Hey everybody, M. here,

It’s been forever since I’ve started up a new social media presence. None of the other major ones, for whatever reason, ever really appealed to me, so I’ve continued using Facebook as my only online social channel for spreading the word about my fiction, just because i was there when it was relatively new and I’m a creature of habit. And I’ve done it while complaining much of the way, as the continued reduction of organic reach has rendered the attempt to get my updates to people who might enjoy my work oftentimes more frustrating than effective. Neither have the platform’s ongoing promotion of garbage content and AI slop, and the apparent desire to become a place where chatbots spam other chatbots given me warm feelings about it. That said, I’m still active on Facebook, still sometimes post stuff there that doesn’t make it over here, and it makes me happy to get a new follower every once in a while. So if you’ve enjoyed one of my stories and you’re using Facebook, check me out on there and give me a follow.

But I’ve been thinking more lately about the need to be in more places online, especially with an unprecedentedly big summer release schedule coming up for me (which includes a number of stories in anthologies and my sword & sorcery collection Kingdoms Trembling). The reality is that any social media platform can take a dump in a day and there’s nothing you can do about it, so it doesn’t hurt to diversify.

Beyond that, some of the ways Facebook has deprecated long-form content in the past few years has consistently irked me. And the overall shape of the internet has made the idea of driving a ton of direct traffic to this blog you’re now reading, much as I’d love for it to be otherwise, seem a little old-fashioned and unlikely if not quixotic. So all of this added up to me deciding to launch a presence on Substack.

Poking around the platform in the first few days of using it in earnest (after literal years of sitting there staring at the dashboard), I’m having mixed feelings. My imagining it as throwback to a different era of social media that had not fallen victim to the many things that make the online world agonizing and deleterious seems to have been a bit of a pipe dream. But I think I might be able to do some interesting stuff with it, so feel free to visit The Sternstack if you are so inclined.

I guess you could say it is more of a “soft launch” at this point, as I’m just figuring out the platform. I’m envisioning it as a place where I can both keep people who are interested in my work up to date with what I’ve got coming out via the newsletter, and send out additional exclusive content in topics that relate broadly to my fiction. With this in mind, I’ve just recently posted a review of a comic book from the early-’90s, a sort of writing I haven’t done in a long time but that I think some readers might find entertaining. I’ve got some other ideas I’m likely going to experiment with as well. So if there’s anything you read over there and enjoy, let me know, like and subscribe, share, etc. It’s really up to the readers how this one comes together and grows. I’m open to suggestions!

Take care everybody!
-M.