Have You Had Problems Commenting on Blogspot Blogs?

       It's come to my attention that some people may be finding it impossible to comment on my blogs.  This surprises me because other people seem to pull it off without difficulty.  So I'm setting out to analyze the problem.  I really would like to get more comments.

       I never have trouble commenting on other Blogger blogs.  I assume that's because my blogs are on Blogger.  When I go to Faith in Ambiguity (Tara Adams' blog, which I recommend highly, btw), for example, I get the same kind of comment box that I have here.  My name is already there -- it reads "Lorinda J. Taylor (Google)" and all I have to do is click on Publish.  In fact, I just put a new comment on her blog and it went right through.

       The Comment box gives choices:  You can post with Google, LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, AIM, OpenID, Name/URL, or Anonymous.  It doesn't give the choice of Twitter or Facebook.  I was told by the person having the problem that he tried all the choices and couldn't post with any of them.  I just checked out each of these choices; LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, and AIM require a User Name while OpenID requires an Open ID URL (whatever that is).  If you aren't registered with these sites, of course you can't use them to post (I'm not registered with any of them -- well, WordPress, but more on that later).  Name/URL requires you to have an URL of your own, and not everybody does.  But Anonymous doesn't require anything.  Spammers have no trouble posting with Anonymous, so I would think that option at least would work, but apparently it didn't.  

       What I think the real problem might be is this:  Blogger is a Google site, and so I think you have to be signed up with Google for it to work well (for your name to show up ready-made in the box).  I think that's why I have no trouble posting on Blogger blogs.  I suppose it's a Google trick to get people to sign up.

       I don't have a solution for you, except to sign up with Google.  So I'm sending out a request to people who often do manage to post Comments on my blogs.  To Kat Anthony, Sandra Tyler, Debbie Doglady, T. A. Miles, E. C. Ambrose, Joyce Lansky, Journey of Life, Chris Andrews, Fel Wetzig ... if any of you read this, tell me if you had trouble posting comments and describe the trouble.  Some of you have Blogger blogs and some have WordPress and some may have other hosts.  Most of those people are signed up for Google, because I've encountered them in Google+.   And for anybody else who can't post, contact me at Twitter (@TermiteWriter) or at Facebook or Goodreads or Google+ and explain the kinds of problems you're having, because I would really like to fix the situation!

 

       Now I want to talk about WordPress, because I have a similar problem posting comments on those blogs.  It's a bit of a long story (but when did I ever write short stories?)  When I first started, I had no connection with WP at all and I had no problem commenting on WP blogs.  Then I got involved with a project to share a themed blog with someone else, and that required me to sign up for WP.  Then that project fell through and the blog disappeared.  But apparently I remained in some mysterious way connected to WP.  This is compounded by the fact that I have a conlanging blog through the Language Creation Society.  It is WP-powered but through wordpress.org, not wordpress.com: http://remembrancer.conlang.org.  It's pretty inactive -- I haven't had time to post anything there for quite a while, but it has a lot of information about my conlangs.

       So now when I try to post on a WP blog, it will ask me to log in to WP.  However, it won't take any of my passwords, either for the defunct blog or for the LCS blog.  It inevitably tells me it's the wrong password.  So I have to resort to posting with Facebook, which requires me to enter all my information every time.  Gravatar also got into the mix somehow -- the Gravatar information pops up when I enter my email address, but if I try to use that URL, the request for the WP passwords comes up again!  At that point I lose the brilliant comment that I have just spent hours composing (ha, ha!)  So what I have to do is delete the Gravatar URL and type in my own blog's URL.  And also I have cultivated the habit of copying the text of the comment before I try to post it, so at least I easily can start over.
       But even that doesn't work all the time.  Occasionally, the comment just disappears into the ether, but when you try to re-enter it, it tells you it's a duplicate.  That happened yesterday.  I tweeted the blog owner and asked him if anything had gone to moderation, but he said, nope. 
      
      They say all lost objects end up on the moon.  There must be a special crater for lost blog comments!  Or else maybe we should all start praying hard to St. Anthony!

[On that note, a Google search turned up this amusing blog post by Nancy Mace (December 20, 2010): http://my1073fm.com/stanthony/
from which I took this image]: 

"Tony, Tony, come around, there's something lost that must be found!"

