Blog Awards

Wow, so while I've been taking a little downtime I've been given a couple of peer-awarded blog awards. They were actually awarded to my flash fiction blogs, Xeroverse: Missing Pieces and Xeroverse: 101, but I'm going to accept them here, because in the convoluted way I've set up my blog presence this is the more appropriate place for rambling discourse... ;)

First up, Steve Green and Stephen Hewitt both awarded me the Versatile Blogger award. For which I apparently have to mention seven random facts about me and announce nominations of my own.



And Rebecca Bohn has awarded me the Liebster Blog award.



So, a big thank you, to all three of you. =)

It's a real honour to be nominated by those three, all of them being writers I admire in their own right, all of whom I would happily nominate in return. As such, I am immensely fortunate to have been given the two awards, as it means I can award Steve and Stephen the Liebster and Rebecca the Versatile Blogger award. So that risks seeming like some kind of hippy love-in, but my mutual respect is genuine and all three deserve it.

Steve Green is an ideas machine. His flash fiction shifts easily among genres and is always a good read, week in, week out. There's often a healthy dose of humour in there too, and what this man doesn't do with zombies isn't worth doing... ;)

Stephen Hewitt takes myth and drapes it attractively over the real world, and then sometimes he takes the real world and drapes it artfully over myth. Always a joy to read, his use of language is sumptuous and masterful.

R.S. Bohn is one of the loveliest people I've 'met' since I've begun to get my toes wet with this flash blogging lark. And she's a very talented writer too. Take the time to read the short fiction she's posted on her blog recently, you won't be disappointed.

To my other nominees I say, "pick and choose". ;)
The following are both among my very favouritest and also extremely versatile bloggers, so they may pick and choose which award they like, or take both. =)

Lily Childs writes exquisite horror fiction. She also hosts and judges the Friday Prediction flash fiction challenge. A gracious host, she invites and brings together a wide spectrum of writers under one roof. Hers is definitely a blog worth following.

Aidan Fritz creates deep and interesting worlds, and somehow manages to evoke that depth without slowing his stories down. Always a great read.

Eastscapes is a blog I've pimped before. A friend and colleague of mine with a great eye for the spaces people leave behind, humanity's afterimages, the photography of the damned...


And now, for those of you still with me, my seven random facts...

1. For a short while I was in business with my parents and managed a lovely little children's bookshop... If I knew then what I know now.

2. I have no TV licence. If you live in the UK you know that means I don't watch any TV. At all.
(OK, so I watch Castle on demand5, but it's Nathan Fillion, dammit.)

3. I'm a big geek, but I'm a massive Batman geek. That established, my favourite character isn't Batman, it's Nightwing. (Not necessarily Dick Grayson as Robin or Batman, but Dick grayson as Nightwing)

4. I have a dragon scarified on my left shoulder.

5. My dream job would be to write computer games (not program, I can't program for toffee, but plot, dialogue etc.). I think, even more so than books, the capacity for (interactive) storytelling and character development is very exciting.

6. The surname 'Xero' comes from my second internet incarnation as Angel Xero. Originally created for a prank, it stuck, and when I wanted something more grounded I swapped out the Angel for my real name.

7. My very first internet venture, back when no one used their real names and I called myself Shadow Weaver, was a site called Dark Minds. It began, 2002-ish, as a collective of friends producing creative snippets; it picked up a few other contributors along the way before fading away. These days it only exists on the Wayback Machine.

Google+ for the flash fiction crowd

These thoughts may apply equally to any other online community as they do to the flash fiction one (or it's sub-community #fridayflash).

So I've had a little look around Google+ (or should that be Google Plus, I guess time will determine nomenclature, as it has with flash/ micro/ nano fiction... G+, maybe) and I've had time to gather a few thoughts together.

For those of you who don't know, one big feature of Google Plus is the circles. These are basically custom friends lists, but very heavily and slickly integrated. When you add someone to your Google+ you have to pick a circle to put them in (and yes you can put them in multiple circles, and removing them from a circle is as easy as click and a quick flick of the mouse to toss them away).

On a side note, they can't see what circle you've put them in, so you can happily add that annoying fellow at the desk next to yours to G+, so he stops pestering you, but put him in your 'ignore' circle and he will never know...

More importantly, this means that it's easy to just see your friends' posts, as distinct from your work colleagues' posts, as distinct from the 'people you met at a party once's posts. Obviously this functionality is available on facebook, but it isn't as easy, and facebook is drowning in bumpf and nonsense. Hopefully google+ won't head up spam creek as readily as facebook has.

The other side of circles is that when you yourself post, you can easily tag which circles can see it. Now the talk of circles has been of privacy and 'blah blah blah' elimination, which I think was the primary intent, but there is a very functional side effect of this too. (I knew I would get to the point sooner or later)

When you post you select which circles can see that content. So, what I currently do is use networked blogs on facebook to auto-post my fiction, once, to my friends. Then on twitter (@Xeroverse), I spam a little, it gets me more readers, and doesn't seem to lose me followers. That seems to be the etiquette on Twitter; it's a high speed, low impact environment. On facebook people miss important things their friends say, on Twitter people don't say important things. (OK, mass generalisation...)

Wait, I was getting to a point, wasn't I? So, with Plus I can have my flash fiction circle, and I can have my friends circle. I'd slap up a single public post of a new piece, so my friends can still read it, like some of them now do from facebook. And then I could throw up a couple of 'reminder' posts, set so only my flash fiction circle could see them. You say 'privacy', I say 'targeted'.

But because I'm in their flash fiction circle, I'm not spamming their friends circle/ stream either, they only need see me, and everyone else who wants their stories read, when they've already caught up with their real world friends.

Of course, one of the great things of the flash fiction community (at least, the parts I occupy) is the community part. So I would probably want to put my more general status updates open to all (I've never really been one to worry about keeping my thoughts private), so that will appear to the flash fiction folk too. However, when I post a video game trailer, something my friends will be into more, I can lock that to my friends circle.

I've seen people saying you should be able to censor people from your main stream, but I think people will get used to looking at individual circles (streams) in preference to everything at once, because that's the point.

Of course, some of this also depends on how Google integrates things like blogger too.

Just some thoughts. As more people move in the whole thing is going to develop rapidly, and we'll see how people choose to use it. It's both simple and complex enough that I think we'll see some totally unexpected new uses and behaviours emerge. It's kind of exciting... =)

John Xero <-- I am on Google Plus.

(As an afterthought... there's plenty of talk of it stealing people from facebook, and I think it might, but not much talk about twitter... could it? Might it? Will it be the one circle to rule them all?)