Blog as Thriller

Reya and I sounded like missionaries for Blogging as we sipped green tea at Teaism with her friend Kimberly yesterday. For us writing our daily rant has become as habitual as brushing our teeth. But Kimberly is a published author, a serious writer of mysteries. She asked lots of questions about this writing phenomenon that is in many ways so different from what she does.

She asked about the feeling of community that comes from Blogging. Reya is particularly interested in artists and knitters right now. I’m intrigued with Bloggers who live in the far reaches of Canada, Australia, and Norway. We’ve both branched out considerably from the small group of 30-somethings who so warmly welcomed us into the local Blogging community and then proceeded to have a number of quarrels among themselves to the point where many of them are not even speaking to each other. I could see Kimberly filing this piece of information away.

We talked about the power of StatCounters, which give you a lot of information about your readers, but not their names. Reya refuses to look at hers, preferring just not to know. As a mathematician, I am fascinated by all those numbers and percentages and cities and countries. I look at the search strings that led people to my Blog and wonder about the people that typed in some of them. We talked about how some Bloggers have used those stats to reveal stalkers and lurkers.

We mentioned the concept of a parody Blog, one that a friend of ours knows only too well. As a sick takeoff on her Blog, it nearly caused her to kill her Blog.

At this point, Kimberly started to voice the plot of a thriller in the making. She wasn’t about to jump on board as a Blogger, but the Blogging world was showing her a who-done-it just waiting to be written. So as Reya and I submit our daily offerings, Kimberly could be out there writing a best-seller about exactly what we are doing. I will be the first to buy it and say “Who said it first?” (to quote one of my favorite sages).