This blog gets an average of 239 page views a day. An additional 60 or 70 people read the posts on MySpace (I cut and paste manually because MySpace is such a bloody awkward interface–very controlling, tuh) and perhaps 50 a day read it on my website (FeedBurner does that work for me, yay). About 40 more read everything via FeedBurner emails. No idea how many read the LiveJournal posts (probably only a handful). So that makes an average of getting on for 400 blog reads a day. Which I think is kind of cool, given that I’ve been doing this less than ten months.
In nine weeks it’ll be AN’s first anniversary. It’s been an interesting year, learning how all this stuff works (65% of you use Firefox and Safari, about 35% of you use a Mac), getting to know you (from Zhengzhou, China to F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming), figuring out what you like, what pisses you off; what gets you all stirred up, what makes you say, Meh. You seem to like wine and chocolate. And rants. And what I think of as fairly humdrum posts about What I Did Today.
Sadly, I haven’t been doing much the last two or three weeks. I’ve just restarted physical therapy and it’s left me feeling like an engine that’s rusted shut. This level of stiffness and muscle fatigue removes much of my impulse to chat. But at some point (oh, soon I hope), all the rust will flake off and my new super shiny honed and revved self will zoom back. Then we’ll party.
Meanwhile, I’m off to read some non-intellectually challenging dyke fiction and some (ditto) historical war fiction and just revel in fictional sex (bound up with honour and duty) and violence (ditto) in between napping, drinking tea, and eating entirely too much chocolate. Oh, wait, there’s no such thing as too much chocolate.
Perhaps you’ll take a minute to tell me something about yourselves…
Nicola Griffith 
I use livejournal as my feed reader, but I watch the RSS feed of AskNicola rather than the livejournal form of it.
& about myself? Last night my wife was out getting drinks & I drank a bottle of wine– & then when she came home she was so pissed at me that she slept on the couch!? It makes no sense to me.
I’ll bite. Been reading for about a week- a friend forwarded your self-defense rant with the side note that you might be the author to get me to read fiction again. I like what I read here. Good mind. Good voice.Me? Spent a lot of years saying “no” to very bad people, now teaching how to do that safely and humanely. In a war zone. Half a world away from my perfect mate. First book doing fairly well. A little scarred up but generally happy.
I subscribed to the RSS feed yesterday through Google Reader. According to stats there, you’ve got 74 subscribers — don’t know if that’s just Google Reader subscribers or all RSS feed subscribers but I’d guess the latter.
I googled you to see what you’re up to – I’ve read all of your books, twice – and I ended up here the other day. I liked it so much that I came back.As for something about me…I learned holistic medicine in the event that society collapses entirely. It comes in handy to be able to whip up a quick tea or cough syrup from stuff that grows in the yard.
Becuase it’s so cold, I’m hibernating more than usual. I work second shift, so I get home late and get up late. My constructive activity level drops except for reading. I just finished Bending The Landscape, Vol. III. I also read mysteries, true crime and biography. The best biography this year was about Alice Sheldon. I work with mental patients, so I get a lot of fantasy in real life.
I used to hate introduction rounds, then again, I used to hate a lot of things.I heart blogs and blogging…opinions…discussions…sarcasm…smart asses. And wine yes, chocolate not so much.When I’m not playing with my laptop, I am an assistant professor in psychology. Not sure how I ended up here…but I like what I read and I love your books.
Life has been good here of late. I also read, again, The Blue Place. I intend to suggest a piece from it for you to read on Friday audio. There are so many wonderful prose interludes. Love it.The weather is unpredictable but its Texas. Ice at the 4am puppy potty (she likes to look at the wind making the bare tree branches dance and hum and the leaves skittering across the ground- I just want to go back to my warm bed.) Sun is out now. Clear,blue, and crisp. I have to go back to the office after a lunch with Nicola break but would rather stay and play… :)
I have a bruise the size of a tomato on my left knee from Wing Chun two Tuesdays ago. The other bruises – on wrist bone, forearm, thigh, and both chins have healed.I’m at a place in training that I’m feeling challenged to continue. Yet I love it. How could I quit? Sarah
Ah well, I hope your delve into “non intellectual literature” and infinite chocolate proves fruitful to your recovery. I love a chatty Nicola. But I will also love you non chatty too.An average of 400 hits a day, and you’ve only started not 10 months ago on this venture? Wow. I guess I shouldn’t say “wow” though, you are full of wonder, who WOULDN’T want to follow you around endlessly, seeing what you are up to?? I’m sure that number will only continue to increase.I found your blog via the SexScenes@Starbucks female. I began stalking her blog obsessively a year or so ago,(oh how I adore her tomboy ways) and she had put a link of your awesomeness, and so now here I am. I fell in love with your Dozen Daily Delights post and have learned so much about the awesomeness you and Kelley have to offer the universe. When you twittered a post of Kelley’s “work ethic” essay in promotion of Humans at Work I was even more in awe of the shared positivity you both seem so eager to spread thoughout humanity. As a mother of 3 amidst a gene pool of mental differences, I have had to come to the same conclusions about how essential equality is in order to generate an environment that is not only productive, but feels secure for all involved.I think it lovely that you care so much about who cares about you. You have such an heir of class and nobility, yet you don’t hesitate to stop and smell the flowers that grow around you. A quality so few seem to have.
