Would you quit snoring???

I know I haven't written a real post in a while (in other words, I am just putting up videos and passing along info that others have gathered) but the good news is that I have been writing and have just (finally!) figured out an ending for my major project (Death and Politics at the End of the World) and how I am beginning another one (whose title at this point is Shitty First Draft. When I come up with a title I will let you know.) Anyway, I thought this was so cute that I would pass it along for a little weekend smile. I found this on one of my favorite websites Why Evolution is True operated by Jerry Coyne author of the book by the same name (obviously) who found it on YouTube. Hope you enjoy it!

 I guess this hummingbird is alone because it keeps it's diminutive friends awake!

Northern lights... gorgeous!

One of my favorite science blogs... oops I mean websites, Why Evolution is True posted this video from YouTube. It hails from Norway-- the Aurora Borealis in all it's glory. According to Jerry Coyne the Borealis results from activity on the sun (solar flares) which increase the energy of the atom in the earth's atmosphere. The atoms then release that energy as bursts of light. And different atoms produce different colors. 

According to the Youtube poster the music is Visions of Socrates by Martijn de Man...never heard of him before but it fits with the video. I will add that at approximately 2:20-2:30 there is a shooting star which is also lovely. 

Hope this adds some beauty to your day as it did mine!  

Funeral Supper

The transforming of day to night is a balm to the spirit. 

It is here that my soul finds the serenity that I desire. 

What seemed, in the bright glare of the sunlight so incredibly glaring and pressing 

is suddenly distant and shadowed 

a faint memory left in the wake of the moon's shadows.  

It is here that I find clarity 

as I watch the clouds wing their way through the heaven, 

there is a great lifting of the weariness of the cares of the day 

and my soul takes flight among the clouds. 

Sunset on Green Mountain with Champagne!

And it is here, on my blog that I share my writing. And The Writing is without a doubt the most important thing. As I have said, that will be always be the case. I would like to thank all the commentors on my last few posts. I don't think any of the readers of any of these posts have necessarily been comfortable with what I am writing and the commentors have been very helpful as I have waded through some difficult topics. So I wade on in what I hope will be my final post on this topic because I (like you, no doubt!) am getting a bit weary of thinking about it. It is a bit overwhelming- even if does wind up being helpful!  

The clouds bandy about sunlight- like they're playing catch! 

   So as I wrote previously, I began thinking about this because of the New York Times Book Review Article called "Building the Brand" in which the author bemoaned the necessity for authors, even published authors of long standing to go on the game (my term) for the their books. He pointed to authors in history like Hemingway who reinvented himself and pulled publicity stunts in order to sell books and told a story about Grimod de la Reyniere who invited guests to a “Funeral Supper” who then "found themselves locked in a candlelit hall with a catafalque for a dining table, and were served an endless meal by black-robed waiters while Grimod insulted them as an audience watched from the balcony. When the diners were finally released at 7 a.m., they spread word that Grimod was mad — and his book quickly went through three ­printings." Geez! Talk about getting your reader's attention! At any rate, the article is interesting and the follow-up comments are also interesting. The entire article is posted below this one if you want to read it. 

Then shimmy off into golden paths

This was followed up by a fellow blogger, Conchscooter's of Key West Diary decision to try and make his blog a commercial enterprise. He did some research and found that one of the keys to successful blogging was posting FIVE times a day. As he did so, he found that his readership went up significantly. He gets around 1000 hits day on his site. He doesn't get as many comments as he used to but readership is up and he is happy with how things are going. He is not trying to build himself a reader base (like I am talking about) as he is not writing a book. He is a writer of a blog (and an interesting writer at that!) and posts pictures of Key West alongside his musings. He blogs on just about anything and everything that comes to mind. Sometimes his musings directly relate to the pictures and sometimes they are completely random. Readers from all over flock to his blog. His readers are not all bloggers- they may simply google Key West-  but the ones who are bloggers are not necessarily writers. Anyway, you should check it out! His pictures are lovely! And should he ever decided to write a book, I would bet that many of his readers will preorder his book.
During that time I found an article on google that talked about how blogs that had original content were boosted up in the food chain when topics were googled. In other words if you were merely copying and pasting someone else's article then you were likely to be low in the page numbers. But if, for example, you were one of the first to post a review on a book, you would be high on the rankings for a google search. You can read more here. And then of course if your own name is the only thing in the "label" then you are less likely to get a hit then say a topic that is more widely searched such as "Key West"! 


