Separation pending a divorce...

... for Knots in the String.

This is a long post. So make a cuppa, have cake and find a chair in the summer shade/winter sun…

I have just made a monumental move – the cooling of my relationship with Facebook. You could call it a separation pending a divorce.

For awhile now, I’ve noticed my newsfeed changing. No longer as many posts from friends and acquaintances, from writers or the few icons I choose to follow. Just a never-ending stream of follow suggestions of the commercial kind. I’ve logged out, logged back in, refreshed and so forth to no real avail. I also have no wish to waste my life clicking on Not Interested. Add to that the plethora of Trump and Musk related horrors and I began to feel a certain level of stress when I opened my account daily. So I finally logged out with no particular date to log back in.

I originally joined Facebook in 2010 as a writer keen to expand her reader base and no idea how to manage it. Two newly made Facebook friends in the USA and I decided to have an e-masked ball via my blog and that was probably when I truly began to hit the straps with social media.

As a means to advertise each book published it worked well until 2015-16 when the exciting indie-book trade began to be manipulated by Unprofessionals on Amazon.

Readers became browned off. I became browned off. I had a moment where I wondered why I was bothering to write at all if my work was going to be lumped with those on the make. I used to write one and a half books a year and so I slowed down, closed my Facebook business account and allowed the remaining account to became more personal. I went through the friends list and had an enormous cull, keeping in contact with those who mattered to me. Slowly though, Facebook hacking, trolling, and the subtle changes when it became Meta began to eat away at me. I would brace myself daily.

After the US elections and with the January inauguration, I knew Facebook and I were heading for the wall. I wanted people to understand that whilst the world is small, it isn’t just the northern hemisphere nor America that will suffer the consequences of a Trump presidency. There are a myriad brilliant cultures and by the same token, many countries across the Indian-Pacific basin whose lives may be ineffably ruined by the rise of fascism and oligarchies in the USA. But there seems to be a blinkered view across Facebook and so before I tore my hair out in response, I declared a separation.

I haven’t closed my account but suspect it’s just a matter of time. I did let my few remaining FB friends know that for the foreseeable we can chat via Instagram, by this weekly Substack post and if people just want to have a look at what my books might be about, then to wander to my Pinterest account where each book has its own mood board. In fact, where my many parts of my life have mood boards. Totally apolitical and fun and you might just get an idea of what I’m about.

Doing:

* Puppy this and that, including his first class. Aced it until playtime when he and a Bernese had a bit too much of a wrestle and he peed with excitement and exhaustion. Oh the humiliation…

*Writing Act III. There is domestic violence in my novel. Not enough to drag a reader into the pits of despair, but enough to give substance to the protagonist’s life. Someone very dear to me has been the victim of violence and I found as I wrote that my heartbeat elevated, and that I tapped the keys that much harder. Finally, I left a 3-4 chapter gap and went onto a further part of the book. That has been a joy and I found I even dreamed a scene which I subsequently included. Also, the settings of the novel are memorable for me, being Melbourne and my coast. I’m sad because one of the characters who was also in Passage will come to the end of the road. Always surprised when that happens.

*Visited a very remarkable friend who has been extremely ill and who is one of my most admired folk. He may not be aware, but there are elements I observed that may find their way into one of the male protagonists in Act III. His is the courage and strength that one would aspire to. We had cookies and a cup of tea while chewing the fat over life and gardens.

*Swimming my way through the heat. Even on a day when we were wrapped in an early morning seafog. That was the day I wished the cottage was called Nantucket, with all the romance of the name. My husband has been babysitting so that I can swim. He’s got an injury and so is happy to rest his back and leg and puppywatch.

*Baking choc-chip cookies (my recipe) and discovered that Cadbury’s Baking Chocolate is useless for melting and drizzling across the bikkies. Give me Nestlé or Plaistowe every time. I also had a packet of stale, overbaked Coles cookies (which are normally lovely and a good emergency go-to) and so I made Ottolenghi’s Biscuit Cake to use them up, also using any dried fruit left from Christmas. By the stars, it is sooooooo sinful!

*Reading. Fiona Valpy on Kindle. A little of my reading mojo is returning as the pup sleeps through the night. Given that my husband has been talking with people in Nepal and because I’ve always wanted to visit Nepal, and also because the premise of the novel intrigued me, I purchased The Sky Beneath Us There’s a small element of Rosamunde Pilcher in Valpy’s work and I think I’ll enjoy it.

*We watched David Suchet in an eye-catching doco about the Orient Express. He travelled from the UK to Venice, and we lusted after the journey. My husband googled the cost from Paris to Istanbul and we choked on the Ottolenghi Biscuit Cake!

*I saw that this will be in Hobart this year. I would never have considered myself a romance writer – I’m a cross-genre writer (fantasy, historical fiction and contemporary). But stitched into the plots of every novel I’ve written, there are tangled relationships which hang on love. Does that make me a romance writer? Perhaps not in the truest sense, but I noted the sessions on offer and decided this might be a conference worth attending. Not least because it’s just along the street from our townhouse and because Jo Tracey, a new Substack friend, will be one of the panellists. Actually on that note – I must make mention of Jo’s current book-launch. Best launch story I’ve read!

I think on what Substack has given me freely over the last couple of years and think that it has the capacity to keep doing so, far beyond what a now de-regulated Facebook has to offer. In truth, I miss reading about my FB friends’ lives but I have gained enormous brackets of time now that I am no longer scrolling. I also feel a touch calmer, although I know awful global news is just a click away. But the freedom to express one’s own thoughts is the bedrock of my chosen world and I suspect such freedoms are being eroded on Facebook. So I am in absentia from my account and potentially drawing up a divorce decree.

Music for this post? I decided that it needed to be big and bold to stand up to the powerful negatives of social media. So thank you, Verdi!

I apologise for an early arrival at you in-boxes but we have an early start tomorrow to see The Gnasher’s sister and his father being shown at an All Breeds show. We’d like Roxanne from Roxham Kennels to see how our little landshark is growing out and we’d like to see Rita (Skeeter?) who has had her puppy coat stripped.