Website credits Hutton Archive

So What's Next, Now That The Storm-Wing Is Published?

       This piece will be a kind of roadmap of what I intend to do in the upcoming weeks and months, both on my blogs and in the area of writing and publishing.

 

       First, I should say that I won't be publishing anything for a while.  I plan to let readers get caught up with the verbiage I have already produced! (LOL!)  And the third volume of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head isn't anywhere near ready (I've shortened the name from The Tale of the Valley of Thorns to simply The Valley of Thorns.  I think, since I've chopped this into so many volumes, shorter is better). The text is in partially formatted shape, but it needs a good bit more editing and polishing, and I don't have a map or cover drawn.  That is, I have a large map of the whole Quest but I'll have to cut it down to fit the setting of this particular book, which will cover only a small part of the termite world.  I want to come up with a different way to show the mountains.  I don't like that hatched background -- makes the place-names hard to read (see the map for The Storm-Wing here).

       As for the cover ... well, I have only one drawing for this part of the book and it's very stiff and not to my liking.  Here it is (comments?):



Click for a larger view

       Actually, this picture isn't as bad as I remembered, but obviously it's oriented wrong to be a cover picture.  Also, you can see by the date in the left corner that I drew this way back in 2003.  At that time I was outlining all my termites in black.  Now I do them in orange -- it softens the effect.  I also don't like the canyon walls, so I would need to find some photos of rocky cliffs to use as models.  But "Lug'tei'a Battles the Demon-Sorcerer" may very well be the subject of the cover, although I have another idea that would require a brand-new drawing.

 

     So!  I will be working on all that off and on.  First, however, I'm going to take a break and do some reading.  I've promised several people to read and review their books, and also one person is waiting for me to read her WIP and comment on it.  I need to get caught up on all that.  I'm afraid my rather ambitious intention of analyzing all four of Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion retellings is going to have be put on the back burner.  I've only done the first one -- Prince of Annwn (see all four posts here, on my other blog) -- and I do intend to get back to it someday, but I need to do some other things first.

       One of these things is to extract a section of The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars that deals with what happens to the Jews in my future world and also with the psychological struggles of the first star-mission's Chief Engineer.  Most of that will have to be dropped from the final book if I ever get it published because it's somewhat peripheral to Capt. Nikalishin's life, but it's too compelling to leave on the cutting room floor.  So I intend to work seriously on that and it will probably be the next thing I publish.  It will have to be drastically shortened and condensed, with a lot of rewrite.  It will be a complete change of pace from my termite SF/fantasies and maybe that will be good -- show I can write about something besides termites and conlangs and introduce some variety into my backlist.  The book will probably be called Of Fathers and Demons.

       Betwixt and between, I want to keep posting chapters from Man Who Found Birds (in spite of the fact that I still don't know whether anybody is reading them), and I want to do more Mythmaker explication and also some more Olde Grammarian posts, etc., plus other less ponderous stuff.  On the termitespeaker blog, I have more bird myth material to post (people seem to like that), and I may put book reviews on both blogs.  I will also keep updating my progress on formatting The Valley of Thorns.  And there will always be promotional tasks to undertake.

       So I think I'm going to keep busy, don't you think?  Stay tuned!  And keep trying my books!  Read sample chapters!   Download samples from Smashwords!  And please do comment more!  I really enjoy your opinions!

 

VISIT MY INTERVIEW AT THE LIMEBIRDS WEBSITE

 BY APRIL 8 AND LEAVE A COMMENT,

AND YOU WILL BE ENTERED TO WIN A COPY OF

 "MONSTER IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER"!

 



 

Blogging and Self-Publishing: My First Year in Review

       Actually, it's been more than a year.  I put up my first blog post on October 11, 2011, about a year and four months ago.  That post was entitled "An Introduction to My Worlds" and featured a picture of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  Here's the picture:

 

 

        At that time I didn't know how to turn an image into a JPEG, so I printed out my drawing and took a picture of the print with my new digital camera.  That's why it has that funny shadowing around the edge.  I'm surprised it came out as good as it did!

 

       Boy, have I learned a lot since then!  Not that I've become an expert on anything, but I do know how to use Paint or GIMP to make a JPEG! 

