why I blog

I’ve been neglecting this blog – with a great many writing projects all coming due, and other blogs that I contribute to clamoring more loudly, I’ve simply had no time – but Kerrie pointed me to this meme, started at State of Denmark (not a Scandinavian crime fiction reference, well unless you count all those murders in Hamlet) and it seems a chance to catch up and reflect a bit. Besides, it reminds me of the why I teach meme (inspired by the brilliant Dr. Crazy’s Why I Teach Literature) which was a nice chance for a lot of people to step back and reflect.

1.  How long have you been blogging?

Since before I started using proper blog software. I created a blog-like page for my library’s website years ago. The html was criminally bad. It’s much easier now to share information with the community. In fact, I’m reminded that a student showed me Blogger many years ago; he’s now a seasoned faculty member at another academic library. He’s still teaching me things.

2.  Why did you start blogging?

The first foray was to replace an irregular library newsletter with a nimbler, more responsive means of providing information (and avoiding the huge headache of layout and creating content for a newsletter that was, frankly, one newsletter too many for most of its potential audience). Later I started  my personal blog for a similar reason: to replace another static web page that was tricky to update, one containing book reviews. THEN LibraryThing came along, so I started posting most of my reviews there, except for ones that I write for Mystery Scene and Reviewing the Evidence, so the blog morphed, as they do. (I had to look this up, because I couldn’t actually remember why I started my blog.)

3.  What have you found to be the benefits of blogging?

Since using it for quick easily-illustrated news from the library, I started blogging for ACRLog and began my own blog, then went slightly blog-mad. I now use blogs for all of my courses, very occasionally contribute to Free Exchange on Campus, try to contribute to a blog I started for students interested in the field of librarianship, and am using a blog to supplement a  faculty development program on my campus. Oh, and I have a fairly active Scandinavian Crime Fiction blog, a way of updating a website on the topic that was a summer research project last year.  My own blog has evolved into a place where I can integrate the various strands of my life – librarian, academic, novelist, citizen. Another thing about blogging: since discovering FriendFeed I am finding it a wonderfully communal activity. (They also have a kicking widget that I just added to my professional CV. It so much less busy and frantic than most widgets.)

4.  How many times a week do you post an entry?

In my various blogs, probably two or three times.

5.  How many different blogs do you read on a regular basis?

Probably 20 or so daily. Maybe more. I know, it’s an addiction.

6.  Do you comment on other people’s blogs?

Just try and stop me.

7.  Do you keep track of how many visitors you have?  Is so, are you satisfied with your numbers?

No, I try not to pay attention. At my personal blog I’m mainly working things out that are bugging me. I’m not doing it for marketing purposes. The conflation of self-reflection and self-fashioning-as-self-promotion is one thing that I find both fascinating and disturbing abut blogs. Just because we can count visitors doesn’t mean we should. It’s a bit like equating your real social capital by how many “friends” you have at Facebook.

8.  Do you ever regret a post that you wrote?

Not so far.

9.  Do you think your audience has a true sense of who you are based on your blog?

Usually as a writer, I’m very concerned about audience, but in my personal blog, I mostly say what’s on my mind, for me as much as for anyone else. It’s a space for me to nibble away at things that I’m thinking about. That probably does give people a good idea of who I am – someone with strong political beliefs, a visceral aversion to mingling marketing with identity, a person who loves books and reading and is curious about the publishing world, a librarian with an anarchist streak – but I’m not doing it to tell the world who I am. I’m just putzing around.

10.  Do you blog under your real name?

Yes.  And under my real self, as well.

11.  Are there topics that you would never blog about?

I doubt I’d ever say anything personal about my family. If they have things they want to share with the world, that’s their option, but it’s not something I feel is my option. (This is why I would never write a memoir – too intrusive into the lives of people close to me. Also incredibly boring.) I also don’t blog about how to write or my path to publication or how to market books. There are plenty of other people who blog about that, and I have really nothing useful to say. My path to publication was sheer luck; I don’t really get marketing, and I’ve never taken a course on how to write fiction and wouldn’t presume that I know anything useful about it.

12.  What is the theme/topic of your blog?

My personal blog is, for me, a place to work out things that I’m thinking about. There’s something about the medium that is nicely informal and immediate, which is a change from the more academic or polished writing that I do elsewhere. I like the bracing logic of an academic argument, and I like writing fiction in someone else’s first person voice, but blogging is like having a conversation with a friend.

13.  Do you have more than one blog?  If so, why?

Mine are all for different purposes. Students seem to like the course blogs, at least being able to find the readings and syllabus in one place and not having to find that packet of paper handed out on the first day – and it’s kind of  neat way to create an open course. That’s why mine are licensed under Creative Commons. Sharing is good.

the holy trinity

Karen Chisolm has tagged me with a meme that started over at David Montgomery’s Crime Fiction Dossier: who are the three authors you couldn’t live without?

A few years ago, I might actually have duplicated his answer – Lawrence Block, John Connelly, and George Pelecanos. Or maybe it would have been John Harvey, Reginald Hill, and Dennis Lehane. Or Elmore Leonard, Robert Crais and James Lee Burke . . . Okay, you get the picture. It wasn’t hard at all to name my favorites. I had a fairly short list.

