Today’s assignment is another toughie: analyze another top blog in your niche and figure out what you can emulate in order to improve your own blog.
Top blogs in my niche . . . my first thought is Neil Gaiman, who talks about life and writing, and posts pictures of his dogs and kids and interesting people he meets, answers questions and posts interesting links, and is always calm and approachable and just his awesome self. Yes, I’m a fan. I’ve been reading his blog almost as long as I’ve been reading his books. (When I met him a few years ago at a book signing, he drew a rat in my copy of Coraline. I liked it so much it was my sixth tattoo. Tattoo number seven is a line from his poem “Instructions.” And so it goes.)
I don’t know how interesting talking about my life would be here, though. I mean, how relevant is it to my books that I made a Doctor Who joke at work yesterday that nobody got? Being not-quite-yet at GNeil’s level of success, or Scalzi’s, or at the level of many of my fellow authors with my own publisher, there’s not a lot of writing-related news to report, and my life is . . . well, it’s a life. There are big days and little days, minutiae and worries, days when I can only tell them apart from the others because of what was on TV last night . . . it’s quite ordinary.
Recently, though, I read a post about using an author’s blog purely as a promotional tool versus as a personal journal type of blog; and the author of this post was in favor of the latter, as being more interesting to read. Which, yeah. Most of the time the personal stuff is more interesting than just the “buy my book!” stuff.
On the other hand, I don’t consider myself a public figure by any means and don’t want to share every detail of my day-to-day life. On the other other hand, I kind of already do, to a different and more selected audience. (Which is why most of this entry is going to be old hat to people who follow my livejournal.)
So, I don’t know what the answer is here. I would like to engage with readers more; I’d love it if people commented more and I’d certainly answer questions as best I can. But I don’t know how to open up a dialogue with you all. All I can do be here and be available.
Have a little personal stuff, since we’re here. This is the tattoo I got two weeks ago, as an early birthday present to myself: 
The font is called Bleeding Cowboy, though I asked the tattoo artist to clean up most of the “bleeding” so it wouldn’t look smeared. I got it done at the Painted Temple in Provo, Utah, and the tattoo artist, Randal, was a lovely fellow. The tattoo has healed beautifully and I’m very, very pleased.
I’ve been looking for something to commemorate being published ever since Chiaroscuro came out, and I was reading “Instructions” again for a completely unrelated reason when that line jumped out at me as a perfect expression of how I try to live and how I try to write. And now it’s permanently on me, and it’s my new favorite tattoo.
And now I need to get back to the day job. Tonight when I get home, I’m editing the story for the Going to the Chapel anthology and watching Mamma Mia! on DVD.
Buy my book! 
Mirrored from Jenna Jones.com.