 

       I published my first book ("Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder") on November 11, 2011.  Easy to remember -- 11/11/11.  I thought this novella would make a good trial run, to learn the self-publishing ropes with CreateSpace and Kindle, and later (not until February 2012) on Smashwords.  At that time, since I still didn't know how to make a JPEG, I elected to go with a generic cover for the print edition.  Not long ago, I republished it with my own cover, but because of the subtitle that appears on the paperback entry and not on the Kindle entry, Amazon has never put the two together.  But they definitely are the same book, and the cover turned out great in the print version!  If you plan to read the novella sometime, you really should shell out the $5.49 for the paperback.  The cover makes it worth it.

 

       I went on to publish The Termite Queen, v.1: The Speaking of the Dead on March 12, 2012; The Termite Queen, v.2: The Wound That Has No Healing on May 12, 2012; and The War of the Stolen Mother (v.1 of the series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head) on July 16, 2012.  Now if you're thinking, boy, is she prolific!  She wrote all those books (which are not short, except for "Monster") in less than a year?  'Course I didn't!  I wrote them between the years 2000 and 2003.  Then I began The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars, and got bogged down for several years (enough on that for now!)  But during the three and a half years when I was writing about my termites, I wrote the entire Ki'shto'ba series, which consisted originally of three volumes, now split into six.   Therefore, I have another five volumes ready (or close to being ready) to publish.  I haven't written anything this past year except blog posts (although the splitting of the series necessitated a lot of revising).  That doesn't mean I don't have more new things in mind to write, but first things first.  I always have liked to finish what I start.

 

       So why did I start a blog?   I never intended to write a social blog or a humor blog, and I never intended to try to teach people how to write (there are scores of blogs out there aiming to do just that).  Also, I was not looking to learn how to write, because I don't consider myself to be a beginning writer.  I wrote too many words back in the first part of my life, even though I never published anything at that time.  I write best when I don't think too much about theory and just let it flow.  I think the best way to prepare to be a writer is to obtain a good liberal education (writing is always a part of that), study literature, and read, read, read, especially in the genre you intend to write.

      

       My main purpose in starting a blog was to promote my books and give myself an outlet for some of my ideas (as in the Mythmaker posts; a new one of those is long overdue).   However, I've ended up with three blogs to maintain and I've done some things with them I never intended.  The blog you're reading now, Ruminations of a Remembrancer, is my primary blog and it's become more diversified, with nostalgia posts about myself and my family, essays on poetry and grammar, a few book reviews, extracts from some of my unpublished writings, and some quite popular posts on how to format books for self-publishing.  I even put up a recipe at Christmas, which attracted a lot more attention than I expected! 

       The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head started out as my conlanging blog, with a different title.  Later, when I published the first volume of the series, I decided that a six-volume series needed a blog of its own, so I moved my specialized conlang materials to a website sponsored by the Language Creation Society (Conlangs of a Remembrancer).  Then I found I didn't have enough material for the "Labors" blog so I expanded it to include semi-scholarly discussions of myth as it's utilized in literature (after all, that's what I'm doing in the Ki'shto'ba series).  Besides discussing the background of the Labors series and the myths on which it is based, I've used some of the bird myth research that I conducted for Man Who Found Birds.  I've also had a nice guest post by Fel Wetzig on insects in folklore, analyzed one of Kat Anthony's stories that's based on Sumerian myth, and am now running a series on Welsh myth as retold by Evangeline Walton.  All that is a lot of fun, but pretty time-consuming.  Why don't you stop over there and take a look at some of the material?

       (And by the way, if anyone would like to write a guest post similar to the one Fel Wetzig did on insects, or if you would like to dissect a novel that is based on any variety of myth or folklore, or if you've published a piece of fiction that utilizes myth and want to do a little self-promotion, feel free to contact me.) 

 

       So what's next?  First off, I need to maintain my level of promotion.  Not nearly as many people have read my books as I would like, and that's too bad, because for the right person, they're terrific!  (Sorry -- I can't help blowing my own horn, because I love my books.  I know they aren't perfect, but they have a lot of meat in them, they have powerful characters and unexpected plot twists, and they move fast in spite of being long.)