You actually found me on Twitter, you follow both my accounts, and you’re the only person I don’t personally know that’s following my locked personal account.I was so thrilled to see you are so accessible and have such a great web presence. I’m actually a book editor and most of my authors are not so savvy!A librarian friend recommended Ammonite to me a couple years ago, then last year I read the trilogy (out of order, actually). It was incredibly powerful to me, the books are like no other books, and I’ve shared and discussed them with friends.I actually started taking aikido but it was too hard so now I go to the gym and I’ve lost 30 pounds.You rule!
I’m in snowy Maine and have been following this blog since…oh, this past July, I believe. My sweetie bought me all of your books for my 30th birthday and soon after, I found and fell in love with this blog of yours. Nicola, you and this place were the final push I needed to begin writing my own novel. I started in January and I’m loving it. I have no idea if it’s any good, whether it’ll publish, or how I may improve my writing, but I continue to just plug along…between physics lesson planning. .grin.
Sorry about the rust, hope it passes soon. I came upon your blog I think about the second week in, I have enjoyed it from the very beginning. I was also unemployed at that time and had a lot of free time to read and comment. Now, I am thankfully employed full time, traveling two hours a day in to New York. The good part of course is the paycheck but I am also enjoying all the dedicated reading time. The flip side is that I take a quick glance at the web at night but I am unable to keep up with a lot of the online content I enjoyed. I hope to rectify that in the future but for now I will have to make do.
I’ve been lurking around your blog (and Kelley’s) for a while now. I’m in Sydney, Australia. I’ve read almost all your books. I use Google reader which I love even though I sometimes miss seeing what people do with their websites. I read just about every post you and Kelley write but mostly in a few sittings a week. I’m doing a PhD on same-sex parenting and blog reading is both work and welcome distraction. I don’t comment much (in fact, hardly at all) as I do so much writing, thinking and commenting for work, it’s nice to just ‘listen’ to someone else’s musings. Think of me as a rather tired friend who is relieved they don’t have to talk much, but just listen, nod and laugh. Thanks to both you and Kelley for sharing.
I’ve been distributing type into job cases today. That is: I sometimes set lead type to print, by hand, the occasional postcard, broad sheet, and oh…wise paragraph. After reading this post and all the comments, I found myself noting the difference between a “t” and and “f” and also marvelling at how far the written word travels. I’m glad you invited your readers to “introduce” themselves, Nicola. I’m astonished to “meet” the landscape that includes these many lives. Once, visiting the gallery in the British Library, where you can find Lewis Carroll’s hand written story about Alice, AND a Gutenberg bible, and…well: the history of written words in a room, I most marvelled at the Chinese texts printed by hand with letterforms carved out of wood: books that precede the first mass produced Bible by so many, many years. CARVING LETTERS IN WOOD. We humans WILL HAVE OUR SAY, one way or another, AND spread it around however we can. This forum is yet another example of that. I craved company during an unplanned, complicated stay in a city once upon a time and typed “lesbian, fiction” into a library computer. I found a novel STAY which began with “From the roof of my cabin I can see only forest…” and I, a fire lookout for many seasons, wondered who this writer was that so understood the uses of being solo in the woods. I’ve been amused, provoked and wisened by this forum for almost two years now. Occasionally I have directed writing students at the community college to links here. In a computer lab one day we had a lot of fun we visiting the rooms of writers which provoked a fine discussion about what it takes to nourish word making. I don’t read here, or visit Kelley’s community, daily, but mostly I catch up with an hour’s sit now and then, and I’m grateful for it. (And thanks for the info about the “Room of One’s Own” grant process. I did apply and found it useful to me no matter what the outcome.) I can’t always sort out OpenID and Name/URL so sometimes I just sign anonymous. Though I am…Jean R(I’m not unused to being pubic with writing, and far prefer autographing my words–I write a monthly column for a newspaper–but when I use my whole name, far too many “hits” show up at Google, so I don’t. And then students pester me for more details…)
I very much enjoy your science newsy posts from ID dust to wolves, which I shared with the Northwest Science Fiction Society (over at http://nwsfsnews.blogspot.com). I’m fairly new as a regular AN reader. Around the Solstice Whiteout post, I felt kind of strange to be reading about your dinner, and then oddly inspired to cook (for me, this is quite rare) by your description of a “perfectly English meal for winter.” Carol Guess (at http://carolguess.blogspot.com) introduced me to <>Ammonite<> (loved the audio, great request) and <>Slow River<> awhile back, and now I’m really enjoying your online presence. You’ve got this social networking thing down impressively. Must be hard to maintain! The blogosphere (such a word!) seems like natural territory for writers, but also a distraction from fiction writing. Or not? I’m a reader, writer and college communications specialist.
Thanks, everyone, for telling me about yourselves. Normally I’d reply to each of you in turn, but for the next few days my comments will be a bit…random.Shel, yes, the online presence thing is a distraction, but it’s also usually a joy. Definitely worth it.