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Writer's picturePatricia Murphy

Blazing Through the Blogosphere



I'm just catching up on my blogging experiences (how Meta am I!) as I've been preoccupied for several reasons. One was the terrible events in Paris on Friday. We are frequent vistors as my husband works there regularly and we spent seven months of this year in the south of France. So the tragic events felt very close to home.

Also my left arm is now in a cast as I fell off my bicycle and fractured my wrist. So typing is a bit more cumbersome. But I have still been following my progress in cyberspace.

And this really is a global experience! Edgar's stylish Gothic blog complete with scary profile picture comes from Venezuela! The blogging community truly is international and there were some intriguing questions. The only disconcerting thing was Edgar has a visual that shows the location of visitors to his page. So every time I clicked in to see if anyone was asking me questions, I felt like I was stalking myself.The app is called Feedjit -which for an Irish person uncomfortably rhymes with eejit. But it was nice to see people dropping by from all corners of the globe. But I was interested to see that the tour organisers GoddessFish's icon was now a photo of Marianne and Judy. And what nice looking women they are. I found out that they are located in Kansas, somewhere near Wichita. So I now think of them as being descended from Dorothy, her great grand daughters maybe - after she came back from Oz. Perhaps one of their mother's married Glen Campbell's linesman for the county - or broke his heart. Or Wyatt Earp was their ancestor. Anyway I'm not really stalking them. I just fell down a wormhole in cyberspace.

Start of a new week and a slight glitch with timing as post wasn't up at the usual time. But that was okay as we're all in different time zones and the post went up promptly as soon as Goddess Fish sent a reminder. Rogue's Angels is a fun site by a group of writing and publishing professionals. They're questions were specific and writerly about creativity and how I work. So they clearly take a keen interest in the craft. Allana Angel and Gabriel Genie dropped by for a chat too - I felt very welcomed. They are based in Oregon so its great to hang out in all these different corners. I'm beginning to feel that the blogosphere is a real place, with all these sites like saloons and cafes just waiting for readers and writers to drop by.

This site is based in Florida - an amazing place to visit IRL. We stayed in Sanibel Island, St George's Island and Orlando several years ago. My husband was at a conference on the future of capitalism - in DisneyWorld of all places. Maybe the organiser had a sense of humour.

But back to the present and again, a nice bunch of people showed up for my virtual tour. Teresa Noel who runs the site really does have an eclectic mix of stuff. She reviews everything! from essential oils to books. And a new one on me - Vaping products. I was intrigued. What could this be? Something for killing flies or communicating with aliens? Then she described her partner as her vaping mechanic and it has something to do with tweezers. My life is getting too sheltered I thought. But a quick internet search and I now know its e-cigarettes. It's a whole sub-culture that has passed me by. Judging by the passionate discussions around different products, people have transferred their brand loyalty for tobacco onto different types of Vapers - I guess they're called. Thanks Teresa for expanding my knowledge. And of course hosting me too. I wish it was in Silver Springs for real. I could check out the vaping stuff over a cup of coffee.

This site run by Diane Coto asked me just one question but it's a gem. What could the character Molly tell us about Dan that we don't learn from the book? This really engaged me and got me thinking about the life of my characters from a different angle. Diane is another committed blogger whose love and respect for books shows all through her impressive site. The blog spot also turned into a fun almost-live discussion - with Diane curating and also responding to the many nice comments by those who droped by. Lisa wants to recommend it to middle grade teachers and librarians in her district (thanks!) and Anne thought it sounded like a unique and captivating read. What a psychic reviewer you are Anne. Becky asked me about my favourite books ( endless list) and Mai T asked me another killer question about my favourite recent Disney movie. Frozen is the short anwer. I was feeling pretty chipper too about my rafflecopter entries which are now 523. Until I clicked on another novel on tour called That Girl Darcy by James Ramos who looks about twelve. http://edgarbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/that-girl-darcy-pride-and-prejudice.html

It's a cool sounding YA re-telling of the Pride and Prejudice story with gender reversal. Darcy is the scowling rich kid while Elliott is a geeky skateboarder. Sounds good. But his $50 voucher made me feel like an old skinflint. Then I caught sight of the rafflecopter 13,700 and counting!!! Go on then click on it, you shallow rafflecopter hounds. But you get much better odds with me. Honest. Do the maths.


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