I'm Back

First off, sorry to my subscribers for the series of random posts today.  I was trying to figure out how to make multiple pages, which in Blogger, as it turns out, does not involve the multiple page options.

Second, GET IN!  I've just figured out that rather than the aforementioned involving "pages" per se, it's accomplished via post labels and a special gadget.  So much for clarity.

Third, sorry I've been gone for awhile.  I was incapacitated for a week with illness.  I wasn't sick.  I was just completely screwed.  Remember when I said about being a martial artist?  Well, I was pretty hardcore around six years ago.  I tried doing one of my old training routines and I completely did myself in a quarter of the way through.  I was bedridden.  I'm proud that I could push myself hard enough to actually damage my internal organs, but all the same it wasn't exactly wise.  I think I'll build myself up to my old level of fitness slowly and sanely from now on.

So here I am writing again, and existing on the web-o-sphere while I'm at it.

I've re-shaped the blog somewhat.  I'll still post writing advice, but I'm going to include some elements about myself.  Back when I started the blog, narrative craft consumed my entire life.  I studied it voraciously.  I taught it at Kingston University London for a year, and after moving up to the Midlands I privately tutored.  Basically I love writing and teaching.

The week before Everest by Fog started, I was sitting in a pub with my brother, who is real job haver and everything, and I told him that I had a blog and didn't know how to market it.

"You sell stories, right?" he said.

"Yeah."

"And your readers don't have anywhere to learn about you?"

"They have.  But I don't know how to market it."

"What's your blog about?"

"Erm... me... and stuff."

"Every teen-aged kid with a computer has a blog about 'them and stuff'.  What do you have to offer that's special?  Give it a theme and market around that."

Aha!  I can offer my one true obsession, and even make myself not look insane!  So off I went, and within one month I went from having 20 views per month to having 300.  Now I'm at 600 and steadily growing.  But I think it's time to move things forward.  There's more going on with me than learning the craft.

I'm studying Sociology, English and Creative Writing for a PhD come September.  I'm going to learn all kinds of cool stuff and I'll have a zillion thoughts on how to apply those things to writing.  I'm completing a novel very soon and I'm going to learn all kinds of neat stuff about the publishing industry from the inside.  My novel research dearths some pretty cool facts.  Especially when I wrote short fiction, which I shall be doing again soon, I constantly scanned about for scientific and political facts that inspire me.  Basically, there's more to me than writing advice and I shall start offering it.

For those of you who just like the stuff about writing, it's all still here.  I'll still post on a regular basis, and I'm sure it will consume the majority of my blog.  For the rest of you, the rest of me will be here too.  Everest by Fog is about "me and stuff" once more.