deviantART
I have been on deviantART since probably 2005. At one point, this was my most active site, where I posted all of my most current musings and usually my most recent updates. For people interested in seeing my work, this is still my second most recommended website, even though that work is wildly out of date. You will need an account to view it, since I have marked everything as “mature audience.”
Wix has totally changed the layout and functionality of the website, and you have to pay for a lot of features that used to be free, and they’ve gotten rid of the once-robust search filter – meaning that tens of millions of artworks now all show under one non-category and are next to impossible to find. It basically sucks, now.
Facebook
I don’t use it very much.
Here’s the thing: Facebook is driven by emotional feedback. So it will show you the most “popular” comments on another post, even if they’re super negative. It’s become a vile cesspool of screaming and toxic like-baiting. The algorithm doesn’t respond well to its limited feedback options, and the feed often refuses to show even things you’ve favorited, which defeats the purpose of the feature. I can’t tell if people aren’t seeing my private page’s posts or just don’t care – and I don’t want to know. It also refuses to share my public content with my friends – I can tell, because it tells me how many people have seen my posts vs how many people have “liked” the page. I’m not giving Meta money to promote to my own friends. I hate Facebook, and only go back occasionally to let friends and family know I’m still there.
Twitter is different.
No! You say. Twitter is awful!
It can be. It can be really, really awful. But it’s also easier to control. Twitter allows you to mute words you’re tired of hearing about so you don’t have to see the subject matter nearly as much (most of mine involve celebrity drama and politics), and the phone app gives you more options when you click the corner of a post to remove it from your feed. Everyone once in a while I find I need to go on another removal spree (targeting toxic language and terrible fallacy-laden arguments of all kinds), but the results are worth it.
Best of all (to me), I have learned that Twitter, unlike WordPress, is a much more conducive outlet for the random stupid things I think about at work at 3am. Sometimes I just post in response to incendiary topics just to see if anyone will notice because I’m bored (no, this isn’t smart, but neither am I at that hour). I also post real stuff like quick status updates that weren’t meant to be seen for more than a few minutes. Maybe a day. After that, I don’t expect anyone to see them because of how Twitter works.
I tried to use it to promote Patreon, and still will, but really more than anything Twitter now keeps me amused when I’m working long/weird shift hours. I repost pretty much anything I find halfway relevant. Some of it is social and political stuff (yes, I blocked most of that content, but I do still follow a couple of pages because I do actually still care that the world seems to be going to hell), some of it is science, but I prefer dinosaurs and animals. So follow along if that’s your thing.
Patreon
Oh, Lord, this project.
I wanted to do too much with this the first time. Way too much. The truth is I’m already consuming my limited free time with writing – outside the time I spend living my normal life when I’m not at work.
So here’s what it is, real simple:
I will post my chapters. About two a month. I’ll talk about the editing process occasionally, and I’ll do it more often if people seem interested in it. I’ll also post some sketches here and there. I want to do videos, but I’m starting out simple.
Why Patreon?
- Because I want to hire a professional editor, eventually.
- Because my writing is not always “safe for work” and should not be publically available. My characters swear, slander, and fight. They butcher and draw blood. They question social norms. They offer deeply contrary views. Some of which have been reworded or even deleted over time.
- I am guilty of responding to real-world social issues through my characters, then realizing later that though the response may fit the character, it does nothing to support the story. This is another reason why I’ve deleted Facebook App and limited my Twitter feed. For example: Silver explaining why his sentience qualifies him for personhood – despite being nonhuman – affects Bernard’s views later on. Silver opening a potential treatise on his gender identity in the same chapter makes better archive fodder, as it’s good for me to know his feelings and experiences, but the plot didn’t call for it after the first few sentences, and brevity is a friend I need to become acquainted with more often.
- Because I am in the 4th phase of a project I started in 2010. Not including all the time spent worldbuilding outside the Original Draft, that’s 1-Handwritten Original Draft, 2-Typewritten Arc 1 +critical analysis, 3-Arc/Book 1 Revisions +deep frustration (interlude: workshop and serious independent craft study), and 4-Book 1 Replotting/Revision. I’d like the next step to be a professional editor prior to submission to a printer.
