PROMOTIONAL CATHARSIS

It’s becoming quite apparent that without comments from readers to spur me on, I am only inspired about twice a month to rant or rave on my blog. The rest of the time I do it privately by e-mail. No shortages of things to rant or rave about. Just haven’t learned to blog them yet.

One of my favorite rants is about the amount of promotion authors are expected to do these days. In the early days of romance it was fun and exciting to do booksigning tours and have lines of fans waiting for autographs (or at least, to see the Topaz Man). But now booksignings are old, and readers don’t turn out unless it’s a megastore or a mega-author or there has been tons of publicity to start with, rather defeating the purpose of generating publicity.

So now we’re supposed to learn how to do websites and blogs and interact online. Don’t get me wrong. I adore the internet. I love having an eternal universe of research materials at my fingertips so I never have to leave the house. But I’m clueless about how to do more than type e-mail and order books and run Google. I have to pay for my website and every change made to it, and if there’s a way of connecting this blog to anyone else’s, it’s beyond my knowledge. So streaming videos and original music aren’t coming to my site anytime soon.

What I’d like to know is how people find different blogs in the first place. I don’t have time to read half the things falling right into my mailbox, much less go out and look for more. Sure, it’s handy to look up an author’s website to see when the next book is coming out or to check the excerpt to see if I want to order it.

But there’s this whole huge blogspot action happening, and I can’t even figure out how to maneuver around in it. And I really haven’t the time to learn—unless this pounding, buzzing noise from my floor construction continues much longer. I sure won’t be writing until it’s done, at least.