Flight of the Big Blue Bird

Twitter logo

I’ve been bird-watching. I’ve followed the events at Twitter this week with a morbid fascination: Elon Musk’s arrival at Twitter HQ bearing a sink; the outrage at a billionaire buying up a major cultural outlet (which overlooks all the other billionaires making similar purchases, and most of all, that Twitter itself help make founder Jack Dorsey one, but for some reason, this time is different); the questionable sagacity of predicting Twitter is doomed after a mere seven days of changing hands (this from the same media that told us the Twitter sale itself was doomed from the outset); the layoff of half of Twitter’s workforce; and a notable, but not mass, migration to Mastodon, a Twitter lookalike with a more distributed modus operandi (and no billionaire owner).

I’ve been on Mastodon since 2018. I’ve never liked the Pepsi-or-Coke situation with Twitter and Facebook, so I dipped my toe in the Mastodon waters four years ago in the hope of finding a better situation. I didn’t. My Mastodon feed was tumbleweeds, mostly cat photos and random musings on how much better Mastodon is than Twitter. The way to build your Mastodon feed is to follow more people, but I could find no one there I knew or cared to follow—and if I did, they were on Twitter too, so might as well follow them there.

My dusty Mastodon feed greened in the past week. It has more interesting content now, and my own messages (“toots” in Mastodon parlance) are getting some engagement as well.

With the growth comes growing pains. I’m already having a knee-jerk hipster reaction to the increased traffic there, similar to that sinking feeling one gets when your favorite cafe tucked away in a quiet neighborhood gets Yelped.

Mastodon logo
Mastodon

Worse, I’m already starting to see the kind of toots my Twitter feed was flooded with a few years ago: Smug, taunting, highly-politicized messages supposedly proving how people not-like-the-message’s-author are idiots. This was one of the reasons I wanted to find an alternative to Twitter in 2018.

(How did I halt the flow of those messages on Twitter? I stopped following people who retweeted those kinds of messages. Harsh, yes, but if you’re repeatedly propagating material I don’t want to read, I reserve the right to stop following you. The Twitter algorithm picked up on my change of reading habits, and pretty soon that kind of content disappeared from my feed.)

The real question is if this mild shift in traffic snowballs into the Mass Twitter Migration of 2022 that leads to its collapse.

I’m not holding my breath. Twitter has tremendous inertial energy behind it, no matter its ownership. The blue-checked accounts and users with six-digit-plus followers have a ton of investment in the system. Ten percent of Twitter users produce 90% of its content. Power users are a big draw, and I don’t see any of them packing their bags quite yet.

Mostly, I think those capable and willing to leave Twitter won’t. They’ll simply maintain one more social media account. Most people already juggle Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail. Adding one more to the mix might be annoying, but it’s hardly some massive additional investment of time. And if people are active on both Twitter and Mastodon, then—surprise!—Twitter lives.

My Mastodon account is here. More information on joining Mastodon is here.

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A Man Named Baskerville giveaway

Cover of "A Man Named Baskerville" by Jim Nelson

In celebration of Halloween, I’m working with Goodreads to give away 50 copies of A Man Named Baskerville!

To enter the contest, follow this link and apply to win. There’s no obligation. All you need is a Goodreads account to apply.

If you know any friends or family who may wish to enter, please feel free to share the link with them.

Read here to learn more about my rewriting of the Sherlock Holmes classic. And if you’d like to start reading now, A Man Named Baskerville is available for purchase in Kindle and paperback. The book is FREE for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

According to Cain—a new interactive fiction game

I want to let you know about my latest endeavor, a new interactive fiction (sometimes known as a “text adventure”) called According to Cain.

In the game, you are tasked with solving one of the oldest recorded mysteries in Western literature: What is the Mark of Cain?

You are a medieval investigator sent back in time to learn the secrets behind mankind’s first murder. Using an alchemy system, observation, and your wits, you must discover the untold truth about Cain and Abel.

It’s more of a literary murder mystery than a religious one. And it has an unusual twist in the detective story: Rather than solving the crime, you’re trying to solve the nature of the punishment.