Now I have a very long list. And an even longer list of authors I want to try, but haven’t yet. (Damn you, 4MA! I’ll read until I die and I still won’t be finished!!) Another thing that has happened is that some of my favorites ten years ago are still writing, but either I’ve changed or they have. They just don’t have the pizazz for me they once had.

So I think I’ll divide this into two parts: authors who made me the reader I am today and authors whose work really excites me right now. And then the Meme graders can give me an F for not following directions.

Three authors who made me the reader I am today – Dennis Lehane, who showed me you could write beautifully about terrible things. Elmore Leonard, who loves all of his characters, even the lame, the halt, and the uncool, and who has a laconic but utterly generous approach to the world. And John Harvey, whose writing has a very special quality of light.

Three authors whose work excites me right now – Jo Nesbo, who is simply brilliant and makes me believe in his world. David Corbett, who takes risks and is insightful about what’s going on. And Denise Mina, who had me with GarnethIll, but keeps surprising me with her range.

Of course that’s three authors among some 3,000 that I could name . . .

photo courtesy of Your Guide.

Randomized

Tagged again! Karen, via Peter, has asked me to reveal six random facts about me. Since I have never kept chooks nor flooded six floors of a hotel in China, this would be a really good time for you to catch up on your sleep. Here goes:

My daughter’s dog Sadie will be staying with us for a few weeks while Rosemary travels to Italy. This would be fine, except the cats took a vote and have passed a unanimous resolution against dogs. Negotiations continue.

I live in a building that used to be the town firehouse (and town hall and police station; it’s a very small town). There has never been a pole; the firemen used the stairs. There is no bell, because the firemen took it with them when they moved to a new building. There is also no bell tower, because a tornado knocked it down ten years ago.

I will be teaching a new course on international crime fiction next year, as well as a new course on books and culture, as well as a course I’ve taught for several years, Information Fluency. I clearly need to see a professional about my bad habit of filling out course proposal forms impulsively.

I have a large pile of books to read. This should come as no surprise to anyone.

I know someone who is directly descended from Kant and Leibnitz.

I’m pretty good at handling new technology, but telephones scare me.

There. I hope you enjoyed a refreshing nap. Though I’m supposed to tag others, I think I’ll let this one go since, so far as I can tell, I was the last resident of the planet who had not yet played.

me-me-meme

I’ve been tagged again! This time by Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise. It’s a simple meme, meant to spread the word about books. The task, should you decide to accept it, is this:

Pick up the nearest book, open to page 123, find the fifth sentence, then post the next three sentences. You’re also meant to tag five more people, but so far as I can tell everyone I know has already caught the bug. So I’ll skip that step and instead do the other steps twice for penance.

“Lucien’s grip was legendary, and if you were ever unfortunate enough to have him lay hands on you, you suddenly paid very close attention. It was fun to watch the mechanisms start up, to see Lucien’s eyes start flying over Absakora County, sweeping down from the mountains, through the gullies, over the foothills, and into every attic, cedar chest, closet, and gun case in a hundred square miles. He added five more names to the list, none of which were Indians.” This is from Craig Johnson’s The Cold Dish.

“When he returned to the locker room, he noticed the handkerchief on the bench. It was Chinese silk, embroidered in red with the monogram AL. He picked it up and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, not really caring whether or not she’d return for it.” This one from Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang.

Both books are in a rather tall TBR pile, one from the book room at LCC Denver, the other from my last foray to Once Upon a Crime. Speaking of which, if you’re in the Minneapolis/St. Paul neighborhood, come keep me company on Tuesday, April 29th, at 7pm there, where Pat and Gary are kindly hosting the launch of In the Wind.

a meme for all seasons

Sandra Ruttan tagged me in the current meme that is appearing on many a crime fiction blog. The challenge is pretty straightforward. You open the nearest book to page 123, find the fifth sentence on that page, then post the next three sentences. Fortunately, I am not currently reading Faulkner. Here’s what I came up with -

“Your woman. Justine Dalvik. I know you heard what I said a few minutes ago. That we’ve been keeping an eye on her because she’s not on the up-and-up. But you don’t want to hear that. So you’re trying to pretend you didn’t hear it at all. It’s not going to help you, Bergmann. As soon as I’m gone, you’re going to be turning it over in your mind, again and again.”

Okay, that’s more than three lines, but it give just a slight flavor of the book. A touch of procedure, a dose of dread, a case that hinges more on psychology than technology. Oh, and characters named Dalvik and Bergmann. Yes, you got it – we’re in Scandinavia, smack in the middle of Inger Frimansson’s The Shadow in the Water. I snagged an advance copy of the US edition, being published very soon by Pleasure Boat Studio.

While I’m at it, Sandra reminded me of something embarrassing – I had meant to point out Marshall Zeringue’s wonderful Campaign for the American Reader in my host post for the Carnival. I’m going to fix that, but it’s one of the best sites around for whetting your appetite for books. The Page 69 Test is a fun way to not only find out what a book sounds like, but to hear the author reflect on how it fits into the whole. A truly novel way to sample a book. (And if that’s not enough, there’s also the Page 99 Test!)

The next thing the meme involves is inviting five other bloggers to play. So now, I tag … let’s see, who hasn’t already played? – I’ll try Mary Saums, the Material Witness, the Book Bitch, David Montgomery, and Bill Crider.