Back before social media, the closest thing Australian fantasy authors and fans had to hanging out online was forums. When HarperCollins created Voyager Online, later nicknamed “the Purple Zone” after the website colour, it became a lively place for their authors and fans to hang out. Into this zone came Russell Kirkpatrick, newly published with his book Across the Face of the World. 

When Voyager sent me an ARC of Russell’s book, I took it to the gym to read while on the treadmill. This proved to be a mistake, for all the right reasons. The characters’ struggles on their trek was so convincing that every step on the treadmill felt like two. So I read it at home, where I could slow down and appreciate the characters journeys and marvel at this incredibly well-developed and, at times, terrifyingly real world he’d invented. 

Russell and I soon found we both had a background in mapmaking in common, and strong opinions about the failures of maps in most fantasy books. I felt they should look like an artefact from the story, not a like it had been made on a computer. Russell… well, as a geology lecturer with accomplishments including creating an atlas of New Zealand, his approach had been quite opposite. His modern, digital map was exquisitely detailed, geologically plausible and several metres long. He would unfurl it during convention panels to the amazement of the audience and fellow panellists and, if we timed it right, right after I’d delivered my take on maps looking like artefacts. 

It was at these conventions that online communities became in-person friendships. And what inevitably happens when authors become friends is a writing retreat, where we would write, swap feedback, increase word counts, sharing recipes, swap music recommendations and laugh until we had to breathe deeply to avoid passing out. Usually Russell would pretend to be the sensible one until our silliness, teasing and crude jokes, listening with just an amused gleam into his eyes, but the prize was getting him to a full-bellied chortle.

He was incredibly generous. Once, my partner and I arrived for a holiday in New Zealand at Christchurch airport, only to be surprised by Russell waiting. He said “skip the plane” then drove us to Queenstown, acting as our tour guide. Later we met again, this time as planned, in Hamilton, from which he took us on scenic drives. There can be no better tour guide in New Zealand than a geologist, describing the volcanic history of the land we were travelling through in vivid detail. It was truly one of the best travel experiences of my life. 

To Russell, geology was as much about people as place. When the two of us drove down to Metung for another retreat, he scoffed at descriptions of Australia as a harsh land. Look at New Zealand’s mountains, he said. These are just gentle hills. Small lumps, really. But after the Black Saturday fires, he told me he now appreciated and respected the savage side of this land. He mustn’t have been put off though, because he later moved to Canberra with his partner, Kylie, and was warmly welcomed into the sf community there.

Work obligations, the pandemic and health issues meant our paths didn’t cross often in the last decade, but I look back with fondness and appreciate that the last twenty-plus years wouldn’t have been as wonderful without Russell’s friendship. He was a kind, thoughtful, intelligent person, a talented writer of epic vision, played a mean round of golf, was a good sport and a friend to many, and will be greatly missed.

For the first time in ages since the postie brought me a parcel (which was in quite a state with lots of rips held together with tape) of books. I was enchanted to find this bundle of green awaiting me inside.

This is a new French edition, of the whole Black Magician Trilogy. So green and lush and whispy. And though you can’t see it in the photo, it’s satisfyingly chonky. Reminds me of bundled series of fantasy books I read in my 20s, happy to know the next one was right there waiting when I finished the last.

I’ve been on Bluesky for a couple of months and so far I don’t feel the need to run screaming. Every week or so I remember it’s there and check the feed. I’m very out of practise with social media and I’m hoping not to develop a compulsive habit. But it’s nice to have somewhere other than my website to make announcements, should there be anything worth saying. So if you’re there you can follow me to see my occasional contribution.

It’s a little over six months since I posted about social media, and a few things were left up in the air so I’m just going to write a quick update.

I deleted my Twitter/X account. The only use I had for it was answering reader questions, and I was getting so few there it wasn’t worth having the account. Recent queries were vanishing into a gap between the very most recent and ones from years ago, and I wondered if algorithms were restricting what got through as well.

