Wednesday, 12 August 2026

My Own Worst Enemy

I need better supervision

I’ve just renewed this year’s subscription to my Wordpress blog, Always Another Chapter, and I was thinking. I’ve never really clicked with Wordpress, and I’ve been using that blog since 2018, so I’m unlikely to start now. On the other hand, I’ve been posting on Blogger for my mum/personal blog since 2012, and I’m quite comfortable there. I think that I’ll be able to get adverts on there, as I managed to add them accidentally to my mum blog, so that’s a plus. And it’s free! Of course, I could just switch to the free version of Wordpress without using the company that help with domain names and support, but I still like Blogger, so Blogger it is.

I’ve decided that I’ll be posting on my writing blog on Wordpress until the end of October. I always like to do something spooky in the run up to Halloween and I’ve already started scheduling some posts, so I’m keeping going until then. After that, I’ll move everything over to Blogger, leaving a redirect notice on the Wordpress blog until the subscription runs out. That’s the easy, on-the-surface stuff. It doesn’t sound so bad, just switching across to a different platform. If only it was that simple.

The main reason that I renewed the subscription this time is because I would lose a lot of work if I lost the site. I’ve already lost a few pieces because I’ve posted directly onto other people’s sites and then lost the work when those sites went down, and I’m sure that there’s a few pieces in the aether from when I tried with other blogging platforms, so I feel quite attached to the bits that I’ve managed to hold onto. It’s not entirely at the mercy of my blog, though, as I automatically save to the Cloud, and while my laptop is chaotic and I can’t find a thing, I’ve recently gained access to an elderly PC and I’ve managed to keep things in better order on there.

Photo by Carles Rabada on Unsplash
And a great representation of the chaos of my laptop’s filing system

However, I really can’t find anything on my laptop, and my PC is so elderly that it is physically unable to run Windows 11. In fact, the PC crashed two paragraphs ago and I had to do a hard reboot and give thanks for the automatic save function. I’m not sure that I can be trusted to keep a USB drive safe, but I’m going to have to invest in a couple I think, just to keep the work safe. I have two potential fallbacks. One method is to convert as many posts as is feasible into book form, so goodness only knows where I’ll go from there. After all, I’ve not had stellar success with the posts for the White Hart. The other is to preserve stuff on my blog. My Wordpress site has functioned as storage over the years, and there are about 360 draft entries that function as a trail of what I’ve worked on and when. If I stop paying my subscription then I lose all those pieces. I’m going to have to transfer all those posts over to Blogger. What fun - not!

So I skimmed over all 598 posts, including drafts, on my Wordpress blog, which was more fun than it sounds as I got to dip into a few stories that I’d forgotten, and that I absolutely want to tidy up and show off again. I made some wildly optimistic notes about what I could potentially do with a few bits, and then I had a rummage through some bits on Blogger. Many years ago, I posted fiction on Blogger under the same banner, Always Another Chapter, and that site is still there. Some posts from there ended up on the Wordpress site and others have drifted into obscurity. I had a quick rummage through the 164 posts on there as well, and there are a couple of duplicated posts.

Photo by Ire Photocreative on Unsplash
So many lists…

But when faced with overwhelming administrative odds, the first thing to do is to make a list, and I have just shy of 100 posts to transfer between Wordpress and Blogger not including all the posts for Invitation Accepted, Under Dark Hills, Dark Picture and The Guest. Posts for the White Hart and Kane are already elsewhere, and I’m not too worried about those, at least for now. I suspect that I’ve quite a few posts missing from those as well, but I’ll see how it goes. I can see many more lists looming in my future.

So because I’m my own worst enemy, I’m now going to be playing around with just shy of six hundred posts and making sure that I don’t lose anything, while still trying to do all the other stuff that I want to do. But I hope that it’s worth it and allows me to move forward with a better idea of what’s going on, and a free platform to play on. And that can’t be bad.

Tuesday, 11 October 2022

Unexpectedly Best Seller

 

Available at Amazon, free until October 14th

Today I am overwhelmed to find that I'm Number 3 on Amazon.com in 90 Minute Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction. And here's my inexpert screenshot to prove it.

I'm also 41 in Horror on Kindle in the US Amazon store, which is incredibly flattering and it just goes to show - I'm too much of a scaredy cat to read horror. I just write it!

I'm completely taken by surprise - but I'm thrilled.

And just in case anyone has downloaded this and enjoyed and found this post, I've recently revisited the hills in the story, and you can find a series of short pieces that came to an exciting conclusion yesterday here - Under Dark Hills

Now I am going to spend the evening basking in the glow as I carry on with some more fun posts for the October Frights. Let me know if you'd like to see more of these characters. I had so much fun writing them, and I'm sure that there is plenty of mischief they can find yet!

Tuesday, 2 April 2019

Thursday, 20 September 2018

Quiet Library

The new post is up on my website here - I hope you feel free to drop in and have a look.