Originally published March 23 2010

Kismet

If you are a Blogger, or want to become a Blogger, you can seek out tips and advice from various other Bloggers. I have flitted around these blogs and one consistent tip I have seen is: write your title first, before you begin - helps you to stay on topic. Well, I'm writing this post and I have no idea what the title is going to be! Wonder how this will turn out ...

A few months ago, Darren Rowse, over at ProBlogger, ran a contest (a random draw) for some books about Blogging. I was fortunate enough to win one of the draws, and I want to thank Darren for going above and beyond the call of duty getting the book to me. The first copy he sent me got "lost" in the Post (hope you're enjoying the book, whoever you are! weasel), so he sent out another copy, Express.

The book is called Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters by Scott Rosenberg (c 2009). Scott is the co-founder of Salon.com, author of two books (the other being Dreaming In Code) and has his own Blog, Wordyard.

The first first paragraph on the jacket liner sums up the book nicely:

"Blogs are everywhere. They have exposed truths and spread rumors. Made and lost fortunes. Brought couples together and torn them apart. Toppled cabinet ministers and started grassroots movements. Immediate, intimate, and influential, they put the power of personal publishing into everyone's hands. Regularly dismissed as trivial and ephemeral, they have proved that they are here to stay."

If you are a Blogger, you will find the book fascinating. There certainly are some who will argue about some of the points in the book, but I found it interesting to follow the exponential growth of what is now called Blogging. From the (reportedly) very first "weblog" page ever posted for all to read - by Justin Hall on January 22 1994 - to the (reportedly) 250,000,000+ "blogs" that are on the Net today, it has only taken 16 years. From the A-Lister blogs right on down to this little ol' blog right here, people are posting what they have to say, and nobody can stop them.

I had just finished reading Say Everything when my wife randomly brought home a bag full of books. I picked through them and equally randomly chose Roadside Crosses by Jeffery Deaver (c 2009). I choose books entirely based on their cover ... I either like the colours, I like the picture, I like the fonts, or all those superficial things. Pretty scientific, eh? LOL

I started reading it late on Friday evening, finished reading it Sunday evening ... 397 pages! Couldn't put it down. It was a murder mystery entirely set around an A-List Blogger, fictional of course! They (author, editor, publisher, whomever) also set up a "fake" website on the Net, placing URLs throughout the book that really do appear on the Net, showing the blog posts and the comments to the posts (all fake of course). It tells you in the book to go to the website and read the posts/comments and maybe pick up clues to who the killer is. It was fun! I thought I had the identity of the killer pegged about three-quarters through the book. Boy was I wrong. LOL

In the fictional book, Roadside Crosses, they mentioned a lot of the real people that were featured in Say Everything. It was really neat! It was totally kismet that I would win the draw at ProBloggers, have the first book go missing, receive the replacement book when I did, read it, then a day later randomly come into possession of Roadside Crosses. Sometimes life just works out that way.

And now I have the title for this post. :)

As a humorous aside, I ran across a ReTweet (thanks to @gogogooding - if you don't follow her, you should). I think this was set up outside an establishment at the recently concluded SxSW festival/conference. Hugely funny, and humbling for any Blogger! As the old saying goes - click here!

Randall Hawes