This morning I received a comment on the blog that really upset me.

As some of you will know I’ve been relatively lucky in my avoidance of trolls only having had one personal attack (until now) in 19 months of blogging and, just like that first dalliance, I will not be approving the comment. This is NOT the last bastion of free speech on the internet, nor am I claiming this blog is a commercial media outlet – it is a personal blog designed for people who know me, people who’ve read me and/or people who share similar interests. Nothing more, nothing less.

I am, as you may have guessed, going to talk about it though. The reason being I would hate for people to be confused as to how I see myself and/or my work. If you dislike rants you should skip this post.

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Right, I think this is worth stating again despite it being covered elsewhere. This is not intended to be a literary blog – although there are definitly people of a literary leaning amongst its occasional readers. This blog has three key purposes:

1)       It lets my family and friends (of which I am fortunate to have a few and who are spread over three continents) know what I have been up to in an easy multimedia format that can be automatically delivered to them via email or RSS.

2)       It allows me to play around with blog media in a way not linked to my work (I am a digital marketer) and like to learn by doing. Incidentally, this is exactly how I use twitter as well.

3)       It is a marketing platform for my writing and as such I am attempting to build an audience around my fiction using what is an emerging but by no means rare model (that’s a whole other post).

I have never made any claims to deification that I’m aware of nor would I and I have never claimed my opinions are any more valid than any others. For the record I consider myself to be:

1. A short, slightly stocky, human being who lives in London and who hails from Wales originally.
2. A professional digital marketing specialist. (specific expertise in email marketing, web analytics, social media and using content to drive traffic. I am also able to hold my own on the SEO, project management and copywriting front.)
3. A writer (I make no claims to being professional, just someone who writes).
4. A geek. FFS I just used <rant> in a post – geek and proud.

See: god doesn’t feature anywhere on that list.

Debating an opinion you disagree with is not the same thing as believing everyone should hold the same view. Where I have posted views on politics, news events and/or media it is for one of the following reasons:

1)       It is an issue I feel strongly very strongly about and I disagree with the coverage, or lack of, in some way.

2)       It is an issue that directly affects me or someone I know.

3)       It is an issue I can lampoon and may as a result entertain.

4)       It is an issue I know has been misreported and/or omits key facts (such as the way the internet is reported, or the Bridgend stories run in the national press)

The Friday Flash Fiction meme is meant to be nothing more than a productivity hack and a bit of fun. I periodically do round-ups of my “best” pieces as measured by my opinion against my own work and I am not making any claims comparing my work against any other writer. To do so would indeed be egotistical and foolish. I do those round-ups because some regular readers of this blog occasionally miss stories and I have a steady (albeit small) influx of new users. I post the stories because they’re meant to entertain, help me grow an audience and to garner constructive feedback. 

As for whose interested? Well, clearly there is an element of ego involved in blogging and this is where I show mine: Typically, over five hundred people a day swing by this site and my more popular stories are read by just under half of that number (a rate that is slowly growing).On its best day the site generated over 2000 visits. So some people do actually bother to read it – unlike (and by their own admission) the person in question.

It’s also worth noting the print anthology of the best of the first six months of F3 from all the then participants donated all profits to charity.

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Look, the fact is I don’t expect everyone to be interested in this blog and I hesitate to mention the traffic figures because in the commercial web world they’re laughably small. I’m not forcing anyone to read it.

I do try to provide a balance of value posts be that to laugh, inform or assist with more indulgent rants, updatery and news but I know I’m not going to please everyone all of the time. And as for disagreement and debate – well that’s fine, argue away in the comments thread and as long as it’s not insulting we’ll merrily debate away, I encourage it, I enjoy it and maybe I’ll even change my view – stranger things have happened.

But please be aware the Internet works best when you remember there’s a human being at the end of a user ID.