Deleting my main Instagram account didn’t delete the secondary one that I couldn’t get access to any more. Fortunately, the secondary one was for non-writery things, so it doesn’t matter. I considered creating a new non-writery one so I could follow the users I missed, but then I remembered all the ads and decided I didn’t miss them that much.

Deleting my Instagram account deleted my Threads account. Sigh.

I’m still considering whether to try a different social media. I don’t miss the ones I was on, but I do miss having a conversational connection to readers. When done right, the format is also an easy way to spread the information you wish to get out there to the people who want it. But if it isn’t useful and fun I can’t see the point in it.

There’s nothing more sure than change, and perhaps nothing embodies that more than the internet. Social media in particular has never had much permanence and stability. A few changes have happened recently that I wanted to write about. It’s a bit of a ramble, but I’m a writer so can’t help wanting to add context and ‘make it into a story’.

I first started interacting online back in the 90s when newsgroups were the thing, limited at first to the rare few who were tech-savvy enough to have access to the internet (or in my case, knew people who were). It was fun and exciting. Then along came websites, and my Australian publisher started running a forum on theirs and a great little community of writers and readers formed.

Then LiveJournal arrived and kind of superseded the forum by having a global reach. I joined in 2005 and my friends thought I was nuts for keeping it ‘friends-only’, but the growing number of fans wanting to get in contact led me to keep public and private communication routes separate. This blog began in 2008, and replaced an earlier website I’d created to facilitate that.

These early formats taught me some valuable lessons: nothing is ever truly private on the internet, forums subjects will cycle around again and again no matter whether there’s a FAQ page or not, and if there’s a way to scam or spam people, someone will do it.

I left LiveJournal in 2011. In 2009 I’d given Twitter a try and liked it, and I could take it with me on my iTouch (remember those?). As the years passed self-promotion grew rampant and outrage was never-ending. 2014 I deleted the app from my phone and restricted myself to only checking Twitter for reader queries every week or so on my desktop computer. I still do. For now.

My UK publisher had created a Facebook Fan Page for me but wanted to run it themselves. This was fine with me at the time because I had enough on my hands with this site and Twitter. However, it meant that I couldn’t reply to reader comments or post announcements for other regions or languages on Facebook. I did eventually gain the ability to comment, but it was between book releases and before I had a change to post there I found Facebook had somehow booted me out again. You have to go through all sorts of hoops to have a fan page now and, well, it’s too much trouble and I have… had Instagram.

Ah, Instagram. In 2015 it seemed mainly about posting artfully filtered photos, but writers, artists and crafters were using it so I decided to give it a try. It was lovely. My calm place, where I only followed users who posted quiet, soothing images. Until Facebook acquired the app and, no matter how much I tried to train the algorithm it kept disrupting my feed with noisy, flashy ads. But without Twitter or Facebook, and blogs not being cool any more, it was the only place where I was interacting with readers. I stayed, but I decided to avoid confusing them with art and craft posts and created a second account for that.

Then recently I lost the ability to sign in to that account. No matter what I did, I couldn’t regain access or went through the hoops of proving my identity only to be signed into the author account instead. This suggested the two accounts were still connected somehow, so eventually I resorted to deleting my author account to see if it would delete the other one.

Now that it’s gone, I’ve decided not to open a new Instagram author account. I don’t trust it not to shut me out again. Which makes me think of Facebook and how it booted me out of being able to post on the fan page. And that Twitter is not even called Twitter any more and everyone hates it. And that Pinterest was great until it changed. And how the other social media that I tried never came to anything.

I’m so over social media. I’d just keep this website, but lately email has also grown unreliable and most of the time I can’t reply because the recipient address is on gmail or hotmail, or was written under a full moon under the influence of cheese.

So I’ve reluctantly rebooted my Threads account. Which was disturbingly easy – I didn’t have to set up anything again so clearly Meta hadn’t really deleted it at my request. Anyway, it’s probably the best way to get in contact with me now.

Until, of course, it changes. As it inevitably will.