“There is nothing permanent except change.”
Heraclitus
Well, it’s been quite a harrowing two months, but this blog isn’t going to be about that. I will eventually write something about what has happened, but it will be in some other, longer form because anything less would feel like disrespect. This medium doesn’t have the reach or the space to unload that kind of emotion.
Anyway, moving on, this blog is not really a blog at all, but a quick note to say that a few things have changed.
Number 1 – and this is just a passing comment, really – I finally got sick of putting up with a billionaire’s midlife crisis and deleted my Twitter/X account. I’ve written a bit about this before, so I won’t bore you with the entire history, but when I realised that my tweets had become pointless (or even more so) because no one could see them, I knew it was over.
So, goodbye, Twitter. It was fun while it lasted and incredibly useful for meeting writers, readers, and publishers, but I simply can’t wallow in the mire of far-right lunacy any longer. So, fuck you, Elon Musk, you absolute cretin.
And to be fair, I have a plethora of other social media apps – Facebook, Threads, Instagram, TikTok, and BlueSky – so I can be found posting, threading, gramming, TikToking, spamming, strutting, and cutting everywhere else.
Number 2 - If you stray beyond the confines of this blog, you’ll notice it looks startlingly different. I launched my website in early 2019 – you know, in that strange, ethereal period before Covid that now feels like it was one hundred years ago - and since then, I’ve only tinkered with it occasionally. During that time, the provider, Wix, had updated – and I have to say vastly improved - their templates. When I tried to make some much-needed changes, I encountered some difficulties. I quickly discovered that my old site was obsolete, so I either had to rebuild each page individually - which would have been dreadful - or set up a new site with a nice, shiny template. The latter was the easier option, so I took it.
Unfortunately, in my haste and excitement for bright, new things, I didn’t realise I couldn’t transfer my blog. So, it has all disappeared. This is a shame because the guest blogs were interesting, and I would have liked to have kept them active for posterity, but alas, it was not meant to be.
So, out with the old and in with the new.
Go and have a look. I think you’ll agree that it looks far more professional.
Number 3 - The release of my book, New Gillion Street, has been rescheduled until 26th January 2024. So, if you have pre-ordered my book, please bear that in mind! I have cancelled the launch party, but I’ve rearranged another, better, more author-ish event, which I’ll announce soon.
Anyway, that’s all for this petite edition. I will have a proper blog coming within the next few weeks that I wrote in September and never posted due to recent events.
Thanks for reading.
Elliot J Harper
Author of the soon-to-be-released New Gillion Street by Fly on the Wall Press.