I just dug a few things out of the archive and way back machine. It looks like he started with the blog around Dec. of 2015.
Some Thoughts On Putting Yourself "Out There" as a Public Figure
12/6/2015
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12/2/15
Welcome to my very first blog entry. I've decided to create this section mostly for the purposes of talking about strategies for writing, marketing, querying publishers, creating a public persona, etc. In the future I might get into specific How-To topics if there's a demand for this. Initially I want to express my consternation about putting myself out there as a public figure, particularly an artist, & whether I should still fit in my political views as a private citizen. Upon reflection I've decided I should primarily curtail them unless they're directly related to critique of my work itself.
I'm deeply conflicted about this because I tend to champion "lost causes" or whoever I feel is being silenced by authoritarians, be they on the right or the left. One more person scared into silence is a million too many. And yet, I've reflected upon how much I've enjoyed novels where I knew not a lick about the author's political views or had to read deep into the subtext to surmise them. As a reader, I'd rather not have knowledge that would bias me one way or another to the work itself. Despite having a definite viewpoint, I have sympathies with both the left & right of political/social thought. I want both in my readership. Therefore the political thought of my private life will be kept private until such time as it is relevant to my work or a critique of my work, as I've stated.
Kind of wish he'd stuck to his word and kept quiet about the politics.