Some Housekeeping

And a plea to protect your access to stuff you like on line

My damaged shoulder keeps getting incrementally better, but I’m still a long way from being totally healed. I am able to do some more writing now, so here’s a couple things that I want to share.

First, I’ve finally published my latest novella as an ebook.

It’s basically what I published in serial form over the last year or so—with a lot of keystroke errors, etc, fixed. If you like my writing, but don’t want to commit to a long term financial commitment, buying a book is a good way to give me a ‘tip’ without spending too much. It’s available—with my other books—at the Smashwords website in all the moderately popular formats. At $5 each, I think it gives value for the money.

Also, I’d like to ask anyone who reads my blog fairly regularly but hasn’t subscribed to do so. I publish everything totally open to my free subscribers, so there’s no financial reason not to. Indeed, I understand because I simply can’t afford to pay for everything I read on line either.

The reason why I ask is because social media is very quickly becoming ‘enshitified’ and this means that it is going to become harder and hard for the casual reader to find the links I post on social media. The tech companies are trying to monetize the posts people see, and that means free stuff like announcements for new articles on my blog are going get pushed out of sight more and more. Browsers that integrate AI will make this much worse. And if you depend on FaceBook to remember to look at my blog, you will slowly end up forgetting about it as Meta pushes you towards something that is more support of Mark Zuckerberg’s business model.

It’s not that much to ask for—.

Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!