changed into something new.6 At the same time, I read “How to Disappear Completely” by S.E. Smith on The Verge, and saw that “38 percent of webpages accessible in 2013 are not accessible today” according to the Pew Research Center. Add to that the number of academic journals no longer available7 and it’s easy to see why dead links abound.
This only gave me more incentive to hoard all my stories in one place on the internet (and off-line as well, obviously). At least then I always have somewhere to always link back to. Plus having less places to update, which is always a good thing.
Also, Smith’s article and the research linked in it is really worth a read!
Current fiction WIPs
Finishing Where the Stars Used to Sing means that I can also take some other fiction projects off the back burner. My main fiction WIP will be Porselein, but I’m also going to continue writing flash fiction and short stories in-between. There are a few short stories that still need editing before they can see the light of day, but at least they’re standalone ones – and I’m going to keep it that way!
The reason why I’m choosing Porselein, is that it’s a standalone novel and, even though the worldbuilding still needs a lot of work8, I think starting out with a standalone will be more manageable that forging ahead with the series of books planned for The Ruon Chronicles. Plus, I have been itching to write something in Afrikaans again, so I figured, why not?
Books I’m currently reading or listening to
I’m a few chapters into Jasper Fforde’s Early Riser and, man, I’ve forgotten how much I love his books. However, I’m still not sure why they’re shelved under “plain ol’ fiction” and not “fantasy” – unless it is to lure unsuspecting readers into reading fantasy when they would otherwise not look at the science fiction and fantasy shelves.9
Although still busy with The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time, book 5) by Robert Jordan10, I’ve also started Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes by Rob Wilkins (and also read by him).
And here’s some music to end off with:
Not to mention the various other blogs and websites I’d tried over the years. I started blogging in 2010, which is difficult for me to believe. Good grief, I was still busy with my MA! (And no wonder I’m getting the itch to study again…)
Because media day job.
Part of why I’d stopped writing and posting was being overwhelmed by platforms and places and the feeling that I had to update everything constantly. Being unable to do this, I basically just froze and retreated into a corner until I figured out what to do about things like Building an Author Platform Without Going Completely Out of My Mind.
Luckily for you, Dear Reader, that is a me problem.
At least the parts I frequent.
For example Noisetrade that is now, unfortunately, a thing of the past.
“Eighty-four online-only, open-access (OA) journals in the sciences, and nearly 100 more in the social sciences and humanities, have disappeared from the internet over the past 2 decades…”
This isn’t just me falling into a worldbuilding rabbit hole, it really does still need a lot of work.
In which case, well played.
It’s over thirty-six hours long, so not quite a “quick listen”. I usually listen to it on my commute home, unless my brain is off working on story ideas.