One Author’s Experience with MyWritingNetwork

dr-juneau-robbinsGuest Post
by Dr. Juneau Robbins

For many years I have dabbled in penning various musings and thoughts to paper, writing countless articles…personal and professional…even completing a book or two. Many of those years I dreamed of writing seriously, on a regular schedule, with lofty thoughts of organizing my writings, growing and evolving them, and ultimately sharing chosen selections with the world. On the morning of my 45th birthday, as a concrete action step to force myself to begin writing more, I decided to start a blog.

Honestly, I had no idea where to begin. Internet technology advances at a rate exponential to human aging, and I’m somewhat of an internet dinosaur. Last week, a friend enjoyed a hearty laugh at my expense when she found out I still have and use an AOL e-mail account. What’s my point? The thought of starting a dedicated writing blog in an unfamiliar online world was intimidating. Continue reading “One Author’s Experience with MyWritingNetwork”

How to Start a Blog for Beginners

how to start a blog-684748_960_720Back in the dawning of the eBook age, when I signed on with a small publisher for my first novel, one of the requirements of my contract was to start my own blog. I knew what blogging was, but I hadn’t seen any point to having one of my own – mainly because I didn’t think I had anything to say that other people would be interested in reading unless I’d made it up.

But since I was now contractually obligated to have a blog, I went to my internet service provider, which at the time was Earthlink, and used their tools to set one up. The name of my blog, which rolls trippingly off the tongue even now, was, “Allegedly, She Has Something to Say.” Continue reading “How to Start a Blog for Beginners”

Creating a Fictional Newspaper Blog

Blacktip Times logoMany of us have seen instances where authors take their fictional characters beyond the books that spawned them: interviews with a character, blog postings by them, Facebook pages, Q&A sessions with readers. Recently, however, I came across something that was new to me. Tim Jackson, author of Mangrove Underground, has created a newspaper blog for Blacktip Island, the location where his book is set. Tim describes the site like this:

South of Imagination and east of Flor de Caña lies Blacktip Island, the setting for Tim W. Jackson’s forthcoming second novel, Blacktip Island, and for his many short stories. The Blacktip Times is a weekly record of news and events in the island’s small community of dreamers, reprobates and ne’er-do-wells.

Seeing this as a rather unique spin-off of a book, I decided to interview Tim and find out the behind-the-scenes story. Continue reading “Creating a Fictional Newspaper Blog”

Whose Blog Is It? – or – Why I’m Not on WordPress

a free blog is good enoughI’m half Czech. And Czechs are notoriously frugal (okay, fine – we’re cheap!) as well as practical. So if there’s an easy and inexpensive way to do something, I’m there.

That goes a long way toward explaining why I began my blogging career on Blogger. That is, this go-round of my blogging career began on Blogger. Many years ago, I started a blog on Earthlink’s free platform. I think I made four posts over the course of several months before giving up. Continue reading “Whose Blog Is It? – or – Why I’m Not on WordPress”