Death by Google

Well, I said I'd be back -- and I'm only a day late. Only. The wifi connection was "up," but there was no opportunity to blog ... as well as nothing significant to blog about. You certainly don't need to know about w.o.r.k, and how it totally screws up your life!

However, I'm back in a lull where I can transform myself from drone-for-hire to optimistic-and-opportunistic-writer. [short pause while Keegan puts on Writer's Hat]

You can probably tell from the relative brevity and occasional invisibility of recent posts, that life ain't what it used to be! The global economic downslide has hit everyone, everywhere -- physical bookstores are closing, publishers ain't publishing too much anymore, and writers are writing less and reading the employment ads more. And Keegan is no different. Middle of '08, we were screaming along and I was hoping to "give up the day job" by about May or June of '09. Not going to happen this year, guys --

In fact, in the immediate future, I'm going to have a good deal less time than usual to spend blogging and chatting: I have to get my priorities hammered out. I need time to write, and to do promotional activities, and blogging, alas, is going to be shuffled waaaaay down the list.

Add to this the fact that Google never did respond to my request to get my page rankings restored for this blog (they zeroed me out five months ago now, and apparently refuse to talk about it), and you have a blog with 350+ posts up, which is struggling to get 10 visitors per day ... which sadly (in fact, it's tragic) means that the time I invest in this blog is a dead loss, speaking in purely "business" terms.

Why did Big G zero out my page rankings? I'm clueless. I've read their rules. I've abided by all of them. I have been critical of their policies regarding Adsense on gay-friendly pages (where publishers are paid out in fractions of a penny per click on ads for which the advertiser paid to Google dollars, plural, for said click). I've begun to suspect there is a human monitor who reviews criticisms of The Goog, and when they recognize criticism, you get ... terminated. I can think of nothing else to account for what's going on.

So --

Time to shuffle my priorities. I need more time to write and do promotional work; I have less "spare" time to simply chat. I can certainly continue to post to this blog about book launches and special deals, and reviews, and webpage rebuilds. Hey, that's "promotion." But -- and I really am sad to be saying this -- I won't be able to write about every subject under the sun, as I have done for nine months!

Eventually, I'll be recutting this blog into two or three new blogs -- but again, this is a very time-consuming project. Put it this way: if we want Legends finished, and Hellgate finished, the time has to come from somewhere!

This is a very sad occasion for me: I've enjoyed blogging, and if there were any way to keep on doing it ... I would.

Blame the global recession if you like. Or blame Google (which is probably far closer to the mark!) for being a righteous, "true faith" prima dona who disapproves of gay-friendly sites and punishes criticism harshly.

To those readers (you know who you are!) who have been following this blog for months now: thank you! It's been a tremendous learning experience for me. Tune in occasionally, because when I get Hellgate finished (Christmas '09??) I'll have the time to cut The World According to Mel into Keegan's World, plus at least one other blog besides. And since those blogs won't have been "Googled to Death," theoretically I should be able to chat again. When you're chatting for a wide daily readership, you can rationalize the time invested as (!) promotional activities.

What's next, for me? Heavy-duty marketing. All titles available at Kindle, Mobi and Smashwords. All titles available as hardcovers. Press releases and review copies going in every direction; and ... so on.

Summer is winding down into fall ... the rain won't be far away now. Cool weather is good for getting some work done, and I do feel inspiration starting to bite. So --

Ciao for a while: I will be back, but not daily!
Thanks for reading, I appreciate it...
MK