To Feed on Dreams is a space opera with two couples - m/m and an ace couple.
Book 1: Exiles
Published by JMS Books
Buy links
JMS Books
Amazon UK
Amazon.com
So it’s mid February. How are your resolutions going? ‘Fess up – they’re not doing so great, are they? (Neither are some of mine. I’m no paragon.) You’re not alone. Many people’s big plans for the new year have fallen by the wayside by now. The gym is getting quiet again. Dry January got a little…damper than expected. The writing goals went a bit pear shaped in the face of all that great stuff on streaming, or all the new books you got for Christmas. But that doesn’t mean you have to forget about them. As we stare down the barrel of Spring, let’s look at why resolutions fail and how to revive them.
My 2023 resolution - separate from my goals, which have to be SMART, cause I’m that sort of Type A nerd - is to become more hopeful. Which started out as “become less cynical”, but goals and resolutions should always be phrased as a positive admonition to do, not to not do something. (Excuse me, into Yoda turned I have.)
This is sort of an expansion on my last post about me and the Gavle Goat and why it became important to me that the goat did not burn.
2022 was kind of a hard year for me. My dad passed away. And the world was full of grim news all around, as usual. I was far too addicted to doom scrolling on Twitter, watching the world burn and feeling more and more despairing about it all. After the last few years a lot of people feel like their mental health is in a fragile state.
As we go on through 2023 I want to do the following to help me become less cynical and despairing and more hopeful and positive.
Back in 1966 Stig Gavlén, an advertising consultant, came up with the idea of building a large Yule Goat display to attract people to the local shops and restaurants. On 1 December 1966, the local fire department erected the first Gävle Goat. It was 13-metres high, 7 metres long, and weighed 3 tonnes. Impressive! It stood through to the 31st of December, when a vandal burned it down.
(Repost from my old blog.)
Writers are all too familiar with rejection. But there’s a more unusual type of rejection I don’t see much about online – the revise and resubmit rejection.
A rejection – but, it’s not the “and the horse you rode in on” type of rejection. Sometimes instead of just being told “No” by a publisher, the author gets a “no, but…” A revise and resubmit rejection says the publisher doesn’t want it as it is, but if the author is prepared to get the red pen back out and make some specified changes, they will be prepared to consider it again.
It is not a guarantee that they will take it if you make those changes, only that they will consider it again. It’s not a contract. It places no obligations on either party.
(Republish of a post from my old blog.)
It’s usually the first novel. Or your Great Novel. Your magnum opus that will shake the literary world to its core – if you ever get around to writing it/submitting it/selling it. If you have actually written it and started submitting it, it’s getting rejected, but you keep on editing it and keep on trying because my god twenty years of blood, sweat and tears has gone into this thing!
It's been a month since I created an account on Mastodon. A few days after I created the account, I decided to lock down my Twitter account and focus on Mastodon.
I am loving it. I found a good instance to be on. I've had a couple of toots go a bit viral, getting several hundred boosts and likes. Have found lots of cool people to follow - by this point probably less than half are people I was following on Twitter. I am building up followers nicely - am currently on 468.
I'm not here to tell you all about how to get started on Mastodon - I'm still a noob myself after all, and still learning basic stuff every day.
But I've got a couple of thoughts to pass on to other new Mastodon users, who are maybe struggling a bit figuring out how to make more connections, especially if not a lot of your Twitter friends have come across.
We all get told, "just choose any server" when first getting signed up. You can interact with anyone else in the "Fediverse" from any server.
And technically that's true, but I think if you're going to maximise your experience then once you're on and have figured the basics out, see if you maybe want to move to a different instance. Doing it early is best. You don't lose your followers, but the sooner you find your home, the better.
Well I hope those observations have given you a few more ideas to get the most from Mastodon.
But really, there's no magic to it. You didn't land on Twitter with a great big following and a curated timeline. It took time. It probably took years. And it's hard to start over. But you've done it before, maybe several times if you've been on the internet for a long time. You can do it again.
See you around the Fediverse!
Some of my older books aren't currently available, but will be back soon, published by JMS Books , and in some cases will eventually be ...