In 2014, I graduated high school. Started my first job. Self-published my first novel. And, in general, me (and the rest of the world) moved on from forums.
It wasn't a conscious decision I made, per se. I met a lot of wonderful people on forums. I have a lot of fond memories of them. I met a lot of wonderful people who I still talk to now and I believe it helped shape a lot of the man I am today. What happened was that I became older and things changed. The forums I once frequented dried out. I became busier. My goals changed. I started focusing all my attention on writing my stories and reviewing other people's stories (on my review site Nickelbib.com, which I have had running in some form for about a decade now).
Fast forward to 2023 and you will see a lot is different. I am a married man and I have a family (most of them are cats, but I digress). In 2014, I published my first novel, but, in 2023, I will publish my eleventh. I have a small company with my brother Scott Moore called Mishmashers Publishing, which now has twenty-something stories under its belt.
Recently, I started to develop Dustjacket Social. Although it might not look like it, I have been developing it for awhile now. When I first hatched the idea, Scott and I agreed we needed to be the Facebook of Storytelling. I learned new software, I searched for days for add-ons and extensions, and whatever else I could find. I dealt with server crashes and things far out of my field of expertise and kept pushing and punching buttons until I had a nice, little Facebook replica. It had its own app and messenger system, and you could create Groups and Pages, and all the other bells and whistles you'd expect from a social-media website. But, then I realized, I didn't want to be the Facebook of Storytelling. First and foremost, it's an overzealous expectation of oneself to begin with (I am one middle-class man and Facebook is a billion-dollar company), haha.
What I wanted was a forum. An old-school forum (with modern touches, of course). Like the very art of literature, forums are a dying breed. They are a relic of a bygone era. But I don't want them to be. Maybe it is nostalgia, but I want to keep the torch burning for them.
Thus, we commence the Beta of Dustjacket Social. I have a lot more work I need to do for it, a lot of configurations I have to implement, a lot of configuration I need to learn how to do in the first place. There are changes I want to make that I don't even know I want to make yet.
But I could use your help - I could use your curiosity and your enthusiasm, if you would be kind enough to oblige me. Together, we can all shape Dustjacket Social and help make a wonderful community together.
Thank you,
Nick
Attachments
Last edited:
