Kill Your Darlings (and by “darlings,” I of course mean “old website that got hacked”)

My website got hacked. I’m not tech savvy enough to know what to do about that beyond burn it to the ground and salt the earth. It’s too bad—my first post was from 2012, and I had a few interesting thoughts here and there—but I couldn’t do anything on the back end and didn’t feel like copy-pasting everything worth saving. Was there a better solution? Probably, but it’s September 2026; we are not looking for perfection here—we’re looking for survival.

AI has made me self-conscious about my use of em dashes, but listen: I would have gotten an em dash tattoo by now if it would be at all recognizable.

The irony is that my old website was very neglected; I think the last post was from sometime in 2025, and it was about how, as an aroace writer, I often do not know if I’m doing it (i.e., writing allo characters) right. Either nothing feels like anything, or everything feels like innuendo. I had one that was probably pretty sentimental about how I’m happy as a queer adult, because I saw a meme about how queer kids need stories of queer adults being happy … but the number of kids looking to my blog for hope, or anything else, is approximately zero, so no real loss there. I had some that were more literary criticism, some that were more introspection. I wrote one about learning a former friend’s abusive father had died, so I bet that was a laugh and a half. To be fair, humor is one of my go-to coping mechanisms:

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” -Kurt Vonnegut

There was probably at least one about Vonnegut. I was supposed to go see him read, but then he died. That’s also the time I fully should have lost my virginity but didn’t because I had no appreciation in the moment for what a good story it would have been. (I know, but there are worse reasons, okay?)

I work third shift (more or less) but 4 AM is still a feral time. I probably should have slept on the decision to burn it all, but oh well—here we are.

Back in 2012, I was going to learn web design, and I did a bit—some basic CSS and HTML. Now, I’m not even fully confident I set up the DNS right. (What’s DNS, you might ask? Do Not Suppose-I-have-any-idea.) We’ll see if, within 72 hours, alicethomsen.com redirects to this page or not. 

Because the only place I’ve dropped my URL recently is my resume and Query Manager, I’ll close by saying this: You should hire me, and you would totally love my novel.