I’m now in my fifth month of blogging and I’m still revelling in the learning curve. It’s a mixture of past and present – looking back on the ups and downs of my own writing development, and venturing into some wonderful on-line other worlds that’ve been opened up for me by other bloggers.

I wrote last week about the Bookcrossers, and in a way, they’re the ones who inspired me to start this blog, as they’ve been so kind to me in their responses to The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society, my first published novel.

Another amazing organisation that I only discovered a few weeks ago is the LibraryThing.
Anyone who enjoys reading anything and finds it hard to let go of a book they’ve enjoyed is likely to jump at the chance of organising/cataloguing their real books in a virtual library, where they can rate each book and/or write reviews.

This means, of course, that they can check out numerous reviews from other members, and join in lively discussions on a book they’ve just finished themselves. I still haven’t got my head round all the intricacies of it, but it’s a site I visit often – and not just to see if anyone’s sent me a message!

I was thrilled when I’d seen that someone had given my book 5 out of 5 stars . I left a message to thank her for this, and I had this lovely message back – (It also gives a flavour of the friendliness of this site.)

private notice posted by Agade at 11:07 pm (EST) on Aug 23, 2009

Welcome welcome, it’s an interesting place, isn’t it. And there’s just so much here! I’m sure there’s plenty I’ve not stumbled across myself yet.

And I gave your book five stars because it’s bloody fantastic :). Very human, funny and real in the right amounts and the right places. I shall be avidly reading anything else from your pen that crosses my path in future. Thank you for writing :).

As you can imagine, that’s a real boost to an author, four years after publication. The LibraryThing must be one of the biggest book-based clubs in the world – it calls itself that, and with its community of 850,000 booklovers, it’s probably true. (Someone reading this might be able to put me right here and tell me that there are more Bookcrossers than LibraryThing members. Whatever! Take a look at this site – if you’ve not come across it yet, it’ll blow your mind.

P.S.
I’m grateful to Nicola Morgan or alerting me to the Biggest Coffee morning in the world in aid of the Macmillan Cancer Support. I’m of to drop in to her bloggoffee herestrong>, now!