Today marks my 6th year as a blogger, writing 5 days a week (M-F) on the writing life and what other writers have to say about life. Social commentary is the way I guess you’d categorize what I do, for those who care about categories. I don’t. But I do care about my readers who have grown in number over the years, starting with a few friends and now extending to almost every country across the globe. Some have stayed with me a long time so I want to send a special thank you to them — my contingent in Australia and the gaggle of readers from India. There are two followers in Brazil who’ve been with me almost from the start. They never comment on anything I write, but I see their dots on Google’s Analytics page — no names, just dots — and I wonder that they have remained with me for so long, like flies on the wall, observing my progress through time. Perhaps, like me, they are amazed I have lasted so long. In any case, I thank them and the rest of you for your company. You can’t begin to imagine how honored I feel that you have stayed with me on this 5-year journey.
Today, the blog is brief, a note to thank you and to mark a new year for an aging column. And I’d like to announce that my first novel, Heart Land is about to mark a new beginning, too. Very soon, it will be coming out in a new, edited edition complete with a fresh cover and illustrations. Heart Land is a fictional memoir about a boy growing up in rural Ohio in 1939, at the end of the American depression and between two wars. The book has endured because many have said they found it funny and heartwarming. Or as Gary, a reader in Portland, Oregon wrote, “After finishing it I decided that great art is in the experience of it and I had a wonderful, powerful experience.” That’s good enough for me and a reason to go on writing my books and these blogs. Maybe I’ll last another 5 years.
I hope my readers will excuse me if, figuratively at least, I take this day off to go fishing. Drop by tomorrow, if you can. I’ll be here.
Courtesy of waltcurlee.homestead.com
