Thursday Thirteen, Ed 14

Something that sort of took me by surprise after I’d been blogging for awhile… is that it’s really a circle of bloggers. I think it’s the rare reader, or at least the minority one, that doesn’t have her own blog. I had this image, originally, of providing this font of knowledge for appreciative readers who just didn’t know WHERE to turn for their next romance fix.

OK, heh, so it’s not quite like that. We all have blogs, we are all voracious readers of both books and other blogs, and we are all avaricious about our reader stats. Turns out there’s a fair amount of behind the scenes type stuff that bloggers may or may not do to make their blogs memorable and manageable. Maybe you saw my earlier posts about Bloggiesta and the hard-working Natasha. There’s also a group at BookBlogs.ning that I belong to where bloggers share tips and advice about improving their blogs.

I found all this to be very inspirational, however I wasn’t able to get nearly everything done that I wanted to during the official “Bloggiesta.” So I’m dedicating this T-13 to my blog to-do list.


1. Content. The part that I care most about for this blog is to have good content, even when I don’t feel like writing. I’m going to try to write one “rainy-day” post each week that I can pull out when work gets crazy or the kids get sick. When I have a nice stash, I’ll start posting them and writing replacements so they don’t get too stale.

2. Guest posting. Something I hadn’t thought too much about, but Natasha’s list included working on getting guest posters to appear regularly, and I really like the idea.

3. Static Content Pages. I’d like to have a good “about me” page, as well as pages that outline my policies (my, doesn’t that sound official?) for accepting submissions, reviews, and giveaways. Blogger doesn’t have a great way to do this, so I need to get creative.

4. Sidebar clean-up. I’ve got quite a bit of stale stuff there that feels cluttery. The new template helped a lot, but there’s more to do.

5. Figure out Feedburner and Technorati.

6. I’m planning to kick off something new here that I’m fancifully calling “Friday Fantasy Feature.” Since this IS a romance blog after all, you may be forgiven for that little trip into the mental gutter you just took – but no, I’m not talking about erotica or THOSE kind of fantasies. I’m talking about the sci-fi/fantasy genre, which I confess occasionally distracts me from romance (though I always return).

7. Submissions to book review sites. I’ve poked around a bit superficially without much luck, but I know they’re out there.

8. Contacts at publishers. I have a couple. I want more. (Don’t we all?)

9. Thinking about joining RWA, even though I’m not an aspiring writer. Seems like a good way to find out about good stuff coming up.

10. Graphics and badges. I want to play around with a small square icon for Alpha Heroes – some people like to put graphics in the sidebars, and I might futz a bit with some T-Thirteen headers to share.

11. Do more blog-hopping. I think I’ve gotten into a bit of a rut. I have my favorite bloggers, to whom I’m very loyal, but there are new ones all the time and I don’t tend to make much effort to find them – and that is definitely MY loss.

12. Related, I want to refresh my blog rolls. There are a bunch that I want to add.

13. Read and comment more at the big sites: AAR, Smart Bitches, Dear Author. I tend to feel a little overwhelmed by the big magazine style sites, but I should get over it. Maybe. OTOH, I rather like the little single-owner blogs; they have an intimacy that I love.

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