       I'm especially disgruntled because almost nobody has read The War of the Stolen Mother.  Now, it does take off from the end of The Termite Queen, and it's probably better if you read TQ first, because a lot of plot points refer to what happened in that book.  But it's entirely possible to read The War of the Stolen Mother without reading TQ first, and so I'm going to be doing more promotion for my series on this blog.  I believe more people read this blog than read the other one. 

       And I'm working right now on preparing v.2: The Storm-Wing for publication.  I published v.1 way back in July and I intended to publish v.2 in about three months, but I waited, hoping people would start reading the first volume.  Now I'm not waiting any longer.  I'm doing a final proofread on the CreateSpace template right now (and I'm glad I am, because I'm catching a number of little mistakes, like "in" for "it," and a period following an exclamation mark, and missing quotation marks.  As everyone knows, it's really tough to proofread your own work, but since I have nobody to do it for me, I just plow ahead.

       I'll be doing another post soon on The Storm-Wing.  The other blog already has a lot of material about it -- go there and click on the Label "Storm-Wing" if you're interested.  And here is my cover art for the book (not too shabby):

 

   Click for larger image   

 

        So, what have I learned from this year's worth of blogging and self-publishing other than technical information about how to handle images and how to format for CreateSpace and Kindle and Smashwords?  I would say -- patience!  If you believe in what you write (and I do), you have to stay the course!  Every time I check my publishing stats, I think, well, one of these days there will be a dozen sales, and some of those people will read the books, and some of those people will review them, and then somebody else will read the reviews and decide to buy the books, etc.  (by the way, I've never had an adverse review on any of my books, and the rankings average out to 4 stars, although "Monster" has achieved 5 stars.)

       And I keep making interesting internet contacts with all kinds of fascinating people whose acquaintance I really enjoy.  That can't hurt, either.  I resurrected a fantasy novelette that I wrote back in the '70s called "The Blessing of Krozem" and have made it free on Smashwords.  Go over there and pick up a copy!  I've had 26 takers, gotten one little review and attracted some attention for my other books on Goodreads and through sample downloads on Smashwords.  I haven't become a best-seller -- probably never will.  But if I can reach enough people who like my type of literature (yes, I call it literature -- it's certainly not pulp) and keep growing a following, then I'll be willing to call myself a successful author.

 

A Post on Posts 2: What Deserves Another Look

       Since I wrote the first "Post on Posts" on August 1, the item on formatting with CreateSpace has jumped from 101 views to 114! Hyphenation in CreateSpace seems to  be a popular search topic this week, and I'm also getting hits for Smashwords problems.

       However, what I want to talk about today is some of the disappointments.    What I call my Nostalgia posts (reminiscences about some elements of family history) fell flat. Only "My Grandmother's Indian Head" (24 views just since July 18) attracted any attention (and also some of the more mystifying search terms.  When people searched "plaster Indian busts," "bust of skin cote," and "1800s Indian head plaster bust," was it simply a generic search or were they looking for my post?  Awfully specific terms!)  I'm glad people enjoyed that one!  But you might also enjoy the Christmas post on my mother's Christmas card collection (7 views) and the later one I wrote on my mother's experiences teaching out on the Colorado prairie during the 1930s Dust Bowl (11 views).

      The lesser-viewed posts include some of the topics that are the most important to me. The posts on the use of epigraphs and poetry in literature have been duds. Please do give them a try if you have any interest at all in poetry: The Use of Epigraphs in Literature (16 views), and Of Poetry and Epigraphs, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 (15 and 9 views respectively).

       My biggest disappointment is that very few people have taken an interest in the Mythmaker philosophy that underlies the 30th century ethic. I promised that I would elaborate, but I haven't done that yet because one cannot lightly toss off a piece of this depth.  That one post has gotten up to 17 views, however, and I encourage people to read my Future History and then give the Precepts a look.  They are intended to make you think.

       I was pleased to find that I've had 9 page views in the last week on my discussion of why Evangeline Walton is important to me, which brings all-time views to 23.  I attribute this to an exchange about the Mabinogion that I had on someone else's blog, namely, Pechorin's Journal, which is one of the best literary book review blogs I've found.  

       Another disappointment is "You Say Alien and I Say Extraterrestrial. Plus a Follow-up on "My Future History" -- a measly 4 views of what is an interesting, debatable, and even controversial subject. Maybe the fact it came right before Christmas played a part in that. It includes my opinion on the illegal "alien" debate. 

