Author chat

I had my first experience of an author chat yesterday on Chatting with Joyfully Reviewed -
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chatting_with_Joyfully_Reviewed/
and found it exhilerating. If anyone wants to check it out the posts 42822-43030 will just about cover it. Put the numbers in the search facility and they'll pop up like magic. Jean Fullerton, Linda Sole, June Francis and Anita Davidson joined me.

So, what did I learn? First of all, check the dates. I think a lot of Americans are heading off to the big convention in Houston this weekend, so that may account for the low participation by US readers. Secondly, think more carefully about time; at 2pm GMT the messages popped up on the group almost instantaneously. As the day wore on, the time lag increased. By 9pm GMT it was really frustratingly slow. And thirdly - it took up the whole of my day! 8 hours with only an hours break for food.

Perhaps I'll never know if it was a productive 8 hours, or if I would have done better to stick with my writing and produce a couple of thousand words...but it was something new, something exciting and we all need a little excitemeent from time to time. And next time, if there is a next time, I'll know what to expect.