About that Tumblr...

In May, at the urging of several friends and contacts in the publishing industry, I expanded my online presence by creating a separate Tumblr, which you can find here. I also set up a Twitter account, although I have yet to make any use of that.

Unsure of how to best use this blog, the new Tumblr, Twitter, my public Facebook page and my own personal and many-years-old personal web site Spudd64.com, I solicited advice from a few friends whose point of view I trusted and whose experience in the online world far exceeded my own. Surprisingly, their opinions were more varied than I would have guessed, and ultimately I had to make my own decisions based on a wide variety of ideas and input.

Initially, the plan was to continue to use this blog to post all my new art, book illustrations, and comics and to continue to post longer, more thoughtful written pieces such as my notes on Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, the marginally obsessive book junkie posts, ruminations and posts from guest bloggers on book covers, travel stories and photographs and so on. The Tumblr would be a home for my sketchbooks and occasional illustrations from others that I found interesting and inspirational. The Facebook page would primarily be a way for me to publicize any book events, occasionally share art, and link out to posts on either this blog or the Tumblr. That all worked well, but only for a while.

I've come to realize that really, those who are kind enough to visit me at any of those sites are, by and large, completely different groups of people. I know there are a handful of you, most of whom I have shared some contact with through either emails or phone calls, who do visit all of the sites. But in general, through responding to comments and watching re-posts and re-blogs, it is really very clear that the person that visits my Tumblr is very often not going to find me on Facebook or to ever read this blog. That gave me some pause, and I reconsidered my plans.

Rather than prematurely shut anything down, I've decided to keep this all going. The exchanges have more often than not been wonderful, and the chance to share my art with so many other people has been one of the best experiences in my life. And yes, I have a vested personal interest in continuing that, hopefully with more and more people. So for now, realizing that these are indeed three different ways to reach different people, there will be some overlap and some repeated content. Here's what I have in mind.

This blog will remain unchanged. All of my art, illustrations, sketches, photographs, comics, thoughts on books and book covers and art and artists and the world and everything will be posted here. This blog, out of every other presence I have online, will always be the most personal, the most intimate, and the most fully developed.

The Tumblr will also be used as a place for me to post my art, illustrations, sketches, photographs and comics, but nothing else. It will be entirely visual with no real commentary or writing from me, and the hope is that the presence of my art and my published illustrations on the Tumblr will facilitate wider re-blogging, linking, and general sharing.

Finally, my public Facebook page will be used to share organized albums of my art and illustrations as well as to link out to posts on this blog, mostly about book events I might be doing or interviews I have given. Facebook seems especially well suited for publicity, so that's mostly what I'll be using it for.

So, if you only have a very limited amount of time (and who doesn't) but still want to find time in your day to see what I have been up to (something which I truly and sincerely appreciate very much) then I suppose this blog is where you'll want to head. If you regularly check in on Facebook, or you have a Tumblr of your own and like to share what you find, or even both, then I truly do hope you will "like" me on Facebook and "follow" me on Tumblr. I promise there will always be something a little different and new from me on both of those sites.

So for the next day or two, I'll be adding the contents of some of my sketchbooks to this blog. There's some good stuff in there, and I think you'll like seeing how these ideas start. Now, if I could just figure out what to do with Twitter...