Electric Wow

Just a note to say thanks for the nice responses over my Easter entry. Bouncing around the Web, I'm reading from my blog list written by my Usual Suspects and my eyes catch firm on something achingly familiar. My blog entry title for Easter is living and breathing as the title on someone else's blog.

Seeing my blog's entry header appear as large as life on his blog shocked me for a second, caught in a moment of recognition of something familiar, but seeing it in a whole new landscape.

I don't know what to say. I'm flattered, flustered, embarrassed in a "surprise party" kind of way. Someone recognizes me in the flotsam and jetsam of the blogsphere and replicates my words on his blog as a tribute. He's redirecting his readers to me. Word of mouth, the Internet way with invisible highways being built to my little truck stop. Tracking back through the Blogger traffic-watcher feature, I see I got eyeballs from his site. People come see me, read me and get on with their lives. And for a second, I was part of their lives. Me, a stranger.

Earlier this evening, my wife was cleaning up the living room, including putting away the book she had been reading, "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins. At one point, she held up the book and said, "This book is getting really...really good." Just like that, all frantic as you can imagine in her random but fevered testimonial. She reads an avalanche of books on a monthly basis, often times making me feel like an illiterate sloth for not keeping up. For her to say something that positive and passionate is a real seal of approval.

So, when she said it, a little green-colored spark of envy and desire came alight. Maybe, hopefully, one day some avid reader will be saying that about some novel I wrote.

Until then, it's great to get a "rah-rah" from someone you never met.