Happy 2nd Blog Anniversary! – An Interview, Part 2

Greetings readers, bloggers, geeks, and authors. It’s my anniversary and I thought I’d interview myself and share it with you. I’ve come a long way as a writer, blogger, reviewer, and interviewer and I’d thought it would be nice to share some of the things I’ve learned and tell you a little about myself, in case you don’t already know.

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What inspired me to travel to the land of The ToiBox of Words?

I had played around with blogging for two years before I thought of starting The ToiBox of Words. Up to that point all my blogging efforts were focused on writing and promoting my first novel, Eternal Curse. At some point it hit me that I had so much more to offer than simply obsessing over my first book. I wanted to be able to connect with people, especially others in the book industry, and I wanted an opportunity to show people that I’m a real person, not just a writer trying to sell them a story they may or may not want to read.

So what would I say is this blog’s content rating?

I consider myself to be much more diverse and flexible than I actually allow my blog to be, and in all actuality, I’d like to think that The ToiBox of Words is pretty diverse. However, I won’t pretend that I don’t set limitations. I cater to an adult audience, but I know that my nephews, nieces, and their friends may stumble upon my blog at random intervals. For that reason I do not allow my content to reach beyond a teen appropriate level. For the most part, my blog content is PG, but because I am catering to adults, some of the themes can be mature.

Overall, how would I say I roll with all the punches of blogging?

Blogging by itself can be a passion, an obsession, a job, or a way to escape. For me it’s all these things. It’s also just another form of social media so I have a love-hate relationship with it. Blogging consumes my time and my mind. Without it I feel lost, useless, and out of touch. With it I feel overwhelmed, inadequate, and sometimes invisible as a lone speck in the vast blogosphere. But…The ToiBox of Words has become my home on the web and I feel safe here.

Any comments on blog comments?

I get the feeling that most bloggers want comments, but fear what they’re going to get. I’m no different. It makes my day when I get a comment and it’s something positive, but I’m always wary that it’ll be something negative.  So far I’ve been pleased to either not get comments or receive very nice ones. I don’t stress over a lack of interaction because I know people are busy, and I know sometimes I want to leave comments and don’t because I’m just so busy. In any case, I do welcome comments, nice or negative.

They say everyone’s a critic, how about me?

I thoroughly enjoy talking about a movie I’ve just seen, a book I’ve just read, or an album I’ve just heard, but I’m still figuring out this whole reviewing thing. I don’t read as much as I’d like, but I’ve started to set aside time just for that. My next step will be to set aside time to review what I’ve read. I’m so bad with reviews. I do them, but it’s usually months after I’ve read the book. I’m not an overly critical reviewer simply because there are more than enough of those out there already. I am however honest. I even realize that while I may not like certain things, I try to keep an open mind to the possibilities that others will.

When I do a review, I do so because I either want to support an author’s work or because I want to share my experience. I do my best to keep pressure and animosity away from my review experience by not reviewing books I have no interest in. I hope to try doing movie and music reviews down the road.

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Okay readers, bloggers, geeks, and authors, that’s all for today…unless you have a question you’d like to ask me. 😉

Thank you for sticking with me these past two years. Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for part three of this interview and hopefully enjoy some more of my insights.

This has been a

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords