I hope that all of you US folks had a lovely three day weekend. I started the weekend by listening to some horror authors discuss their books and the genre on a crowdcast hosted by the Hatchette Book Group. Thursday I picked up my eldest sister from the airport and delivered her to my mom’s place. While waiting in the South Cell Phone Lot I got to see a couple of beautiful rainbows.
Friday we had a relaxing day at home. Saturday was spent thrifting with The Mrs and my sister, then dinner at my mom’s. Sunday was a prepping day spent cutting firewood for the upcoming winter (I’m feeling very much like the ant and not at all like the grasshopper). Monday we had the in-laws over for time in the pool. Try as they might, no one could coax the dogs into the pool.
Tonight I will get to attend an advanced screening of The Long Walk. I have been assured that this is not one of those viewings where the attendees have to walk on a treadmill at 3 mph for the duration of the film.
Listening To: I’m almost finished with Life Hacks for the Little Alien by Alice Franklin. This is a very touching story about a girl who feels different from everyone around her (in fact, she’s not sure if she is even human) and her obsession with the Voynich Manuscript, something I myself am more than a little intrigued by. In a bit of perfect timing, the library just let me know that I can start listening to Never Flinch.*
*I took a break to vacuum the pool before it got too hot outside and discovered that I had put the ebook on hold, not the audiobook. 14 weeks of wait for nothing. Ugh. I decided instead to listen to something a little lighter: Warping Reality: Inside the Psychology of Cults by Wind Goodfriend.
Currently Reading: I am saving it as a reward for when I finish today’s chores, but yesterday I received the new telling of Hansel and Gretel written by Stephen King and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. I’m going to try my best to read this slowly and appreciate all of the artwork.
Current Obsession: We are all caught up on Wednesday and Alien Earth. Sorry, no King references in this paragraph.
Dragon’s Roost Press News
We are pleased to announce that all of the rewards for the Nightmerica Kickstarter have been sent out. If you are a backer who has not received a reward by the end of the month, please reach out to us and we will find out what the hold up is.
Proof copies for Frank Oreto’s It’s Dark in Here have been ordered. Look for publication information in the near future.
We’ve still got a little tweaking to do on the cover for Here There Be Horrors by Peggy Christie, but that should be available soon.
This Saturday (6 September) we will be at the Wayne County Fairgrounds for Wicked Bizzare. Come down and check out all of the cool vendors. It will be a great way to start the Spooky Season.
At the end of the moth (27 - 28 September), look for us at Fantasticon at the Oakland Expo Center in Waterford, MI.
As stated before, we will not be vending at Frankenfest because we will be out of the country, but we still recommend you head out for an amazing day of spooky vendors, arial shows, reptile rescue, and more all at the glorious historic Fort Wayne (the historical site in Detroit, not the city).
This Week’s Rambling: Leaving Substack Soon
This was originally going to be a fun little list of all of the cool Halloween and horror focused things that I was looking forward to, but instead I’m going to dive into something that has been churning the acid in my stomach for a while now.
Many, many years ago I had a website on which I posted a fairly frequent blog. It covered everything from what was going on in my life to publishing to reviews of movies and books. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, there were a number of technical problems which eventually rendered the website a ghost town. The biggest problems came from the fact that the software I was using to generate the site was mothballed — twice. Each time I had to go back and learn a new system, then try to rebuild as much of the site as possible. Each time I did it became more of a chore. I wondered if it was really necessary to repost rants from 5+ years ago. Were people really going to go back and look at what I was talking about way back then?
The answer was no. In fact, each time the site got put on hold I lost more of my readership.
The last time I made a switch it was around the time that I was getting thedragonsroost.biz up and running. At the time it seemed like it made more sense to focus on getting the retail site in place. I moved over the publishing related material (the original site had two blogs, one personal and one for Dragon’s Roost Press). I limited my rants to however many characters various social media sites would allow.
Well, we all know how that worked. Like the villain in a Scooby Doo mystery, Musk bought Twitter (and fuck if I’m ever going to call it by its current single letter designation. I never stopped calling Pine Knob Pine Knob and now it’s Pine Knob again so ha!) and pulled off his mask to reveal to the world what a total goose-stepping cock-splat he is.
Sidenote: It still pisses me off that Musk calls his cars Teslas as he is the most Edisony Edison that ever Edisoned.
I was looking for someplace I could rant. I was looking for someplace people could go to find out what was going on in my life. Believe it or not, people at conventions started to ask where they could find out more behind the scenes stuff. I thought about resurrecting the old site, but worried about “brand dilution.”Sidenote: 16 year old me just surfaced and punched present me in the dick for using the phrase “brand dilution.”
I heard about a place which was equal parts blogish social media platform and e-mail list. Perfect. Well, not perfect…there were some rumors about freedom of speech being used to cover for lack of proper policing of hateful content. These got worse and worse. The big funders of the site had a huge hand in setting up DOGE.
I started looking at alternatives.
It was one of those things that I kept plugging away at, but not getting to the point where I actually did anything. It was a time management thing. Any time spent working on a new site was time away from editing or formatting or <gasp> doing my own writing. So it kept getting put off.
I recently learned that some Substack users received a push notification from a deplorable pro-Nazi group and decided that was it. I had to leave. I started the research again in earnest. Fortunately I’m at a point where I have a little bit of free time between publishing related tasks. The two top contenders are Ghost and Beehiv. I’ll be out of town (see previous post) for a while, but I am hoping to complete the move by the end of the month. Until then I will keep posting here, just for the sake of continuity.
When the move happens I will announce it all over and send e-mail invites to my current subscribers.
I should also mention that there is something going on regarding having to pay for content if you are an Apple user. This doesn’t affect me at the moment, as I never got around to setting up the special monetized portion (I think we already established that I’m not really good at implementing things that are probably a good idea).
Special thanks to Michael W. Lucas for the information on alternatives to Substack. If you are not already reading his books, what the hell are you waiting for?
Further updates as news warrants it.