Well, Here We Are Again (Behold the Navel-Gazing!)

I'm obviously back on Blogger. This was a pretty difficult decision to make, giving up my static site in order to return here. Economics played a hand in it -- not gonna lie. I was paying more for my hosting plan compared to the amount I was receiving in royalties (that doesn't even account for the domain fee). Yeah, my book sales are pretty sad, but they've always been very dismal. I'd like to afford treating myself to a doughnut once in a while using my royalties!

Kidding aside, it is what it is, and here I am. 

So where have I been in the past year, anyway?

I actually had a Blogger account not too long ago, and it was coming along well enough. That is, until I made the mistake of commiserating with someone on Mastodon on the role of social media in helping us promote our work, etc.. We shared our links, and I was able to check out their site and blog, but the feedback I received regarding mine was more along the lines of "Yeah, I'll link to your site, but it's Blogger, so I'll put a caveat next to your site name." And they did. Their site's link to mine went something like "this is another writer I met, here's her site, but beware it's Blogger."

I was so ashamed of my site that I set it immediately to private before deleting it completely and turning to Neocities for some HTML therapy -- which, apparently, helped, since my recent static site was a design I managed to work out over there (Neocities) and then just transferred to my new hosting service. 

But the idea still stands regarding the shame I felt for using an unpopular platform (more so now than ever given Google's notoriety). That I was really lacking and a bit of a loser for liking a basic blogging platform for my needs.

The thing is I'm not a techie and constantly struggle with creating and maintaining an independent site. I'm not good with social media. I can't even blog worth a damn, more often than not. But I learned to enjoy setting up my own space online to talk about stuff I feel greatly about, and that's all that matters to me even though the ride's been kind of rough half the time.

I'm well aware of my shortcomings online. Everything I do online is janky at best with so many foot-in-mouth moments that lead me to backtrack and quietly delete whatever post I wrote that ruffled feathers in some way or another. My online presence is full-on DIY with zero finesse or social / technological savvy, and I've been slapped down more than once for not "getting it" -- whether on the use or choice of online platforms or my posts on social media. But I'm still sucking it up and carving what space I can for myself.

I'm nowhere near the caliber of popular writers in the gay romance / MM romance genre in spite of my fifteen-plus years in the publishing business, but I don't see myself quitting any time soon. Eventually, sure, but not yet, and that's all that needs to be known about me and why I'm still doing this despite the odds and my bad track record in selling my stories. And I do love talking about my books even though there's been the inevitable finger-wagging over self-promotions over at Mastodon (one of the reasons why I ended up deleting my account there).

So, yeah, I know my place even though I've done what I can over the years to play in the larger sandbox with everyone. Blind faith in oneself can only take me so far, though, and it's high time I take another step back. I've done social media, hopped from platform to platform, got shamed out of my blog, tried a static site, and then economics threw a bucket of cold water on my plans. 

So here I am again, and I'll make sure not to let be shamed out of my personal space this time around because, really, at this point, this is all I have left. And since I'm no longer on any of the social media platforms, I guess I won't have to worry about that anymore.