July 22, 2005
Okay. I'm going to admit it. I started this blog with very little interest in blogs. Then I started taking a few peeks at a few other blogs. I've got a special folder in my favorites link titled "Distractions," and the majority of them are blogs. I haven't figured out how to create a link in the body of my entry here, and anybody who can tell me how to do it in a short, easy-to-use way, I'll be thankful. But here are my addictions and how you can visit them, too, and hey, why you should.

1. Reel Life With Jane (www.reellifewithjane.com)
This is a website handled by Jane Boursaw, a Michigan native, freelance writer and movie freak. She reviews movies here and also invites guests to write columns (including moi) and blogs about TV and movies.

2. Eric Mayer. (www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/)
Eric is the blogging half of this husband-and-wife freelance writers and novelists, Mary Reed and Eric Mayer. Fine novelists of historical crime fiction, Eric brings a quirky and thoughtful look at the writing life and fiction.

3. Lee Goldberg's blog. (http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/)
Lee is probably best known for being a TV writer for shows like Diagnosis: Murder and Spenser: For Hire, as well as a novelist and nonfiction book writer. His blog is all over the place, commenting on all sorts of things involving TV, movies, books and the publishing industry, with an apparently long-running feud with writers of fan fiction.

4. Paul Guyot's blog. (http://paulguyot.blogs.com/inkslinger/)
Paul Guyot is also a TV writer, currently hired to write a pilot. He was on staff for Judging Amy and he left L.A. to move to St. Louis to get away from the industry and write a novel, but seems to be writing for TV anyway.

5. Joe Konrath's blog. (http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/)
Novelist Joe "JA" Konrath's blog. He's got a great website, too, but his blog is interesting. He's currently on a book tour sponsored by his publisher, and is running a day-to-day description of his marketing efforts while on tour. Joe's the "James Brown" of mystery marketing--the hardest working man in the business--and there's a number of lessons to be learned here.

There are a few others, but these are definitely my top 5 ways of wasting time during my writing day.

Best,
Mark Terry