Breaking Free with MeWe: Step One

Lately I would like nothing more than to be done with Facebook. It’s not just that they seem to hate all conservative and non-modernist Christians with a passion. They censor: one woman got in trouble with Facebook for posting a Bible verse about homosexuality. I have same-sex attraction myself, but I don’t see why quoting the ‘wrong’ Bible verse should get anyone into trouble. What if I quoted ‘Judas went out and hanged himself?’ 

I stay on Facebook because I have family members there who won’t move elsewhere. It’s actually the only means of communication I have with them because NO ONE CALLS ME. But what really made me hate FB lately is that I shared some news on FB about some recent medical tests I had which included a bad kidney test (and a GREAT A1c because I’m on low-carb/keto.) 

After this I am not only seeing ads on FB for a kidney disease recipe book (which looks high-carb,) I’m seeing it everywhere. So I’ve replaced my Google-based Gmail email address with one from GMX, and I’m (mostly) migrating to MeWe.

MeWe is a Facebook alternative which says it respects your privacy. So far, it seems to. The hard part is that after years of being on Facebook and accumulating Facebook friends, MeWe seems too quiet— because I don’t have enough friends there yet.

I’d ask you-all as my blog readers to friend me there (https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt) but many of you don’t have MeWe accounts yet. So, the first step is to start your MeWe account. Go to MeWe’s web site and sign up— it’s not that different than signing up for Facebook or Twitter.

Next, fix up your profile page. You will need a profile picture. I suggest a picture or an avatar of yourself, especially if you are trying to use your social media to promote your blog or writing career. If you are being deep-anonymous for a good reason, make a human-looking avatar that DOESN’T look like you. 

Your page also needs a cover image. You can use the same cover image you have on Facebook, or something similar. It doesn’t have to be the perfect cover image for you at first. You can always change it later.

Your profile picture, as on other social media, is seen next to everything you post. It’s the ‘you’ that your social media ‘peeps’ see. If you use a picture of yourself or an avatar of a human-like face, that makes you more relatable. It makes you a person and not a faceless person-or-thing behind a logo. 

Your cover photo can be all kinds of things. A picture of your family, of something scenic from your local area, if you are an author a collection of your book covers…. Whatever says ‘you’ and your social media persona well. 

You need to make a couple of MeWe friends to get started. You have a friend there already. My profile page is:  https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt  Make a friend request and I will accept it— unless your profile pic contains explicit nudity or something. Another way to make friends on MeWe is to encourage your friends from Facebook or Twitter to migrate to MeWe with you. 

Once you are there on MeWe and have a friend or two, post something. It could be a picture of your cat or dog, your opinion on what’s happening on General Hospital, or a rude opinion about your least-favorite political figure. Don’t worry if you don’t get much response yet. You are new to MeWe— it takes a little time to get into the swing of things.

Part 2 of this series will cover how to make new MeWe friends and how to join groups on MeWe.

MeWe-ly yours,

Nissa Annakindt

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My Traditional-Marriage-Support group on MeWe: https://mewe.com/group/5bca1f9c73a3f14e7c8572e5

My Traditional-Marriage-Support page on FB: https://www.facebook.com/defendtradmarriage/

Was ‘Out’ Gay Poet Ginsberg a Pedophile?

The ‘beat’ poet Allen Ginsberg was known as an ‘out’ homosexual; but his involvement with the pedophile advocacy group NAMBLA and the pedophilic content of some of his poems are less well known. Now, in the earlier years of the Gay movement NAMBLA was far more accepted in that community that it is now. Perhaps Ginsberg thought that pedophilia would become socially acceptable along with homosexual behaviors?

But now, today, when we have experienced the stories of many childhood sexual abuse, and how that abuse affected their later life, there is no excuse. Pedophile sex is not a good thing— it does lasting harm to children. So it’s hard to say that the poet Allen Ginsberg must be admired when he has NAMBLA ties and poems with ‘pederastic themes.’

Now, I am not an expert on Ginsberg or ‘beat’ poets in general. My information source is a rather scholarly article online. I found the article hard to link to on MeWe or FB, so I thought I would copy out a bit into this post so that people could see it.

“The late “beat” poet Allen Ginsberg illustrates the seamless connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. Many know Ginsberg as an illustrious “out” homosexual poet: fewer are aware that he was also a pedophile.

Biographer Raymond-Jean Frontain refers to Ginsberg’s publications in both NAMBLA Bulletin and NAMBLA Journal. He discusses how Ginsberg’s biographers failed to discuss his poems that contained pederastic themes:

Although both Shumacher and Barry Miles (Ginsberg’s initial biographer) frankly discuss Ginsberg’s sexual politics, neither refers to his involvement with the controversial North American Man/Boy Love Association. . . . I reread Collected Poems and Ginsberg’s two subsequent collections, surprised by the pattern of references to anal intercourse and to pederasty that emerged. 

