Anti-Social

 

     

    Well, that was interesting. On Monday I dashed off a quick entry about the Crime Bake writers’ conference and in return reeled in a comment from its headline speaker. 

        I often forget that on my blog I send these thoughts out into the ether, forgetting that there are – incredibly – people who read them. It was a bit unsettling that this very well known author had somehow connected to my little two-bit blog. I imagine it was AI at work, or some program that alerts her whenever her name or one of her books is mentioned.

          This experience reinforced my realization this weekend that I’m not willing to do the amount of work that the other writers at the conference do to support and promote their books. It’s enough for me to just tell people to find my books at Amazon. For me, putting together a mystery is barely more than a hobby and is really just an elaborate version of the crossword puzzles in my newspaper.

 This past Saturday, I sat in more than one workshop where panelists discussed using social media to maintain contact with readers. I don’t want to be a slave to Snapchat or Instagram. I can’t imagine having to put out a blurb every day to gain followers so they’ll then storm off and buy the next book.

         

Okay, yes, I just heard myself. I guess that’s not so different from blogging.

         

But at least here I can do it on my own terms.

          So maybe tomorrow’s riveting post will be about today’s victory over the microwave and how I finally managed to get into my LL Bean account at Citibank.