Blogging Resources

My blog documents my attempt to lose 50lbs by the end of the year.

Every day I share stories of what I’m doing and every few weeks I post before and current pics. On my site I share the good, the bad and the in between days. From day one I made a vow to be honest and if that means it takes me three days to confess to have eaten six 1200 calorie Butterfinger crisps, so be it.

Most of all, I try to be a positive example of someone who just happens to be losing weight painfully slow, in the hopes that it’ll give hope to other slow losers to hang in there during their own bad days.

Interview Excerpt

When did you start blogging?

I’ve been blogging in some format since 2002

Why did you choose the subject of your blog?

I chose to blog about my weight loss because it is near and dear to my heart. Once I discovered the world of online weight loss blogs, I became hooked and wanted to share my story as well.

Do you actively promote your blog? If so, how?

I do, I comment on a lot of other weight loss blogs. I’ve also joined blog specific directories and traffic generating programs, like blogexplosion.

Read more of Renee’sinterview.

Visit Renee’s blog at Renee Gets Fit

by Deborah Woehr

Beyond You & Me is the story of Cassie DiMarco, a 24 year-old secretary at Yale University during the Sexual Revolution, who suffers a traumatic love affair with a foreign student before losing him and her husband.

I normally don’t read erotica, although after reading W.S. Cross’s story, I may start. This blog transported me back to a time I barely remember (I was a kid, then.), except for the euphoric idealism I saw in people during that era.

What really struck a chord in me was the difficulty this author is having in securing an agent, despite the fact that there is a clear market for this book. Cross did what many authors are doing, migrating to the Internet to carve out a name for themselves. In a few short months, this author has built a readership of over 15,000.

Interview Excerpt

What compelled you to write this story?

A friend loaned me a journal she’d kept 30 years ago while a grad student’s wife at Yale on the condition that I not reveal her real identity. The story grabbed me right away.

She was twenty-four at the time, bright, but without a college degree. So Yale wouldn’t let her be more than a secretary. They treated their clerical staff back then no better than their custodial staff. As a matter of history, Yale has had among the worst labor relations in all the college world. They are notorious.

So as the old proverb goes, “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” Along the way, she falls in love with an undergrad, experiences a series of erotic encounters with both him and other women, and loses both her lover and her husband before coming out whole on the other side of it all.

The story seemed both timeless (temptation, flirtation, adultery, conflict) and timely (today she’d probably have her own blog), since it takes place at the dawn of the Women’s Movement and the height of the Sexual Revolution in 1975. Her experiences spoke to me because we’re still struggling with many of the same questions, such as sexual fidelity vs. sexual freedom. Is it possible to be in love with more than one person at the same time?

Read the full interview here.

by Joseph Dilworth, Jr.

Take Milton Berle’s racy humor, mix it with Bill Murray’s goofiness, stir in the pop culture observations of Dennis Miller, add a dash of Neil Dimaond’s glitzy glamour and top it all off with Jon Stewarts’s political insight and you have Garfield Ridge. More specifically you have Dave, the man behind the curtain of this great blog. I was originally led to Garfield Ridge by one of Dave’s comments to a political rant of mine back in November of last year, a couple of weeks after the election. Our politics definitely differ, but Dave is one of the few folks who is willing to listen to an intelligent opposing viewpoint and discuss rationally any differences. That and he can make you laugh so suddenly and hard that you shoot whatever beverage you might be drinking out of your nose. I’m also amazed at the amount of posts he manages to squeeze in on any given day. Large quantity and high quality make this blog a daily stop for me.

Interview excerpt:

Let’s start with the standard question. What got you to start blogging?

I was a late bloomer when it came to email. My friends and family had it well before I did– I preferred to just make phone calls. Then again, I’ve always been a bit of Luddite– I don’t own a cell phone, a pager, or even a watch. I’m quite comfortable around technology, I just don’t like relying on it, it’s too easy to get addicted and dependent on it. Makes the mind sloppy.

Read the complete interview…