The blog two years on (includes actual numbers, if not statistical analysis)

The blog and the website are now two years old. Last year I posted a few reflections on the first anniversary, quoting my original post’s intentions for the blog as:

• Publicising my work (the Tales from Ragaris)
• Expressing my opinions
• Glorifying God.

Later in the post, I quoted from a later post about the vision which seemed to solidify at the Willow Creek conference in October 2015:

My vision is…to help people, including myself, to stay Christians by honestly facing and exploring, from within the faith and before God, the real difficulties that many of us see when we sing modern worship songs and read the Bible on one hand, and look at modern scientific atheism, the church’s history and that of the world, on the other. 

And, secondly, my vision is to encourage an appreciation of all things good and excellent (Philippians 4:8) – not to be twee or glib, but to challenge the lie that books, TV, even life, are only interesting and real when they are “dark” and unpleasant.  The lie that integrity and responsibility, “goodness”, are boring, boring to experience and boring to watch.

All the posts are categorised in the following boxes: Books, Ragaris books, Christianity, Resources and General. (And Uncategorised, which I suspect is when I forget.) “Resources” means reviews of books that may help with part one of the above vision.

So I’ve been advertising my wares (Ragaris books). I note that I’ve posted in this category 7 times this year (Nov 16-17) as opposed to 5 last year. Last year had more posts than this year, because I over-ambitiously started out posting twice a week. This leads me to conclude that I’ve been advertising more this year, but that’s presumably because this time last year (14^th November!) “We Do Not Kill Children” was actually published, and “The Tenth Province of Jaryar” is coming up in less than a month. It’s been an exciting time.

As far as God and the vision goes, I don’t seem to have been so prolific. There were 10 posts categorised in Christianity last year, and 2 in Resources. Last year the figures were 21 and 6. So perhaps this needs more work. (There was a period this summer when the blog failed to appear for several weeks in a row without me realising. When this was fixed, I did point out which subjects you might have missed, including for whatever reason one of the most potentially unsound posts I’ve done (My justification for staying at home writing rather than going to the pub). As you can see, I count Unsound Thought as part of Christianity, for indexing purposes.

It’s probably about time I did some more work here.

I’ve had some fun expressing my opinions, of course. When I started off, it was an excellent chance to let out the rants that had been building up steam for years, such as the relative virtues of the two men in “Pride and Prejudice”, and the awfulness of commercial Advent calendars. After two years, it’s quite hard to find something new each week, although the strange times we’re living in do help; and it’s possible that the literary quality of the outpouring may suffer as a result of often being last-minute.

In the first year of the blog, I also hosted Guests: Alan on Scripture, Mike on God in history, Clint on “The Force Awakens” and Ian on his creative imagination and its links to history. This year I haven’t had any guests, and this is something I’d definitely like to remedy. If there’s something you’re yearning to say, get in touch and arrange a slot to say it!

I suppose to be a complete Review, I should add that in the next year I’d like the blog to expand and be more widely read, just as I’d like more people to buy, read and review the books.

Please let me have any comments or hints for the future! And thank you very much for sticking with the Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant Blogger.

I will conclude with an update on the Tales from Ragaris. (Those who know all about it can switch off.)

It’s been a lovely thing this past year to be able to say that I have a book, available, and of which I am I admit still quite proud. (Over the year rereading has disclosed three continuity errors, but no one else has pointed these out.) Every now and then a new person tells me they’ve read and liked it, and almost nothing beats that as an ego-booster.

This last week I splurged some of my inheritance on an advert in The Big Issue, and there was an immediate spike on Amazon, resulting in me briefly becoming number 8 in Christian Fantasy Kindle.

I’ve also had the enormous pleasure of revising “The Tenth Province” for publication. Those who deduce that I’m writing at the rate of one book per year are wrong. The earliest draft of this book was substantially done when my mother died in summer 2015. I do a lot of rewriting.

So there’s discussion with publisher (Mightier than the Sword UK), publicity of various kinds, and all the fun palaver of getting it out there. Please look out for it – but I’ve already drip-fed enough detail onto this blog.

The process is Scrawl – Type up – Consolidate, Take Advice and Rewrite – Polish – Proof-read.

So now I’m scribbling on the third Tale. Having been to the north of Ragaris (Marod) and the west (Haymon) this one is set in the east (Ricossa, land of secretive government and very strict law). I’ve found this one particularly hard to write, unless I’m misremembering the other two, so I’m hoping it will be especially satisfying in the end.

The denouement draws closer. This is crunch time for me to drag four things reluctantly together: what I want my characters to do; what such people would in fact do; what their surroundings and the plot so far would allow them to do; and what would be entertaining to read.

The scope for getting one or all of these wrong is immense.

This is enough for now. Thank you again for supporting the blog for another year.

Love from the PPI Blogger