A quick note on tech, social media and what's going on around here. A while back, I read that Joe Hill saw Warren Ellis liked to reintroduce himself on his blog every now and again and thought this was a good idea - all these years on, I've never done such a thing. I kinda thought it was pretty simple to click on the 'About' tag above and find everything you need, so that's pretty much that... or maybe there's a search engine reason going on behind the scenes, in which case:
Hello. My name is Siôn Smith and I'm a writer. I write Dirty Realism. I like rock music, wandering around the world and owning just twelve things. My short writing is collected together and published by my own company, Bad Hare. Bigger writing - or 'novels' as they are known in bookstores - are sent out into the world with a spotted handkerchief on a stick to get some milk. Maybe they will come back soon. All this writing can make a man thirsty.
I think that's enough - though I probably missed the point if search engines are supposed to read anything into that. It's not my problem if they can't do their job properly. Whatever they are searching for will be down the back of the sofa anyway - where I've hidden a note about Neil Gaiman and the cast of Game of Thrones coming round for dinner next week to discuss the work of Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver and the beat poet movement.
Is that how search engine stuff works?
Anyway, this week, I've been working on how to make a mailing list work properly with Mail Chimp - and I think I've mastered it. I was using feedburner to deliver posts here by RSS but it became old, dated and frankly, useless. So that was the first thing to bite the dust. Secondly, I was also using TinyLetter to deliver a newsletter, but it got dull very fast writing all the things I had already written here once in a different way... so that went into feedburner hole I'd already dug.
Occasionally, I like to dip and out of twitter but I don't really have a lot to tweet about - that almost went too but I kinda like the way the blog here is set up to just go tell twitter when I've posted something, so it can stay for now... and I need some kind of communication with the outside world. It's not that bad if you don't let it rule your life.
I'd also gotten into the habit of posting occasional stories at Medium because they promised it would be a cool place for writers to write - but as it turned out, it was a cool place for people with keyboards at their disposal to write and either a) whine about the state of the world or b) suggest life hacks - but nobody there wants to really hear b) because then they wouldn't be able to partake in a). Medium turned out to suck diesel.
Then there is instagram and for now, I kinda like it. It's not too disruptive but you don't even need to head out that way because everything I stick up there also gets posted further down this page - which also seems like a good idea for the time being.
So.... lots of things have died and been replaced. Twitter and Instagram can stay for the time being - my name at both is @mrsionsmith. You don't have to look for me anywhere else because I'm not there, but you will find me on tumblr (same name) where blog posts, tweets and instagram pics are dumped into one huge timeline. Why? Because I actually do like tumblr and everybody should have one.
Finally - the first and last word on this: if you like what's going on here, sign up to my 'Gone Out For Milk' weekly mailing below. It's just the whole week of blogging here in one tidy package.
And now, I am going to eat a croissant and let search engines unleash spiders into my digital home for no reason at all.