Yesterday was the first day in a while that has been both cool enough and dry enough to work in the yard. And man did it need work. I think three weeks had passed since I last trimmed. An hour of yard work left me beat. After a nice lunch and an episode of MI-5 I made it to my writing desk around 1:30.

I managed 5 pages on the new novel. So far, my little bit of prewriting hasn’t sped up anything. While I am disappointed, I’m not surprised. The prewriting did serve a useful purpose. It helped me figure out where the book was going to start. Now that I’m into it, I don’t think it will do much more good.

So, I’ve been asked a few times why I don’t do more with social media. And aside from the fact that I hate it and that anything you write can be used against you at any point in the future, those sites come and go all the time. Just ask the bands that spent a ton of time and effort building up their myspace followers. And did you all see what happened with Twitter? That huge hack that tricked people into giving away nearly $200,000 dollars in bitcoin. Not only is the site a toxic wasteland, but now hackers have taken over a bunch of big accounts. Sounds like they stole some DMs as well. If nothing else, it should be fun to see what comes out of all this.

Anyway, that’s all my way of saying I think it’s better to focus on building platforms I control, like this blog and my e-mail list. As long as I have my website, this blog will be here. I also download my subscribers regularly in case something goes wrong with my email service. A little more supplementary social media work probably wouldn’t hurt anything, but as I said above, I hate it. And that hatred shows. I can find far better things to do with my time. Like writing my next book.

We end as always with a preorder update. The Great Northern War has reached 669 preorders. Thanks everyone for your support.

Talk to you tomorrow.