Blogging, a pet peeve, and a revelation

I learned a lot about "blogging tours" today--that's when someone with a new book appears as a guest blogger on lots of blogs, at the invitation of the blog host, of course. It's a wonderfully inexpensive substitute for the traditional author tour and probably reaches a lot more potential buyers and readers than all those frustrating stops in bookstores where audiences of one or two wait. I thought I should begin to lay the groundwork now for whenever I have a book--cookbook or mystery--to blog about. So I'm going to invite others to blog about either their books or their cooking. I don't think inviting talk about grandchildren would add to the quality of the reading experience, although I appreciate the indulgence of readers of this blog in putting up with that from me. Which reminds me, I got adorable pictures today of Ford and Sawyer cooking to add to the collection for my cookbook.

But back to blogging, coincidentally Susan came to me today and said she didn't like having to post on things on the A&M blog--she wanted our own blog back. And I agreed with her, so as of tonight The Bookish Frog is up and running--but I won't give the url because we haven't posted anything there yet. But we can have our authors as guest bloggers. I got this whole guest blogging thing going in my mind like a new discovery.

Back to this blog, if any of you want to post a blog, please let me know. I figure it would be great to have one guest a week.

When I taught college freshman composition, I nearly crawled under my desk one day when a student asked me to diagram a sentence. Sure, I learned it once, but I remember nothing about it. I have a pet peeve, though, and I think diagramming might cure it. It's pronoun misuse, as in "She gave it to her and I"--you wouldn't say she gave it to I, would you? And yet I see this even on writers' blogs. And today I got an email with another one: Sheila and myself talked about it. . . . Myself talked about it? That kind of usage--or mis-usage--makes me wince. I may start a collection.

A revelation about my mystery, with which I'm still dissatisfied: last night when Fred and Patt here here, he mentioned that Patt really doesn't like novels with too much dialogue. She wants the richness of description, so she chimed in saying she wanted to feel like she was in the scene. "I want to see the hills if its in Scotland, and I want to see the room, how the people look." I think that's what's missing from my mystery, and I'm not sure I can correct it--but I guess I have to go back and try. If I'm determined to sell a mystery, I can't be lazy or intimidated about it. So that's my next chore.