New Blog & Website

For those of you who have kindly returned here, and those of you who are new, you'll see that the blog hasn't been updated in a while. If you're a reader of this blog, you'll know that part of this was because I was madly writing for a deadline and since then, have been involved in promotion such as guest blog pieces, etc. It's left little time for my own blog - although I'm not complaining!

The other reason is that I've been moving to a new blog. This one will be left for old posts but new things are now going up on my website www.scribblermaxi.co.uk. I'd love it if you started to follow me there now, instead. I've also got an Author Facebook page here.

There aren't too many posts yet but there are some fun blog posts that were done as part of the promotion for 'Winter's Fairytale' and the online RomanceFest that took place in November, as well as a link to a playlist I compiled for the publisher to go with the new book, so feel free to pop over and have a look around.

I'm still working on it, and hope to make it a bit 'prettier' and add posts, but I'm still working out the best way of doing everything at the moment, so I'm not promising weekly updates, or anything. I know from the past that this just doesn't work for me but I will be doing my best to keep it active! 

For those of you who have followed me on here, I very much appreciate your support and look forward to seeing you on the new one!

In the meantime, happy writing!

Facebook - Friend or Foe?

As my previous post was about Twitter, I thought this time I'd turn my attention to Facebook. This was also partly inspired by a conversation I had on Twitter - someone mentioned that they didn't really want to do Facebook but that some of their friends were on it, and refused to communicate in any other way. Therefore he was forced to have an account in order to keep in touch with those people.

Now, is it just me, or does that sound like bullying? Someone who doesn't want to do a particular thing is being forced to because of the actions of others.

I can completely understand the situation and have a similar one. However, I refuse to join. In consequence I do miss out on knowing certain things and that's something I have to accept. But I wasn't interested in joining up when Facebook was all the rage a few years ago, and I have even less inclination to now. The security issues they've had worry me. The decisions they make at times worry me - notably the most recent one about the beheading videos being posted on their site. For more information on that story, see here

The main thing that irritates me about Facebook, however, is that it's made us lazy. As mentioned above, many people put their 'news' on their page and expect others to read it. It doesn't matter whether you are close family or a 'friend' - a term which seems to have very tenuous connections at times. You all get the same news. There's nothing personal for those who are closest, and that just seems  a bit off kilter to me.

Surely the way you tell a loved one something is different from the way you tell someone you've never even met, who's a friend of a friend of a friend. Don't the people who you really spend time with, or you are emotionally close to, deserve a little more attention and consideration, rather than having to go wading through comments from people they don't know in order to try and ferret out a bit of news that could have been put on an email in moments?

Now, this is all about the personal pages of Facebook. For businesses, I can see the purpose. It's a good way to keep people up to date with news and events, if you know that many of them already have FB accounts. It encourages them to interact in a way that they might not if that news was solely confined to a blog, for example. In fact, I'd be interested to hear from anyone who did have reservations about setting up a page but has done so anyway - has it been worth it?

In the meantime, a little request. Please remember that just because people aren't on Facebook doesn't mean that we don't want to hear your news, or see the funny photo you took at the weekend. We just need to be told in a different way.

Newbie post

Writing a blog is something I've been thinking about for a long time. I know, I know, I'm way behind the trend! However, I've now stepped off the diving board into the huge ocean that is the the blogosphere and hopefully I'm going to be able to swim, or at the very least bob around with my head above the water. So the plan is to post two or three times a week on the subject of words and writing. I really hope that you find the entries I make interesting and I'd love to hear your comments and opinions.

So wish me luck and off we go!