Out of the Debauched Sloth

Chaz Brenchley's fortnightly newsletter

“In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.” - Voltaire

Writerly news have I none this fortnight, in part because today (as I type) is the culmination of political fever, election day here in the US. I am both cravenly optimistic and yet terrified, and expect to be drinking heavily all evening as the results come in.

The major local news this week is rain. People, we have had rain! Such as we had not seen since April, hitherto. It’s been nice. (The guttering on this house is metal, and it pings in the rain. It’s kinda fun, lying awake in the dead dark and listening to the pinging.)

And the major personal news—I suppose it’s writerly-adjacent, kinda?—is that finding myself somewhat repulsed by what’s been happening on Twitter recently, I have opened a new social media account on Mastodon. As it happens, so have uncounted thousands of other people, this last week or so. The admins (who are all volunteers, and generally paying their server costs out of their own pockets) are a little overwhelmed so it’s all running somewhat slowly right now, but should you want to seek me out over there I am @ChazBrenchley@wandering.shop, and so far I’m loving it. What the internet used to be, and ought to be, and apparently can be again. Mastodon is basically an “If we build it, they will come” enterprise; it’s taken some few years, but there is currently a great migration away from Musk’s Twitter, and a lot of that is coming to Mastodon. No ads, no corporations, no algorithms, no billionaires: just decent people building community. Come on in, the water’s lovely.

I haven’t deactivated my Twitter account, and I don’t intend to, at least in the short term; I have too many friends and contacts over there to simply walk away. But I’m already there a lot less than I used to be, and I expect that trend to continue.

Oh, I do have one small piece of writerly news after all—when I’m not helplessly panic-stricken about the election and/or reading Alexis Hall, I have been working on a new short story. Not observably for any particular market, just on spec, just because it’s a really cool idea and no one else is going to write it if I don’t. It is called “Barazion at War, Barazion at Peace, Barazion” and thus far it has no plot, it’s all worldbuilding and character interactions and it may just stay that way, but it is the most fun.

That’s it for this round. Take care of each other, especially if today goes poorly, and I’ll check in again in two weeks’ time.

- Chaz