       The earlier posts, such as What Are the Termite People Really Like? (only 8 views), Why Do I Write about Termites? (6 views), and the sequence of three posts beginning with An Introduction to My Non-Termite ETs ...  (8, 6, and 18 views respectively) are certainly worthy of more interest, and I would hope that this summary might send some of you back to them!  Those posts are quite important for a clear understanding of all my books, should you ultimately decide to read them!

      

A Post on Posts 1: What's Popular

       Not long ago I read a piece on another blog in which the author talked about her most viewed posts.  This impelled me to take a look at my own output so far.  I wrote my first post on this blog on October 11 of last year and I've published 74 altogether. 

       My purpose has always been to explain what and how I write and to get people interested in my stories and in my ideas.  So some of my early posts (the first one was An Introduction to my Worlds; it has a nice picture of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head on it) are important but also among the least viewed.  I really should repeat some of them, with some editing, and maybe I'll just do that!

       Things proceeded at a blah pace until I hit a post on November 29 that has accrued 79 page views!  And it keeps picking up views, which really puzzles me, since it's nothing but a brief announcement that I'm publishing a separate page with my Future History on it. The page itself has 52 views, so that means a lot of people looked at the meaningless announcement but never looked at the page.

       Here are my five most popular posts of all time on this Ruminations blog (in reverse order):
       No. 5: 53 page views of my December 8 post:  "Double Topic: Update on Permission Grind; Language in the 30th Century."  It deals with my problems with getting permission to publish my copyrighted epigraphs, and it also discusses the reasons for the adjusted spellings of names and other English words in the 30th century.  Actually, it's pretty interesting.  But how do people keep finding it?
       No. 4: 56 page views of my June 12 post: "Curmudgeonly Addendum to Previous Post."  Not exactly a magnetic title!  It's very short and it's tagged "Smashwords Formatting."  Ah, that may have something to do with it! But the previous post was "Ah, Sweet Mysteries of Smashwords," also tagged "Smashwords Formatting," and is much more detailed, and yet it's received only 13 page views!  Does that make sense?  The mystery persists!
       No. 3:  79 page views on the one from November 29, mentioned above, called "A Discussion on Someone Else's Blog Spurs Me to Post My Future History."  Maybe the "Future History" tag grabs people.
       No. 2:  84 page views of my February 16 post: "Update on Permission, Chapter Posting, & eReaders -- and why not give "Monster" a try while you wait?"  Another omnibus post dealing with formatting, the permission thing, stuff on my Wingdings problem, etc. It's fairly interesting but hardly earthshaking.  I really don't understand why it keeps bringing people back on a regular basis.  I suppose it could be the "Conlang" tag.
       And -- ta-dah! -- at No. 1: 101 page views and growing daily:  "Formatting Print Books with CreateSpace." (March 5)  Who would have thought?  I wrote the post at the suggestion of somebody on Twitter and apparently lots of people want information on that topic!  When I check Keyword Searches, I find at least 6 different phrases with the word "CreateSpace" in them.  That undoubtedly has something to do with it.
       Additional posts on formatting topics have also been decently viewed: "Preparing a Cover for Your CreateSpace Book" has had 47 views, "More on Formatting Books with CreateSpace" has 18, "Formatting Illustrations for CreateSpace, and Other Miscellany" (which includes the map for "Stolen Mother") has a healthy 29 just since July 15.  And "Use of Unicode in Kindle Formatting Is Incomplete! has 43 views.
       I do hope some of you have benefited from my limited experiences with formatting for publication. It seems to show that practical advice proves popular.
        One of the pleasant surprises is "A Picture of a Termite Worker Face," which 34 people have checked out.  And my three offerings to the Third Sunday Blog Carnival have done quite well. Chapter 7 of v.1 of "The Termite Queen" has 28 page views, my short story "A Little Laboratory Work" also has 28, and the Prologue to my unfinished novel "The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars" has a whopping 42.  Also, people seemed to want to read my comments on Mundane Science Fiction (31 views).  The Waldo Canyon Fire got 25.
       However, some of my posts have been duds as far as viewership goes, and yet some of those are among my favorites and deserve more attention.  I'll discuss those in my next post!