I started this blog at the advice of many "experts" on media marketing with the explicit purpose of gaining more attention for the book that was in the publishing process at the time. It HAS boosted sales a bit, making my quarterly check look more like the yearly income I had from "Night of the Tiger", but not to the point I had hoped it would. In short, I won't be retiring from my day job in the near future to go on book signing tours, but I truly appreciate all the lovely feedback, good and bad, as it makes me a better writer to know where I'm failing my fans.....
But the blog has done something unexpected as well.
My other accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc. have come alive since I started this sharing of my thoughts with the world at large. Friends from high school and college, many of whom I lost touch with many eons ago, are hailing me when I least expect it. I joyfully add them to my contact lists and our friendship continues on as if we just saw each other yesterday instead of over 30 years ago.
People from places I've never visited also come through the other accounts, sometimes just doing a "follow", sometimes asking to be friends because they want to get to know the person under the writing hat. While in certain ways these international connections make me worry a little that the NSA is going to start watching me more closely, causing me to think twice about the kind of things I share, it's also something that fills me with awe. Before I started blogging, I would see visitors from Russia, and China, and Germany on the list of IP addresses provided by my Tripod account, but until the blog, I wasn't being approached by any of them.
It's a rather humbling experience to have a strange person request my friendship and, in response to my "how do I know you?" query, to have them respond "I just finished your book(s), love your writing style, and want to be updated as to when the next one is coming out." It's one thing for me to be sitting here seeing the IP address and that they found my page through a Yandex search, which is a Russian search engine. It's quite another thing entirely to see them post things in their native language and, on translating their post, discover that they're thanking me for adding them to my lists and telling their friends to buy my books....
I can say "Thank you" a million times over and still not express how such a thing makes me feel.
I write, as I've expressed before, because it keeps my mental works from getting all gummed up with bits and pieces of storylines, preventing a brain explosion that would surely see me bouncing around a rubber room in the special jacket with the extra long hug-yourself sleeves. I write for my own satisfaction, going back to edit and re-edit until it's the kind of story that I like to read myself on those nights when I can't sleep and can't find any mindless amusement on the Boob Tube. These new friends and followers that I've been collecting the past year are slowly making me come to the realization that my selfish little writing thing, started in a series of journals and only being released into the public faction in more recent years, is actually worth all the time I put into it (even if it sometimes causes arguments between my husband and myself when I get so deeply into the writing that the housework is ignored for several days).......
So, yet again, I thank all of my blog visitors, and I look forward to seeing some of you elsewhere. I thank you for your kind words and criticisms. But most of all, I thank you for your kindnesses that, despite the vocabulary available to me via dictionaries and thesauruses, I simply can't find enough words to tell you how it all makes me feel.
Blessed be.
But the blog has done something unexpected as well.
My other accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc. have come alive since I started this sharing of my thoughts with the world at large. Friends from high school and college, many of whom I lost touch with many eons ago, are hailing me when I least expect it. I joyfully add them to my contact lists and our friendship continues on as if we just saw each other yesterday instead of over 30 years ago.
People from places I've never visited also come through the other accounts, sometimes just doing a "follow", sometimes asking to be friends because they want to get to know the person under the writing hat. While in certain ways these international connections make me worry a little that the NSA is going to start watching me more closely, causing me to think twice about the kind of things I share, it's also something that fills me with awe. Before I started blogging, I would see visitors from Russia, and China, and Germany on the list of IP addresses provided by my Tripod account, but until the blog, I wasn't being approached by any of them.
It's a rather humbling experience to have a strange person request my friendship and, in response to my "how do I know you?" query, to have them respond "I just finished your book(s), love your writing style, and want to be updated as to when the next one is coming out." It's one thing for me to be sitting here seeing the IP address and that they found my page through a Yandex search, which is a Russian search engine. It's quite another thing entirely to see them post things in their native language and, on translating their post, discover that they're thanking me for adding them to my lists and telling their friends to buy my books....
I can say "Thank you" a million times over and still not express how such a thing makes me feel.
I write, as I've expressed before, because it keeps my mental works from getting all gummed up with bits and pieces of storylines, preventing a brain explosion that would surely see me bouncing around a rubber room in the special jacket with the extra long hug-yourself sleeves. I write for my own satisfaction, going back to edit and re-edit until it's the kind of story that I like to read myself on those nights when I can't sleep and can't find any mindless amusement on the Boob Tube. These new friends and followers that I've been collecting the past year are slowly making me come to the realization that my selfish little writing thing, started in a series of journals and only being released into the public faction in more recent years, is actually worth all the time I put into it (even if it sometimes causes arguments between my husband and myself when I get so deeply into the writing that the housework is ignored for several days).......
So, yet again, I thank all of my blog visitors, and I look forward to seeing some of you elsewhere. I thank you for your kind words and criticisms. But most of all, I thank you for your kindnesses that, despite the vocabulary available to me via dictionaries and thesauruses, I simply can't find enough words to tell you how it all makes me feel.
Blessed be.
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