It's an exciting day over at the books blog. Lyndi at Nice2All gave The Thin Red Line a Rave Review, and I am aglow at the wonderful compliments. Meanwhile, my ad for the dot com page is running right alongside the review (Thank You CMFads) and I am feeling a great deal of satisfaction in Lyndi's advice (don't change a thing). It appears to me that I get about 100--150 regular readers per day and I definitely get feedback that these people like what they see. I am starting to feel like a successful blogger again, more so than at any time since my Entrecard-ending traffic drop.
I am really, Really, REALLY homping that CMFads will grow into what Entrecard _could_ have become, had it been managed by people I know and trust, like Ben, Stan and Turnip. A place where thoughtful and quality bloggers will feel genuinely at home and can gain meaningful notice, as opposed to a system that sadly has become largely a meaningless link exchange, where the most Popular blog , in All of Entrecard, for TWO YEARS IN A ROW (as Turnip recently broke) is a splog, run by the same scraper who maintains 5 blogs (each of which drop the required 300 per day) with all the credits gained used to advertise the "main" site. Monkey Tales? More like horseshit, imho.
I suppose it is disingenuous to keep the EC widget on this personal site, even while deploring what Entrecard has become, but some of my real blog friends still use that site and I Do like being able to leave a card and it seems only fair to have a place where they can leave cards for me. Like most serious bloggers, I am Not eager to choose sides in some kind of power struggle. I just want solutions that Work. And CMFads is delivering that in spades.
Oh, and since this is a Mailbox Monday I will note that this week's mail brough an advanced reading copy of Afraid by Jack Kilborn, a thriller that was previously published in the UK that is being released in the US in paperback in April by Hachette's Grand Central Publishing unit (Thank You Miriam Parker!) and a published copy of Lord of Corruption by Kyle Mills, which I will be giving away, probably to my one thousandth commenter on the The Thin Red Line im association with an April review date.
One final thought, today. I have been thinking of trying to organize some kind of South Puget Sound bloggers group where we could meet up face to face, like at the library meeting room maybe once a month just to talk and get to know each other and look at ways we can work together to butter All of our bread. If you are a blogger in the South Sound area and would be interested in attending a get together, please shoot an e-mail to me at drone AT libdrone DOT info.
