Blog update

It has been about a month since I started blogging. I am finding that it has both benefits and downsides.

On the positive, it is providing an avenue to test my writing in a new forum. The publishing and formatting tools in online environments are primitive at best without resorting to hand-coding HyperText Markup Language (HTML)... which I thought had finished back with a little program called HotDog, if I remember my Information Technology (IT) background.

I am currently running five blogs with different flavours:

• Author Journal (this blog - which has had a change of template after complaints the text could sometimes be hard to read)
• Bartitsu & neo-Bartitsu
• Air, Steel & Soul
• Anonymuncles: comment monkey
• Courtly love letters

These have been ordered above as per the level of readership. My Author Journal was viewed more than 100 times over the last month, while the Courtly love letters was viewed more than 10 times in the same period.

I have found that even just transferring material into this format takes some time (like the Courtly love letters), while constructing material in the format can also have its own problems (like Air, Steel & Soul). Anonymuncles has heaps of draft material (I rant a lot but never publish it), but this Author Journal hardly ever has any.

Readership countries and search terms (or entry points) are varied. I even had my Battle of Korunai synopsis access via a search on some search engine of: book review 'space opera'. Google, Facebook, and webmail services are the most common reference sites.

I have also added RSS update feeds, but these remain untested just yet. If they work 'off-the-shelf' then all the better. I will subscribe soon to test them and confirm the required functionality. There will also be some cosmetic tweaks over the coming weeks, but not weeks and weeks of tweaks. Primarily these changes will be to enhance readability of the content.

The blogs have also allowed me to identify flavours in my own writing. My novels are all quite different - military sci-fi, cyberpunk, and space opera/cyberpunk. Air, Steel & Soul is fantasy and at this stage, I have no real plans for a fantast novel... at least none that are anywhere near mature for sitting down and writing yet. I am, however, getting requests - which is nice. I have seen other authors start periodic blogs like this and end up compiling it all into novels or novella, usually in electronic format, but I am still a bit of a traditionalist - I want to smell and feel my novel.

I had someone suggest I could write romance recently. I thought about it in my youth - just punch out some Mills & Boon classics for a few bob. Ssshh! Don't tell anyone, but I have even read the writers guidelines and wrote a chapter or three ... in my youth. I no longer have the material.  I couldn't imagine reading the stuff, so it was somewhat difficult to write it without feeling like I was producing something up there with Days of our Lives in literary terms. This is certainly not meant as an offence to those who do. These days, I see it as another form of writing, of which there are many.

But the value of the blogs comes down to the questions of quality of writing and skill with words and stories... and market for the guff I write. The blogs have taken some time away from my investment in my novel writing, but I think it is 'keeping me honest'.

Now I am off to consider entries for some short story writing competitions in horror and general genre. There is even flash fiction, which is under 1000 words. I am new to that concept, but will try my hand. Another writing exercise.