A Quick Blah

I'll hopefully have chance to add an actual Nightlights update after this, but there was something else I wanted to mention first.

Basically the reason why I've rarely used this site, as far as making my *own* posts is concerned, is because I feel kinda stuck. What I mean by that is that there's little to no enthusiasm for posting things here when I've basically got only one actual follower here who responds. I've got a few other followers, sure, but they never use the site - there are no posts, no comments... I have to assume they don't see these posts because they simply don't use the site any more.

And that's fine. I'm not in any way whining or sulking about this. It just makes it feel a little pointless investing time into making posts on here if they're so rarely seen by anyone, and the one person that does actually respond could be told the same news via Discord rather than here.

The other reason I stress that I'm not having a sulk about it though is the obvious - if, as is the case, you rarely ever use a site, you can hardly expect to build up a following. So that, I suspect, is a part of it. But unlike Twitter, which has worked out pretty nicely for my two accounts, this place doesn't recommend your account to other people (as far as I'm aware) or suggest other people to follow, who might then respond and thus, you build up a little group of followers and people to gasbag to.

So I'm honestly not sure how to actually do anything about that. I really don't like just dropping into people's accounts and nattering away uninvited on their posts, and besides which how would I know whose accounts to head for? I used to have an LJ account and me and a bunch of friends and followers etc had a great time there, trading comments, but I can't for the life of me remember how we stumbled across each other and built up our little "gang" of LJ users. With Twitter it just kind of happens - people with similar interests just gravitate towards each other thanks to whatever terrifying magic they use over there. Sometimes it's not a good thing, and other times it works out very well.

So yeah, despite my best laid plans to use this as a place to do album reviews or progress reports or whatever, there's very little incentive, to be honest. And I'm not quite sure what to do about it! :)

Nightlights December 2022 Update Ho ho ho hur hur loff

Right, now for an actual update, and in fact the first for pretty much six months. :P

Since then, against the odds I actually ended up releasing a second album in 2022 which I didn't honestly think would happen. However, it was one of those rare wonderful times when I was in just the right mood and the songs almost seemed to write themselves. While that mood lasted, I made very sure to make the most of it. And so, as the next album after "Stories" earlier this year, I released the 5th Nightlights album, "April Flowers." *Steve Jobs style audience applause begins*

The original plan, as I said in that last update, was to actually release two albums or EPs. One would be slower, ambient music and the other would be the usual upbeat stuff. In the end it just didn't seem to work out for whatever odd reason, so the actual end result was a 14 track album where the first half was slower and calmer songs, and the second half were faster and more upbeat. It just somehow seemed to work out better like that.

There has also been a companion EP to go alongside it, called "Winter Flowers In April" which will have to do for this year's Christmassy release. Sales of this and the actual album have really not been great, but it is what it is. At least the music is out there for when Rockstar eventually discover it and decide to include it in GTA 6, in return for £150 million. And then I can move to Paris and live next door to the Eyeful Tower and visit Marinette at the Scoffs Boulangerie or whatever the real life version is called.

(Yes, on that note I'm also attempting to learn French via Duolingo which is... great, but I've reached a point where I'm really struggling. So I'm not sure how much further I'll be able to take that. Reflexive verbs, my arse. I don't even know what a verb is, let alone a reflexive one.)

Otherwise, as far as music is concerned, I'm at a bit of a dead-end at the moment. There's nothing really in the works except for maybe a cover version of something, but basically there are no major projects on the way. I'm hoping to perhaps concentrate a bit on the story I've been arsing about with for years, or getting a Snowkitten Kids book reworked so that it could perhaps be sold via Lulu or Amazon. Also, there are M&Ms that need to be curated, and that takes a lot of my time these days.