I am creating this blog as a precursor to publishing my book, Frozen Images. There is a practical reason for doing so, as I want to enhance the book experience for my readers with photos of the characters and additional background material. Yet it feels like a very scary and public move, one that brings me out of the secondary shadows I have preferred and frequented most of my career.
I'm not by any means a newcomer to online self-exposure. In 2005 I started one of the earliest online educational businesses about which I wrote in my own email newsletter to utter strangers - before to do so was labeled spam. I have been creating and writing for a variety of clients and media. I have been sharing personally on FaceBook and Flickr and Cowbird for years. All of this a slow and measured creep toward this very day when the shades come off and I step unguarded into the light.
So why does this feel so scary? Using my own name for a website and starting a blog that has no reason to exist other than a personal ambition to tell the stories that belong to me seems a bold declaration to a small audience. I am here. Pay attention. My friends, I think, will be less surprised that it has come to this. They have watched the evolution. But I am the one who has to be convinced that I have something to say that is worthy of an audience. We shall see.