The other blog I mentioned: Why Evolution Is True in in a similar although much more successful vein. Jerry Coyne the owner of the blog already wrote a New York Bestselling book. His publisher or agent (or someone) has advised him to keep his name Out There. So he has his blog/website (he doesn't like to call it a blog) which he maintains himself. He posts at least five times a day. He has reader cat contests (which I could care less about since I have no cat) but his readers LOVE! and posts on a wide variety of topics, not just evolution. This week he posted a video each day from his favorite musical and said what he thought was so great about them. He posts about great food in the Chicago area and interesting news bits or even (AHHH!!!) POLITICS! He gets as many as 235 comments on some of his posts depending on how controversial they are!  They are READERS!!!! And they love that he posts the blogs himself of course (who wouldn't!) and adds to discussions. Granted his blog (oops!) website is helped that he already has a book published but he is certainly going to be ahead of the game when his next book is published and he is very generous to other bloggers with similar topical blogs by quoting them and linking to them (of course). Oh and I will add that when a newcomer (like me!) posted a comment, the response was quite nice. The other commentors respond and welcome you, it is not just the owner who notices the comments. 

Finally I will post the link to an article I found on Twitter the other day. It was called "More Sacred Cow-Tipping: Common Blogging Misconceptions" at Kirsten Lamb's Blog I generally don't check out these kind of blogs but here are a couple of her tips and I think there are more to come so it might be worth checking out for yourself. "Sacred Cow #1  Writers write, thus they must write writing blogs, right? Um….WRONG! Sacred Cow #2—You need multiple blog sites if you talk about more than one thing. Um, no. Multiple blog sites dilute your brand and erode your author platform. You need one place where alllll your precious nuggets of wisdom collect.Writers write, thus they must write writing blogs, right?"  Well I wouldn't use her terminology I think I would just say that having a blog where you have varied topics will keep readers interest and if your wondering about her reasoning- go check out the article-  I've made this post LONG ENOUGH! There is also a third Sacred Cow on Group blogging that I think is worth thinking about but I won't get into that either.

Ultimately the point is that even if our readers ARE only other writers we want to keep them reading because this is our window to who we are as writers (and maybe even commenting.) 

So! I am over and out on this topic. I know where this leaves me on the topic of my blog.  I think I know what I have to do. I don't think my blog guarantees me success (No! I do not think an agent is going to pop round looking for me!!!) nor do I think it is invisible to the external world -after all my most popular post remains my review on the "Civilization of Maxwell Bright". (Lots of people google "Patrick Warburton" and "naked" apparently!)  And I am going to attempt to put a better foot forward from here on out even if it is only once a week. And when the time comes perhaps I will have the content that I will need to draw in more readers- Whoever they/you are. 

And finally dissipate into the night 

A little bubbly and sober thoughts

            As I've often shared with visitors to my blog that we go on frequent hikes in the not quite high country-- meaning we find great views and hikes in the foothills that are within a half hour drive from our home. One of our favs, but one that I have never posted any pictures of is Green Mountain. The name Green Mountain has always been a somewhat ironically named hill as most of the year it is brown- except this year! We had so much rain in May that the tabletop hill just to the west of the city is as green as the much hardier evergreens that color the mountains behind it.

My son and I once saw a baby rattler on the trail here! A little scary!

Walks are a nice time to reflect and this particular day I was reflecting on my writing and on the topic I've been blogging about for the past couple of weeks. 

            I take it from the response (or lack thereof?? Some of you responded! Thank you!!!! ) that some of you might been embarrassed that I was saying it out loud OR I was simply stating the "well duh" of blogging obviousness.But of course if your plan is to  use your blog for your platform building or your advertising base, then I think the question becomes a great big: HOW????  

