Happy Birthday, Bloggy!

I don't have a lot of great birthday memories from growing up -- those have all come within the last few years. But one that does stand out involves the best chocolate coconut cake with a cherry on top, enjoyed within that magical cottage near the Big Woods in Windham, New Hampshire.  I might have been six or seven.

A year ago, I put my fingers to this keyboard and took what seemed a very bold step.  For all my love of space opera and science fiction, I resisted a Web-based presence (read: kicking and screaming) until I realized it was an area of my career I could -- and must! -- improve upon.  On August 11, 2011 I launched this little blog about my writing adventures, have only advertised it on Facebook and infrequently on a handful of publisher forums, and voila: one year later, it boasts nearly 15,000 hits (even more shocking, I joined FB a month later and have nearly a thousand FB Friends, many of them celebrities from my beloved soaps One Life to Live, General Hospital, and All My Children; numerous of the best designers on Project Runway, a Top Chef or two, various celeb writers like Jane Yolen, Ben Bova, and Peter Straub, actors from Star Trek: Enterprise, a series I pitched to for three years, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine).

So to you, dear Bloggy, through which I have opened up my insular little writing world to the vast universe at large, I wish you chocolate coconut cake with a cherry on top for being the wondrous present I didn't think I wanted.  These past fifty-eight posts have been my pleasure to create, and I couldn't imagine not having you there for the next five hundred.  Happy birthday!