On October 9, 2011, I wrote my very first blog post. It was all about how I was trying to teach myself HTML and had an absolutely horrid drawing that I drew myself (I’m not even going to link to it, and I don’t think it shows up anymore on that page because I am so embarrassed by it). The only thing I knew about blogging was that it was the hot thing to do, and authors were supposed to do it to get eyeballs on their website, to get Google to rank your website higher in searches.

The thing is, I wasn’t writing my blog for readers of my romances. No, I was writing for other authors, so I wasn’t necessarily going to get more readers through blogging. I still don’t—as far as I know. And while I do blog about my writing process and writing craft with examples from my work-in-progress, I don’t actively sell my books here, nor even try to.

The point of the blog wasn’t to sell books, it was to share knowledge. I was just beginning to figure out this new thing called self-publishing. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or how to do it and so I shared all of my trials and tribulations with my theoretical readers (I had no idea whether anyone would find, let alone read my blog).

But I continued on… and on… and on… and I’m still going, baby!

I’m still blogging after ten years. I’m still writing about my failures and my successes. I’m still sharing how I write and why. I’m still trying to teach and help other writers figure out this thing called writing fiction and self-publishing. And while I’ve sometimes had a hard time trying to think of what to write each week, I don’t think I’m every really going to run out of topics because writing is always changing, we’re always learning new things.

I have published over 500 blog posts on writing and publishing over the past ten years and, according to WordPress, 121 people receive my blog weekly in their inbox. Hi, People!! (see me waving madly) And just as an aside, I’ve also published 25 recipes in my Fooding blog so if you want to check that out, I specialize in super-easy recipes because, while I love to cook, I’m super lazy.

Not a lot of people subscribe to my blog considering I’ve been writing it for ten years, but, hey, I don’t care. I love you all! (It would be nice if you wrote every now and then, but that’s okay, you’re busy… just keep reading, okay?)

Over the past ten years, I have blogged about my work as an author, as a formatter, and more recently an editor and book coach. If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I am committed to teaching others about writing craft, about marketing (which I am profoundly bad at, but I keep trying!), and about self-publishing.

I hope that you’ve learned with me when I’ve written about my writing process, the things I’ve struggled with, and revelations on writing technique. I’ve shared books on writing I’ve loved and writing programs I’ve tried. I’ve shared my ups and downs and everything in between because I believe in sharing the reality of an author’s life.

Many of my images are my own creation. There are some that I’m really proud of, and some (like anything I might have drawn by hand) that I’m really not. Considering that I am most definitely not a graphic designer or artist, I think some are pretty good. (Feel free to tell me what you think!)

But most of all, the thing I’d like to take away from ten years of blogging, and what I hope you’ll take away from reading my blog, is that I love to teach and hope that you, dear reader, have improved your own writing through reading my blog. I hope, too, that my failures and the hard lessons I’ve learned and shared will make your self-publishing path easier.

My blog topics are not always pretty. They may not always be what you might want to hear (there were some pretty dark posts in there when I lost confidence in writing and publishing). But always, without fail, I have been here for you to show you what to do and what not to do.

I hope you’ve found my blogs to be helpful. I hope you’ve found them interesting or amusing. But most of all, I hope you’ll stick around for the next ten years – and a comment every now and then would always be greatly appreciated.

As a special thanks—and because I am not above bribery—if you comment (it can be a simple ‘hi’ or a take-away from my blog) you’ll be entered to win a $25 Visa gift card which you can use anywhere for anything.

Thank you!