Blogging, Branding, and Vampire Blood

Another two months gone without a post to this blog. I think it's safe to assume, at least for this extended moment of passage, that I am not a social media creature. Again I ponder what I have to say that would matter. I struggle with the notion of creating "a brand" of myself. Hell, I only recently found that the novel I've danced with long after the ball ended isn't paranormal, which never felt right to me, but more probably science fiction. Well shut my mouth. If I can't even peg the genre in which I've wallowed for these many years, how can I advise anyone else about things writerly? Simple: I don't.


I read on others' blogs on social networking and building platform that one shouldn't set out to build a platform or create a brand for one's self. One should simply identify who his target audience is and write to them. Target audience for the novel that I'd be pitching, should I ever land an agent or publisher? That assumes that the audience for that novel would be the same audience for future works and for the random digressions, wanderings down dark hallways of the mind, that make up the blog posts or tweets. Yikes. Somehow those short 140 character things seems more daunting than full posts, so much more ripe with likelihood of instant dismissal. What the fuck is he talking about? 


So who would be my desired audience? They'd be people who love to delve into the mysteries of the common threads that tie together the hidden (dare I say occult?) knowledge of the working of the universe that runs through all religions and is pretty much equally distorted by all of them. People who are willing to believe, but don't necessarily believe. Everything is possible. Nothing is absolutely true. But mostly, I want to talk to people who can go there and laugh about it, and laugh at themselves. 


Above all, they say, be funny. I can be funny, but I don't write funny, and the kind of humor I like best leans heavily toward the dark and twisted side. Erotic. Profane. Quentin Tarantino. I haven't figured out how to address that in blog posts, especially ones about writing, the writer's journey, querying, and all those things that every other person in the publishing world writes about. 


What do I write about then? What kinds of things would I want to toss around with kindred souls? Let's get irreverent. Was the archangel who came to Mary of Biblical fame really an alien visitor? Was her son, the famous one, really the offspring of a human/alien mating? Are the creatures of the night, the ones of legend, vampires, werewolves, goblins, all alien beings playing on our superstitions, giving us what we are afraid of? Are miracles a simple matter of high-level manipulation of what we perceive as reality? Can we laugh at all those possibilities fooling with us, scaring us, and, alternatively, raising us up? After all, alien doesn't necessarily mean from another planet. Just another place. And just because they might exist and operate on a different level of perceived reality from us, mightn't they be just as prone to extremes of good and evil, whatever those are on whatever scale is used to measure them?


See, there just aren't viable tweets there. Or even posts. Do I believe all that shit? Bwa ha ha. No. Well, maybe. Why not? Could be. What was that wheel within the wheel? Sure is one hell of a lot more likely than humans and dinosaurs sharing the planet together after a seven day splurge of creation. No shortage of scared, desperate hopefuls willing to buy the snake oil. How about a vial of blood instead?