At the beginning of June, I let you know that I had written a guest post at John Hewitt’s Poewar: Writer’s Resource Center.

Today, I learned I had won the prize in John’s guest post contest.

 In his announcement at  John wrote:

 … we had a very clear winner for the contest. The average article received about 500 direct page views in the seven days that followed publication. Almost every article stayed within 100 hits of that figure, one way or the other. Lillie Ammann’s article, however, received almost 14,000 hits the first week. That same article went on to rack up 29,000 hits after 30 days.

How did that happen? StumbleUpon. The article was well-reviewed by the people on StumbleUpon, and good reviews translate into page views. That is the power of social media.

There were many excellent guest posts during the month of June, and I’m amazed and thrilled that my post got so much traffic. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the article on StumbleUpon (even the negative reviews!), to everyone who commented, and to everyone who read the post.

Now if I can just figure out how to get that many page views on this blog!

A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye was born two years ago today. Many bloggers celebrate the anniversary of their blogs, their blogiversaries. However, since this blog is my baby, I’m celebrating my baby’s birthday and the following highlights:

• 376 posts, including 15 series of 2 to 15 installments
• Nearly 3200 comments, which have educated, entertained, and inspired me far more than my posts have done for my readers
• Nearly 70,000 spam comments caught by Akismet in 18 months (I didn’t have any spam control in the first 6 months … and got little spam)
• More friends than I can count - many of whom are listed in my blogroll

On my blog’s first birthday, I reviewed how my understanding of blogging had changed.

I discovered that my blog is not just a place to share what I’ve learned. Blogging is a large city with hundreds of small neighborhoods. It’s a place to make new friends, a place to learn and share. It’s synergy that makes the whole more than the sum of its parts.

My understanding of blogging as community has developed even more in the last year. The number of blog posts increased about 35%, but comments increased by more than 500%.

I said last year I was going to work on SEO and promote my blog better … but I didn’t. This blog is pure fun for me, and SEO and promotion isn’t fun to me. I’m glad I have a handful of subscribers and some loyal readers. If I were serious about blogging, I’d focus on the topic of writing rather than covering whatever interests me at the moment. But that would be too much like work. So I’ll keep having fun and hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Thanks to each of you who subscribe or read regularly and to those of you who visit occasionally. I appreciate each one of you, value every comment, and love our friendly little neighborhood in the big city of the blogosphere.

Put on your party hat, have a slice of birthday cake, and release a balloon to say “happy birthday” to A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye.

Now I just hope my blog isn’t going to start having tantrums like a Terrible Two!

Technorati Tags: blogiversary, blog birthday

This weekend I put together donations for the Pick up a Book and Read Gala for San Antonio Youth Literacy. Several of my clients have given me books to donate, and I made up a package of my own. In addition to a few items for booklovers (like a clip-on book light) and copies of my published books, I created two CDs of work that is available only online as well as an excerpt from Dream or Destiny. 

Though you can read the short stories and articles on my Web site, some of you may not have seen them. Help yourself if you’re interested …

Dream or Destiny - excerpt: chapter 1 (before final edits)

Short Stories - three short stories: The Gift, Trapped by Love, Journal of a Purpose-Seeker

Telling Carola’s Story  - Carola’s Story, a brief summary of the story of how Carola Spencer’s faith helped her to overcome a terrible workplace violence tragedy, and Mission Possible with God’s Help, an account of how I came to write her story in the book Look Beyond Tomorrow

Technorati Tags: free books, stories, e-books

Time always passes faster than I think it should, but March sped by in a blur.

In addition to taking a week off to visit my sister - which was wonderful, I spent extra time preparing bulletins and announcements for Holy Week church services as well as attending services.

My clients, as usual, had plenty of work for me to do, and I created a new Web site for our church, All Saints Anglican Church of San Antonio.

That has left little time for blogging, and I didn’t write a series this month. I haven’t read and commented on other blogs as much as usual and I missed out on Joanna Young’s group writing project … and perhaps other projects I didn’t even know about.

I’m trying to catch up and hope to be back to the blogging world next week.

I am taking a few days off to visit my sister on the farm and will not have access to a computer or the Internet. I’m looking forward to spending time with my sister, seeing the farm and the cattle, and being away from work and the computer for a little while.

I apologize if you tried to access my blog yesterday or this morning and got a strange “file download” message instead of the blog.

My Web host upgraded the server and ran into a problem with PHP scripts. There was no virus, no hacker, no danger to your computer … just a technological glitch.

Technology! I can’t imagine life without it, and most of the time it makes life better. But sometimes …

Technorati Tags: blog

Part 3 in the series of podcasts in which Phil Davis of Authors on the Net interviews me about the Self-Publishing Primer is available now.

You’ll want to listen in order, so if you’ve missed Parts 1 and 2, listen to them first. Next week will be the fourth and final podcast in the series.

Happy 75th birthday to Jack, my husband of 40+ years! 

Yes, he really is 75, and yes, that really is a recent photo - taken less than a year ago.