A Blogger Interview from Of Blog of the Fallen
Larry over at OF Blog of the Fallen has posted a long list of questions for book bloggers. I thought they were interesting enough to post about here, so that’s what I’m doing. Larry seems interested in getting a lot of responses, so if you are a blogger, whether about books or otherwise, you should participate. Answer the questions on your blog and post your link in the comments. (Note: Apparently Larry posted these questions as a spoof of sorts. I took it seriously when I wrote these answers, though, and so should you.) Here goes: 1. Without giving anything away, what can you tell readers about your blog? The World in the Satin Bag is a science fiction and fantasy oriented blog, ranging from discussions and rants about various issues in the genre fiction world, book and movie reviews (sometimes in-depth, sometimes not), and anything else that strikes my fancy. I’ve recently been talking about the New Weird and Scifi Strange “phenomenon.” Some have called my blog “serious.” I like to think that WISB is a mixture. (On a ridiculous side note: isn’t the point of telling people about your blog to give something away? Or is there a specific thing I’m not supposed to give away about The World in the Satin Bag? If I’m not allowed to give anything away, then I can’t even say that my blog is a blog, because that is already giving the reader something by which to develop an expectation.) 2. What can you tell readers about your future themed review months? Are there any sequels in the works? I don’t have any themed review months, so I can’t tell my readers or anyone’s readers about such things. I review what comes to me, what interests me, and so on. All I can really say is that you shouldn’t expect my reviews to be non-genre oriented. 3. What do you feel is your strength as a blogger/reviewer? I’m going to approach this from two different positions: one that is egotistical and one that is objective. Objective strength: I’d probably have to say my dedication to blogging and reviewing. I’ve been blogging for four years as of Sept. 3rd, with over 1,500 published posts. That evens out to about a post a day. I don’t know how many people can say the same, since there aren’t a lot of statistics on these kinds of things. Regardless, the fact that I have been doing this for so long seems to be paying off for me personally; I’ve improved drastically over the years (look back to the oldest posts on this blog and you’ll see how true that really is). Egotistical strength: I consider myself to be a pretty strong thinker and critic, particularly in the last year. I’m not right all the time, but I am quite pleased with many of my critical posts on this blog (such as my writing on Inception or even my more recent discussions on New Weird and Scifi Strange). To be fair, though, this isn’t a strength that I think is unique. There are quite a few bloggers out there who take a critical approach to their posts. 4. If you could go back in time, what advice would you give the younger you concerning your blogging/reviewing career? Do what you love. It’s not advice that I wasn’t already attempting to fulfill, but I would likely tell my younger self to remember to keep the blog about what I love. I wouldn’t try to change what I’ve already done, for the most part, because I think failing and succeeding is a better way to learn how to be a good blogger/writer/etc. than reading about it on the Internet (though you can get a few good ideas from there). 5. What was the spark that generated the idea that drove you to start your blog/reviewing career? I actually began The World in the Satin Bag as a fiction experiment. In Sept. of 2006 I had the idea to use a blog to try to finish my first novel (which this blog is named after). The first chapter went up on Sept. 17, 2006 and ran for thirty-one chapters, ending on Sept. 2, 2007. I used the blog to talk about books, reading, writing, and things related to genre while writing the book, and then converted the blog to a heavily genre-oriented discussion/criticism/review/rant blog. The rest is history. That’s pretty much what started everything. I had no idea that, four years later, I would be where I am now. Then again, most people don’t know what the future holds for them, right? The entire novel is still available to read on this blog, in case anyone cares, but it is old and something I’ve preserved here for fun. 6. Were there any perceived conventions of blogging/reviewing that you wanted to twist or break when you set out to start blogging/reviewing? Honestly, no, but not because I was interested in parroting everyone else. When I started blogging, I had no idea what blogging was. I started this, as I’ve indicated previously, as an experiment. As such, I do things on this blog that I like. That, to me, is the only convention any blogger should stick to: write what you enjoy writing about. Most of us do this for free, after all. 7. In retrospect, is it safe to say that the online blogging/reviewing world wasn’t quite ready for your blog/review column? Blogging/reviewing was dominated by powerhouses such as Wil Wheaton, Dave Itzkoff, and Harriet Klausner at the time. Looking back, was your blog/review column too avante-garde in style and tone? I don’t even know how to respond to this question. If I say yes, it paints me as an arrogant jerk; if I say no, it implies that I’m a hack like Harriet Klausner (though not like Wil Wheaton, who I think has done a damned fine job of making something of himself based on his geek identity; he’s no
Quick Announcement: Zoe Winters is Giving Away and Kindle
I just found out about this today, and unfortunately the contest ends tonight. Zoe Winters is apparently giving away a Kindle 3 (3G). It’s fairly easy to enter, and obviously she’s doing it to try to boost her sales for her new book, Blood Lust. Hopefully she sees a spike. In any case, you should enter the contest!