Ginsberg was one of the first of a growing number of homosexual writers who cater to the fascination with pedophilia in the gay community. ”   — Timothy J. Dailey, Ph. D.

Now, as a woman with same-sex attraction (‘Gay, Lesbian’) I am not thrilled with pedophilia and the NAMBLA crowd. I feel for the victims— and a disproportionate number of persons in the ‘LGBT’ community have experienced sexual abuse in childhood. I might feel compassion for the pedophilic perpetrators and their defenders, but I feel way more for the victims. And as a poet I feel that Ginsberg should LOSE ‘great poet’ points for his NAMBLA connections instead of gaining them for being an ‘out’ homosexual before that was cool.

Poetically yours,

Nissa Annakindt

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Break free of FB! Join me on MeWe:  https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt

My Pro-Traditional-Marriage group on MeWe: https://mewe.com/group/5bca1f9c73a3f14e7c8572e5

Lowcarb Keto Recipe: Free Bone Broth!

Bone broth is a healthy food— wouldn’t you like to get some chicken bone broth for free? I get mine free all the time— because I eat a lot of chicken thighs and I save all the bones in freezer bags until enough accumulate to make some bone broth. Currently I get my chicken from the grocery store, but I AM plotting against the lives of some chickens right now. Which, alas, means I will need to learn to eat chicken parts that are not chicken thighs.

Free Chicken Bone Broth

Accumulate enough leftover chicken bones in your freezer to fill a Crock-Pot or slow cooker. When you have enough, put some (optional) veggies into your Crock-Pot.

4-8 cloves of garlic, crushed

One onion, chopped

thumb-sized bit of fresh ginger, chopped

chopped fresh parsley (or 1 teaspoon dried parsley)

Next, add your bones to your Crock-Pot and add

1/4 cup vinegar (I use Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar)

Water to cover bones

Cook on your Crock-Pot’s Low setting for 24-48 hours. Unplug and cool for about an hour, then strain the broth through a strainer to get the bones and other bits out. Pour into quart canning jars, and put in fridge overnight. The fat will rise to the top, and you can take it out, boil it a bit to get the last of the broth out, and use it for cooking fat. The defatted broth you can store in the freezer until you are ready to use it in cooking or bulletproof beverages. 

I DO NOT add salt or seasonings when making the broth— I can add these things later when I prepare the broth for consumption. 

VARIATIONS: I use the same recipe with beef or pork bones, which, sadly, I have to buy. I have been trying to get my deer-hunting friends to save me some bones, but they insist I don’t really want the bones, I want the meat. My best beef bones come from a local farmer who sells at a farmer’s market in Menominee, MI. I can’t save bones from my grocery store beef and pork because my local grocery sells mainly boneless meat.

USES: I cook my quinoa in bone broth, and it adds a great flavor. It’s a good base for soups. And you can drink a cup of bone broth, heated, as a beverage. Dr. Jason Fung even allows it as a fasting beverage— which is great if you fast in a household full of worried family members. Just make yourself a cup of bone broth, call it your ‘soup,’ and your family will calm down.

So, this is the way I get my bone broth for nothing. If only the chick hatcheries would send me my chicks for free, I’d be a song.

Bone-brothy greetings from

Nissa Annakindt

Fasting Update: Reading a book by Dr. Jason Fung, he talked about ‘modified fat fasting,’ but never explained what that is exactly or how to do it. Dear Jason can be disorganized like that sometimes! So I looked around the internet and found very little until I came across the concept of ‘bulletproof fasting,’ which allows you some bulletproof coffee on a fasting day. Or other bulletproof beverages, I assume. So I’m doing bulletproof fasting today (Thursday) and hope to do regular (water) fasting tomorrow (Friday.)  I’ll let you know how it goes!

Come with me if you want to live! To MeWe, a great alternative to Facebook and the rest of the exploiting pack.  https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt

KetoLife: The Careful Carb Diet & Kidney Disease

I have been on low-carb for years, especially since I developed T2 diabetes. And it helps. My latest A1c test has me at the low end of the prediabetic scale, and I didn’t even ‘study’ for that blood test by being super-strict low-carb like I often do.

I have had bad kidney tests which indicate I have chronic kidney disease (CKD.) Not as bad as what my nondoctor PCP (primary care provider) insisted. I had the clinic mail me my test results and found to my relief I am NOT at stage 4 kidney disease but still at 3. My nondoctor claimed I was at stage 4 on the phone. 

But still, my nondoctor wants me to restrict my protein. And since I need to restrict my carbs to control my blood sugars, that leaves me with one macronutrient: fat. Which I’m sure my very conventional nondoctor doesn’t want me to eat, either. So: a food-free diet???

