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She said I had to keep a blog.“What’s a blog?” I asked, thinking it sounded like a cross between a pool of muddy water and a dirty mark.She explained.“But all I wanna do is write,” I said.“Ah yes, WANA,” she said. “You’ll need to sign up for that. And Facebook. And Twitter. And Instagram. And Pinterest. And then you’ll have to make regular posts onto all of them. That’s as well as blogging,” she said.” And if you’re going to be an author in the 21st Century you definitely need a web site. Linked to Amazon and Kindle and Smashword and Createspace.”I looked doubtful.“When do I do the writing?” I asked.“When you’ve done the Social Network Marketing,” she said. “And remember the blog has to be really, really interesting or people won’t read it.”Well, I’d written about most things in my time. Business, travel, my hearing dog Matt, loss, humour, fantasy. Heck, I’d even thought to write about a hog with warts who does battle with a dead vole but I didn’t think it would catch on. So I reckoned I could probably nail this blog thing without too much trouble.

Then she said “just write about what you’re doing – people are interested in what authors do.”I said, “I’m talking to you. Why would anyone be interested in that?”“No,” she said. “Tell them that you used to be a really successful businessman with hundreds of people working for you, but you gave it up to write. Tell them you’ve written a novel about a woman who’s in love with Sid Vicious and he has reincarnated to be with her, only there’s this other woman who’s pregnant with the second coming of the Messiah who’s in love with him too. Tell them you’ve written a sequel about the baby and who it turns out to be. And you’re about to start on the third volume of the trilogy about the end of the world. Tell them you’ve got an amazing book of short stories coming out called ‘Brief Candles,’ with stories about interracial love in the time of racism and prenatal depression and dryads and revenge and Alzheimer’s disease. And tell them about ‘Dragonsong.’ You absolutely must tell them about ‘Dragonsong.’ It’s mind-blowing.”“Do you think they’ll be interested?” I asked.