Maybe you have a plan??? (care to share???)  

A flower's view from the top looking westward

 I mean, I think there are the things we all do which may feel like A Plan: blogfests, the Writer's Platform Building Crusades, etc. where we meet other writers and follow each other, build a support base. And that is fine!! It's good. I am not criticizing them. I believe that bloggers are a community and support for each other is a good thing! The only problem is that it doesn't necessarily reach readers- it reaches other writers (again, not a bad thing...!!!) And as Talie commented on my last post "Building a brand can be hard, I think social networking these days is definitely a good way to start but then to get readers buying - that is the question! ;-)"
      Which is exactly my point! As I have said to you I am a realist (or as close to being a realist as a writer can be-- haha!) and I would like to have readers one day (wouldn't you???). I mean, I will write whether I ever get published or whether I ever have any readers of my work or not, because I simply must.
But my hope is not to have boxes of unread manuscript for my loved ones to send off with my ashes when I die (I mean, how morbid to have all that time and effort  quietly floating in the air above Key West following the gulf stream for who knows how long then finally come to an end as fish food. Sounds fine for my worn out flesh... but my work??).

Our evening is capped off with a bottle of champagne!

 No! I hope for more. So I am looking out over the blogosphere and the World Wide Web-- I mean not EVERYWHERE (and while I am at it, if you want to be thoroughly depressed about your creative endeavors, you can hop over to Michael Offut's blog and read his post on what it's going to take to even get published, click here. It's a reminder too as to why we all keep blogging.) as it doesn't take a thorough search to begin to get some ideas of what may work and what may not. And, as I looked around I spoke to a few other book purchasing friends (in other words: potential customers!!!! Well, not mine, we have different tastes but you get the point. They buy books! They are some of the few!) I got their take on what they thought would draw them to a particular site for a book purchase.

Sunset over the Rocky Mountains

But in the meantime I wanted to analyze my own blogging preferences: I follow 258 blogspot bloggers. That does not include those lovely bloggers who have Wordpress or Tumblr blogs so if it were all totaled up I might follow close to 300 blogs. I do not follow you all as well as I would like. I'm not great at keeping up even with Google Reader's aid but I do try to pop in when I can and there are some I am better at than others because I have developed a connection with the blogger, so to be perfectly frank, I make more of an effort to check on those blogs more frequently (as do you, don't lie!). 

              But then there are blogs I follow because I find them interesting whether or not I have a connection with the blogger and it is those blogs or websites that I am most interested in discussing, because they are also blogs or websites of authors. 

So Bear with! 

A partial view of Denver as we are coming down the hill after sunset. 

One of my very favorite authors is Jeanette Winterson. She is a British author and had a best selling book some years ago called Oranges are not the Only Fruit (loved this book and I highly recommend it to all and I often purchase if for a gift!) but has written MANY books since then which are featured on her site. She has a lovely website which I enjoy but I don't visit it very often. Click here and see what you think of her site. Tell me what you think about it. Would you visit it frequently if you loved her books? 

The second website I would have loved for you to see was for a book called Special Topics in Calamity Physics by New York Times best selling author Marisha Pessl. Unfortunately the website is down so I will just tell you the website is super cool but it is just for the book and tells you nothing about the author at all. There is nothing interactive for visitors at all- no updates on the author... (could this spell trouble for her???)  What do you think about her site being down and no word on a next book or a site for her? 

The third website/blog is maintained by best selling author Jerry Coyne who wrote "Why Evolution is True" (the site is named the same.) I think his site has the most to teach all of us (please don't let content get in your way!), but what do you think? 

Do you know of any blogs or websites that you follow because they are interesting and they simply draw you in? Tell me about them! 

I'd love to hear! 

I know this is a lot of work here but I do think it might just be worth it! 

More to come!!! 

PS If I am breaking my rule about long winded posts, I apologize! I don't know how to break these up anymore and still keep some continuity. I am trying not to be too rambly.