It All Started with "Sky Blue"

It’s been a year since I started blogging. On March 19, 2009, I opened a Blogger account and set up a blog, with my first post called A Life-Changing Novel. The novel in question was Sky Blue by Travis Thrasher. That was where it started – with a novel I really enjoyed. The post explains why.

That was one year and 297 blog posts ago. I still think Sky Blue was one of the best books I read last year.

The blog didn’t just happen. It started with me posting book reviews on Amazon, and doing research on the authors and the books for the reviews. And then came the blog, followed closely by me signing up with Facebook and Twitter. The first person who signed up to follow my blog was suspense writer Mike Dellosso. I think he was being kind, but it was a huge boost at the time.

And what happened was this:

I started writing poetry.

I started doing guest blogging.

I’m co-editing an online poetry journal and participating in poetry jams.

I found incredible writers, and new authors to read and new poets to recite.

I wandered into The High Calling Blogs, and now publish articles there, mostly about work.

I started writing articles twice a month for The Christian Manifesto, mostly about culture.

But the most important thing that happened was that I met all kinds of new friends online, and became part of both large communities and smaller ones within the larger.

And it all started with Sky Blue.