Facebook Killed the Blogging Star

 I’m trying to decide whether to call the days of the blog over or not. Blogging seems to have been hanging around on life support for quite a while now, but not really capable of breathing on its own. I remember the heyday of blogging. In my experience that was back around 2010/2011. I’d easily visit fifty blogs a day and would have liked to have visited more. I’d post most every day, and would quickly get 20 or 30 comments, which would grow over the next day or so.  My blog links took up the whole side panel of my blog. There was a vibrant community with everyone linking back and forth to other blogs of interest. That just isn’t really happening anymore.

As facebook became more popular, I saw the blogs decline. Why spend a good chunk of time constructing a thoughtful and well researched blog when you could type in a quick status update and get a dozen immediate ‘likes’ on FB? It’s not like a lot of people were really reading the blogs carefully anyway. Then came Twitter and it got worse.  I never joined Twitter. You can’t convince me that important things can be said at such short length.

I remember reading somewhere years ago that: “A bumper sticker is not a philosophy.” That may be the most profound single line of wisdom I’ve ever seen. A blog wasn’t a philosophy either but it allowed people to expand and expound on thoughts. Through that kind of process, philosophies are born. But it would appear those days are pretty much over. What say you?

The Community

I was thinking last night while lying in a tent in my own backyard looking up at stars and trees what a great community we have here in Blog World. How strange it seems at times to have made so many good friends with people I've never physically met, and in many cases never even seen a picture of. At other times it seems to have grown so naturally that it is no different than any other small community. In fact, it's better in many ways because almost all of us here share commonalities and interests that you don't typically find in an actual small town.

I remember growing up in Charleston, Arkansas, population 1500, and not a single other person interested in writing. There were quite a few readers, but only a few were interested in Science fiction and fantasy, which I wanted to talk about. I had great times in that small town, but there are things I might have enjoyed talking to others about that I never got the chance to do so.

This community has the kind of people in it I would have loved to talk to when I was 15, 18, 22. Thanks to all of you for sharing, and thanks for the overwhelming wave of support since the publication of Swords of Talera and Wings Over Talera. Thanks to Sid for admitting he knows me, and to my writing group buds Candice and Sphinx Ink for posting kind words about my writing and pictures of the cover of "Swords" in particular. Thanks to Susan for her blurb-worthy quotes on "Swords" today. Thanks to Randy for being the first to review "Swords" on Amazon. And he liked it too! And thanks to everyone else who has read and commented on my blog and wished me the best. I hope I'll be reading more of everyone's work soon. There are some talented people in this group.

Btw, the whippoorwills are back. Or they never left. I heard them again last night, although not as frequently as I did a few weeks back.