According to Cain is my entry in the Interactive Fiction Competition 2022, which started today. You can download or play the game online, and you can even participate in the competition as a judge.

This is a change of pace for me, and represents a lot of creative blood, sweat, and tears. I hope you take a little time to try it out. I’d love to hear what you think.

I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere reviews “A Man Named Baskerville”

Another review rolls in for A Man Named Baskerville, this time from the podcast and web site I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere:

While this tale is intended to be Stapleton’s counter to what Watson’s published version of the events would be, it rather exposes a horror within that cannot be saved by the loyalty of a good friend, the love of a woman or the faithfulness of a dog.

The full review is here. More information on the book is here, including links for reading sample chapters in your browser.

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Kay’s Hidden Shelf reviews “A Man Named Baskerville”

Over the weekend, BookTuber Kayla of Kay’s Hidden Shelf offers a gracious and positive review of A Man Named Baskerville. It was a wonderful Fourth of July surprise.

If you’re a fan of science fiction, fantasy, and/or historical fiction, I highly recommend checking out her channel, where she offers patient and thoughtful views on a wide range of fiction. Thanks, Kayla!

Kay's Hidden Shelf

A MAN NAMED BASKERVILLE reviewed at My Murmuring Bones

A Man Named Baskerville by Jim Nelson

Viktorija over at My Murmuring Bones reviews A Man Named Baskerville as one of the last legs of the Escapist book tour. She offers an enthusiastic review of the book, and I’m more than grateful for it:

Nelson’s style is convincing and engaging, and places his novel firmly shoulder-to-shoulder with the Sherlock Holmes canon. The attention to detail and careful references to the established course of events are striking, and the character of Baskerville is portrayed with startling humanity. By far best of all is the way Baskerville refers to Holmes and Watson, and those passages are delightful to read.

This well-researched, carefully crafted, and absorbing read will delight mystery aficionados and Sherlock Holmes fans, and would very likely give Doyle himself immense joy, not least of all for the treatment of his storied detective. “It’s time someone said it,” he would surely exclaim.

I’m blushing! Check out the full review is at My Murmuring Bones, along with Viktorija’s other reviews of books and film.

Interview and review of A MAN NAMED BASKERVILLE at FanFiAddict

A Man Named Baskerville by Jim Nelson

The final stop of the A Man Named Baskerville tour is at FanFiAddict, where they’ve graciously published an interview and book review.

The 8 out of 10 review by Victoria Gross is wonderful and offers a lot of grist to consider:

Having a villain as a protagonist is a bold choice. I found myself almost rooting for Baskerville as he continued to make questionable choice after choice. I was still in his corner after LITERALLY MURDERING PEOPLE. I don’t know what that says about me as a person, but it definitely cements the fact that Nelson is a damn good writer. It also posits Sherlock as a kind of dimwit (and if you love Benedict Cumberbatch as I do, it was hard to swallow—at first) which is certainly an interesting take on the famed sleuth. His deductive reasoning had holes and it wasn’t something I was used to seeing in representations of the character. I found it as almost a Wizard of Oz moment, the proverbial pulling back of the curtain to reveal that the Wizard is only a man.

In the interview with Justin Gross, I discuss the making of Baskerville and what led me to write it in the first place. One example:

Were there any specific challenges with writing A Man Named Baskerville? Or, did you find anything to be easier?

The most significant challenge was writing in the style of the nineteenth-century British, as well as researching language, technology, and history, so as to be true to the time and place. As the book is told in Rodger Baskerville’s voice, I didn’t have to imitate Arthur Conan Doyle, but I did use The Hound of the Baskervilles as a primary source for so many things, including diction. I also did a considerable amount of research into more esoteric topics, especially the British peerage system and the baronet title, subjects very important to Rodger.

Was anything easier here than my other books? Actually, it was the character of Rodger that made one thing easier: He’s an audacious fellow, and quite confident. In my other books, the main character would often have to think through doing something outrageous or daring. Not Rodger! He’s the kind of person who barrels into a situation and bluffs his way out of it. That made for some fun chapters.

Thank you Victoria and Justin!