Well, it's about time

For those of you still around, you know it’s been a while since I lost blogged. Kids, work, other family obligations – you know the drill, a thousand different things get in the way but in the end it comes down to this: If you don’t make the absolute commitment to blog and tweet and write regularly, then…well, you end up not doing it.

Guess I’ve been a little soft on that commitment.

I have been writing, editing, and revising though, even if I haven’t been blogging and tweeting about it, and now it’s time to return to the blog, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the digital world so many of you inhabit.

And I do have a few things to tell everyone about, first and foremost being that my novel, CLAIMING MOON (formerly known as THE RETURN), is due out Aug. 1. More details on that, and another publishing surprise or two, will be forthcoming.

Second, I’ll be doing a bit of regrouping here as I return to the blogosphere, and most likely will be moving on over to Word Press soon.

Truthfully, I like Blogger better – it seems to be easier to use for those of us whose minds just don’t wrap around technology very well, but for some reason Blogger doesn’t seem to want to play well with Amazon. I’m an Amazon Associate (these days, who isn’t?), which means I’m kinda working as an independent sales contractor for them. That means I get paid a teeny weeny little bit (something like one one-millionth of a penny, I think) if you click on a link from my blog that takes you to Amazon, and then you purchase the book or item through that link.

Blogger has decided it just won’t let its users do that – when I take a linking code from the Amazon Associates program and place it here on my blog, Blogger automatically adds extra computer code which invalidates the link. If you click on it, you go to a page which says you’ve followed a bad link. I spent a fair bit of time on the phone with Amazon, and they’ve looked at it eight ways to Sunday and can’t do anything about it.

Interestingly, at least to me, if I just take a generic link from Amazon (or from anywhere else) and place it on my blog, the link works. It is only the Amazon Associate links which Blogger monkeys around with. It would appear Blogger (and by extension, Google) wants us to utilize their services, so long as they are the only ones making money off of it.

Oh, well, if I can figure out all the trap doors and rabbit trails of Word Press, I’ll be moving over there. Stay tuned.

For now, the countdown is on….28 days til CLAIMING MOON is released!