The age of technology

As I find myself juggling so many things at once to get the word out about my books and to help other authors, I think back about how so much has changed in the last thirty years.

Now I can still remember sitting in my 9th grade computer class, it was the first one ever offered in my high school. We had just gotten a Commadore 64 at home, so I was the only one in the class who even knew what a C prompt was.  Now - 28 years later - it seems that my life, and many other peoples also, revolves around the computer, the internet and the social networking sites.

Many of you, I'm sure, can remember the bag phones that we had what like 18 years ago!!  Those huge things we used to carry around with us and had to plug into a car cigarette lighter to use it. Do you also remember the first hand held cell phone that you had? I do, it was from Sprint, one of their first PCS phones.  I thought it was so cool to clip it right to my belt and have it with me all the time. Dropped calls were no big deal, it just happened.

So after years of traditional cell phones, and moving on to Nextel direct connect phones and then on to smart phones.  I am trying to figure out how I did it all back then.  Of course, back then e-mail was something that you probably only did on AOL, or Yahoo.  And we didn't text, we IM'd.

If you wanted to know what was going on in the news, you turned on the television at 6 o'clock and watched the broadcast, or you picked up the paper from your doorstep the day after it happened. Now, news is sent directly to us 24 hours a day. Weather reports and alerts are sent to our phones on a daily basis. No longer can anyone say they are "out of touch" with the world, because the world is really at our fingertips - LITERALLY!

So as I have spent the last week on vacation, from my job that pays the bills, I think about all I have accomplished.  Let's look at that, shall we....

First and the most important thing to know is that my computer has been on - constantly! I have found myself sitting in front of it - or responding to things sent to my Droid for between 10-15 hours a day.

So during these last 7 days, I have personally Tweeted (alot)! Spent quite a few hours updating my status on Facebook. Put friends into circles on Google +, Joined a Tribe and created another Tribe on Triberr, posted reviews on Goodreads. Then I Blogged... and blogged... and read lots of blogs... all while tweeting it, because everyone needs to know what I am blogging about and what blogs I am reading!  You all care right?

I have also posted on endless groups like my Worldwide Indie Yahoo group, stayed in close contact with many people on Authors.com, spent lots of time browsing the Kindle Lovers page on Facebook and their website Kindle 3, because I can't live without my kindle. Updated my website, searched for photographs of my characters on Dreamstime for my video trailers, Amazon found me shopping, and posting reviews. I also asked for permission to list my books on two vampire romance lists.

I won't even begin to talk about the amount of time, Excel and Word were being used on my computer for spreadsheets and updating WIP's!

I have also shipped out books that were purchased on my own website, and watched my sales rise and fall on my Amazon bookshelf.  Did you hear, My Blood Runs Blue hit #64 on the Kindle charts for Vampire Romance? It did, and then it fell back off, but it was there, someone saw it! 

All in all - if you look at my house - it's a wreck - and some people would say I did nothing on my week off, but I know different. I know that I reached out and shared things with thousands of people. Maybe some of them cared, maybe some of them didn't, but I did it. I would not have been able to spend such awesome time with so many people before if it wasn't for the way that technology has changed our lives.

So....I will continue to follow, to blog, to post status updates, and to tweet about sitting around bonfires in circles until something new comes around... and then... You'll find me there too!