Connecting The Dots: How My Blog Does More than Just Sell Books

Never underestimate the power of imagination.

Having a fairly vivid imagination comes with the territory – it's in the writer's handbook right after the other must haves of "thick skin" and "love of caffeine".  Imagination is the fuel which powers the idea machine and lately I've been running on fumes.

I never considered, however, that my imagination actually fuels others. Over the course of the last few months I've really been digging into the data on this blog – looking at who is visiting and from where. The WordPress dashboard is full of all kind of interesting items when you know what to look for. One of my favorites is being able to track how people end up on this blog. Sure, some visitors merely click on the various links I throw out on twitter and facebook, but others, the vast majority, are actually searching for something that invariably leads them here. That's the cool part.

In the last week alone people have landed on my blog by searching for everything from Neil Diamond and UPS shipping to alcohol consumption and ghost stories. I wonder what those searchers thought when their Google search for Neil Diamond directed them to a post describing how I wrote one of the bloodiest scenes in my thriller Asylum Lake while listening to Sweet Caroline. Or, how simply searching for UPS Shipping information led others to my post about the best way to ship a dead body. Oh to be a fly on the wall of their cubicle/home when they read my ramblings!

Strangely enough, the Neil Diamond post happens to have more than 3,000 total views – ranking it right up there with some of my more traditional posts promoting the release of a book or random advice on writing or marketing. It seems that the brief glimpse inside the way my brain works appealed to a very wide swathe of people; wider than the typical circle of authors and readers who typically frequent my blog.

It made me realize that my rocket fuel imagination doesn't just help me vomit my dark stories onto the printed page (or pixeled screen if you're into that sort of thing). No, my imagination is also in some way providing a brief respite for those searching online for real and useful information on a myriad of topics.  And I think that is pretty damn cool.

Of course, it also means that not only do I need to use my imagination for my story-writing evil purposes, but also consider what good I can do by sharing my random musings. Hell, I won't be curing cancer or feeding the starving of the world, but if I can make just one person say "WTF?!?" when their Google search lands them on my blog I will consider all of this work a success.

Cheers from Bedlam Falls!