I love social media. I love chatting to all of you, keeping up with what’s going on, sharing pictures of my dogs and, of course, talking SFF. But I haven’t been the healthiest about using it since my book came out — and while it’s incredibly lovely to interact with people who are excited about your stuff it’s equally … uh… less lovely to see the opposite. Anyway, the very wise advice that people give you about not reading reviews etc is indeed very wise, but it turns out I am not wise enough to follow it if I have ready access to these things. So. Some of you may have seen that I’ve deleted social media off my phone, which was where I used the most of it. No more twitter, no more FB, no more Discord, no more Goodreads. (The exception is instagram, on which I just post pictures of things I bake and dumb poses my dogs make, and besides showing me nice pictures of my book propped up artistically no-one tends to make comments about it. So I will still be there, with the idiot lovely hounds and things made of caramel). I was making myself crazy.

I haven’t deleted my accounts, and I won’t be adandoning any of the platforms – I’ll still pop in from my computer to tell you about news etc and if you tag me in stuff I’ll still see it, just not in real time, so if you need to get in touch in a hurry it’s better to email me (samhawkewrites AT gmail DOT com). I will miss being part of conversations as they happen but I have a book to finish editing and some mental health to keep an eye on so I think it’s the right call for now at least.

Take care of yourselves!

Sam