Why I'm here!

I Blame Facebook

I’ve used FB Purity for years to make Facebook bearable (meaning, fewer ads and less control by the algorithm. During the last year or so, it’s become more and more difficult to read what I want to read, so I decided recently to leave. I’ve been reading a few newsletters on Substack for a while, especially Heather Cox Richardson’s, so I decided to try this space. I’ll be posting about the conferences (virtual and hybrid) available for those of us interested in Tolkien and sff studies generally, as well as online and open-access scholarship by fans and scholars on those topics, and about my own writing which I’m doing as a happily retired English prof.

For now, this newsletter will be free. Things will be slow at the start: probably a post a week for a while. I gave myself until the end of December to transition from FB elsewhere before my personal FB and either closing down or handing off some of the groups I maintain relating to Tolkien studies. I’ve never been successful at trying to go cold turkey on anything in the past! I think of FB as a type of addiction, but the problems with trying to read it for my ‘friends’ posts as opposed to the junk the program shoves at me as well as announced plans for the Metaverse were the final push).

So, welcome!