No rules. Just write.

Brenda Coulter posted a comment about writers' blogs, saying that she personally had found blogging beneficial, though the jury was still out on whether it actually did any good as a promotional aid.

Brenda was much too modest to include a link to her own blog, so I went and found it. It's called 'No rules. Just write.' And lo, it proves to be great fun.

It turns out that Brenda has two essential attributes if you intend to mess about in the book world. One, a sense of humour; and two, a sense of proportion. Both of these are needed if you are to write, or attempt to write, and yet remain even halfway sane.

Brenda also turns out to be one of those people who know how to find out where their readers come from, i.e. whether they came via Google or Technorati and stuff like that. Me, I have enough trouble finding my own blog some days. And only today someone wrote and told me that I couldn't even put up a link to Amazon which worked. (I hope it does now but I wouldn't swear to it.)

In addition to her blog, Brenda also runs a web site. Its primary purpose, I guess, is to plug her books, but it contains quite a lot of other stuff. In the print-published world, Brenda writes inspirational romance -- a genre which she defines very neatly on one of her pages. Such novels are not for me, on two counts, but don't be put off because there is much else on this web site: including a recommendation to read P.G. Wodehouse and a learned discussion on the difference between afternoon tea and high tea.

All in all, Brenda's blog and web site are (a) fun and (b) useful to would-be (romance) writers. Not only that but you get to see a very nice portrait of her, taken by a professional. She says it's nothing like her, but I don't believe a word of it.