Milestones

image source: (www.decobike.com)

Being buried in the first edit of my sequel to Second Chance, I’ve missed a couple of important blogging milestones.

Suffolk Scribblings is 1 year old

In fact, Suffolk scribblings is one year and a couple of weeks old (I told you I was a little distracted). In that time the blog has changed from being a creative outlet allowing me to write about things other than my book to being a blog mostly about the writing process with the odd piece about anything else that takes my fancy. It wasn’t planned this way, it just happened. It’s funny how these things creep up on you unnoticed.

12000 Views

Yesterday I had my 12,000th page view. This is 11,997 more than I thought I would ever get (I always knew my mum & dad would have a look, plus maybe some random stranger). Anybody who has written a blog will tell you how nervous they felt pressing publish for the first time. You are nervous on two counts: that you won’t be ridiculed for what you have written, and that this futile act of shouting in the dark will reach the ears of a kindred spirit. Since that first press of a button I’ve had visits from all over the world (97 countries to date) a fact that I find, frankly, mind-blowing. Thank you to everybody who has taken the time to read my blatherings, whether they have been about village life, writing, supporting your fellow indie authors or the ongoing psychological warfare that maintains the flames of love for my wife and soul mate. I appreciate each and every visit.

1000 Comments

By a strange coincidence I also passed the 1000 comments threshold yesterday. Out of all the milestones I’ve achieved, this is the one I find most amazing and satisfying. I never expected to meet people through blogging (I know, I was very naive), let alone that people would have enough interest in what I’d written to interact. The big surprise is that I now think of a number of these people – people I have never met and in some cases have no idea what they look like – as friends. It has further strengthened my faith in humanity.

Sadly, as in life, I’m not the best of people at keeping in touch with those I’ve connected. As the number of blogs I follow has increased (along with writing, twitter and good old-fashioned life commitments) the amount of time I have had to comment and interact has lessened, but it does not mean I don’t read your blogs whenever possible, and feedback when I can. For anybody who has connected to me via this blog, I would like to thank you for your generosity of spirit, your frequent encouragement and the occasional clip around the ear if I take things too far.

The future

All this may sound like I’m building up to a goodbye but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m a little behind on my Recommended Reads but I have a number of self-published books waiting to be read on my kindle and I will get back to them as soon as Patrick Rothfuss gets his claws out of my brain. I have a host of blog titles sitting in my drafts folder waiting to be written, plus I will be sharing one or two golden oldies (a year is a long time in digital terms) that some of you may have missed.

So a big thank you once again for all your support over the past year. Long may it continue.

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