- I cannot offer the results of the amount of work I have done for free. I am already doing it for free because I love doing it, but that is not a reason to expect any creative person to share their work for free. It does them an immense disservice. I say this frequently of other artists, and find it only appropriate that I ask the same respect of my own work. On that note:
- Because doing work for free necessitates an all-consuming “normal” job for creatives to support themselves, thus reducing the amount and quality of work they can produce. Until my work starts to pay me back in a meaningful way, its progress and quality will always suffer. I can’t expect it to replace my day job, but I would most certainly love it if that were the case.
- I’d love to have more time to spend honing the craft of storytelling so that you, the reader, can have a better finished product. Sooner, rather than later. I’d love that more than anything. Remember, I’ve been at this since 2010 and I’m on Book 1. Out of 9. That’s not including the notes I keep for ideas that extend beyond the series. I’d actually like it if we could all enjoy this within our lifetimes – without short-changing the finished quality. I’d like to think that since I have such a better understanding of how all of this works than when I started, it’ll be easier to work around my day job and future books will get easier to write, but I’m honestly terrified.
- I would love to have the time and funding to sit and develop deeper and more complex worldbuilding. Better conlangs, more detailed creatures, planets, and tech. More individualized and thought-out cultures with deeper histories. Better art and design work – which is difficult to produce on a mind-jarring rotational schedule.
- I’d also love to travel the country (traveling the world is a stretch in this day and age), visit the real places I want to write about, take photos and sketch them on-site (yes, IRL makes a difference).
- And finally, I’d like to have time to plan interviews with scientists who know more about my subject matter than me.
- Because I eventually want to have time and funding to offer y’all cool stuff. I’m all about some coloring pages, stickers, bookmarks, and custom plushies. I love the hell out of some merch. Art has always been a core aspect of my worldbuilding process.
- Because I also want to commission other artists, because I love seeing how other people interpret things and I want to support a community of incredibly talented artists in a meaningful way. Prints? I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far, yet. I’m pipe-dreaming.
Please support me through Ko-Fi or Patreon (available October 31st), and together we can make dreams come true.
Ko-Fi
Ko-Fi is a donation site to support artists. I upload to it periodically, but mainly it exists as an option for me to accept payments from folks who want to support this project. At the moment, I don’t have much of a use for it outside of its payment feature.
Scribofile (members only)
This is how I used to edit, but I haven’t had much energy for it since I started this job. How it works is you get so many points per critique you do on other people’s work, and you use those points to place your own chapters or short works in a spotlight, so others can critique it for points. After a certain number of people have critted your work, you go out of the spotlight until you crit for more points. I joined a small workshop group through Scrib, which was immensely helpful and pretty fun, too. If you’re a member, my whole book from that workshop is in beta, and can be viewed through the link in my profile. Do be aware that I did things to it while I had COVID early in 2022, and I … did things … to the first several chapters. I’ve been afraid to go back and assess the damage.
Wattpad (not presently active)
This is where I originally thought of expanding before I chose Scribofile. I’m not active at all.
Tumblr
I’m not active. I had a second account I used for cosplaying, and since I don’t do that anymore, I don’t have a use for Tumblr. My blog posts show up on it, and that’s it. An earlier version of the app spammed my phone with hundreds and hundreds of random memes and pixel graphics – basically everything it ever loaded as I was scrolling – into a hidden damn folder on my phone, and I didn’t know about it until I ran out of space and exported my photos, and all the junk exported along with, right into my dated folders next to my pictures. I still haven’t found them all, and I’ve long stopped trying. I have folders on old drives from 10 years ago that are labeled things like “plus Tumblr garbage.” Since I deleted it off my phone after that fiasco, my use of it has steadily waned to nothing. I’m still upset about it.
Taladay Arts 