OK, so I’ve done a major search of all the low-carb and health books I have, including my 3 books by Dr. Jason Fung, a nephrologist (kidney doctor,) in search of information on combining low-carbohydrate and low-protein. I found very little until I got out an old Dana Carpender book and found ‘The Careful Carb Diet’ in Chapter 14 of ‘How I Gave Up My Low-Fat Diet and Lost 40 Pounds (2003.)’

Dana (who is not a doctor, nurse, dietician or ‘health coach’) developed this diet for a man with severe health problems including kidney disease. (This man was under constant doctor supervision and had extensive blood tests every 3 months.) 

First step is figuring out your protein requirement which you have to eat every day (except when fasting, I presume.) In Chapter 8 Dana said you take your ideal weight (not a super-skinny anorexic weight goal) and divide that number by 2. The result is the number of grams of protein you should get in a day. So for a 130 goal weight, you should get 65 grams of protein a day. 

Dana says you should not exceed your protein requirement by more than 20 grams, so for me, with a requirement of 65 grams a day, my max should be at 85 grams of protein. Which I set as my protein limit on my Carb Manager app, which I recently downloaded because I didn’t have a book that gave the protein counts of foods. 

Dana presumes you will be having three meals a day (I’m so over that way-of-eating now I’ve been doing intermittent fasting/partial-day fasting for a few years.) In addition, you are allowed certain ‘low-impact’ carbs, 2 to 3 servings with your 3 meals a day. Among the foods allowed is brown rice, cooked, (1/2 cup serving) or whole grain barley, cooked (1/2 cup serving.)

My problem is that rather than having 3 meals a day I usually do OMAD or have one full meal and one small bit-of-something, or perhaps a bulletproof coffee or two. And I don’t think having 2-3 servings of a carb food at my OMAD meal is going to be good for my blood sugar or my long-term low-carb compliance. 

But the idea of adding back a bit of carbs sounded a bit fun so I started my Great Quinoa Experiment. Now, I don’t know if quinoa counts as a low-impact carb, but it does have quite a bit of fiber in it, and I actually OWN some quinoa, in the back of my cupboard. 

My daily ‘dose’ of quinoa has been 1/8 of a cup, dry measure, which comes out to a little over 1/4 cup, cooked. So about 1/2 of one serving according to the Careful Carb rules. I’ve had it every day for a week, doesn’t send my carbs over my limit, doesn’t make me get heavy carb cravings. I cook my quinoa in bone broth and pretend it tastes just like Rice-a-roni, a major high-carb love of mine from childhood on. 

For the coming week I’m thinking of upping my daily quinoa dose up to 1/3 of a cup, cooked, just to see what happens. After all, on Dana’s Careful Carb I’m allowed more than one 1/2 cup servings of a cooked grain in a day. 

The real test will be once I finally get an appointment with my new nephrologist and get new tests to see if I’ve improved on restricted protein, or if I have to restrict still more. 

Yes, I’m doing the keto-lowcarb thing back on this blog again. Hope some of you folk enjoy it.

Low-carbily yours,

Nissa Annakindt

Come with me if you want to live! To MeWe, a great alternative to Facebook and the rest of the exploiting pack.  https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt

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T2 diabetes – Type 2 diabetes, adult diabetes

A1c – a blood test of your blood sugars over the past couple of months

prediabetic – elevated blood sugar, but not enough to qualify as diabetes

CKD – chronic kidney disease, comes in 5 stages, #5 being the worst

PCP – primary (health) care provider. Government jargon.

macronutrients – protein, fat, carbohydrate

micronutrients – vitamins and minerals

nephrologist – kidney doctor

OMAD – one meal a day— a form of IF (intermittent fasting)

AspieLife: We’re All In This…. 6 Feet Apart

No, we are not all in this together. Social distancing means we are not together. Some of us *Aspies are cut off from other people more than ever before. We may not be big on receiving hugs and handshakes, but when we can’t get those gestures of human contact we miss them and fear we are condemned to being alone forever. I mean, even more than usual.

If we have good jobs we may have to ‘work from home.’ And fear that our employers will discover that they don’t need us so much after all. We may be required to participate in video conferences— say we have the kind of internet service that allows us to do that. What if you can’t handle that kind of thing? What if it makes you feel weird and awkward and like you are on stage and about to make a major mistake?

If you have a low-level menial job— perhaps in spite of a high educational level— you might be considered ‘essential’ and have to go to work and take risks even if you are a person at high risk of getting a serious case of the Wuhan virus. Or perhaps you are not lucky enough to be employed by an ‘essential’ business like liquor stores, marijuana shops, or abortion mills, and you are out of work, with bills to pay and fears of eventual homelessness.

Depression is a common *comorbidity with Asperger Syndrome. And depression symptoms shouldn’t be ignored— depression is a serious disease, like Ebola. If you had Ebola, you wouldn’t take a bubble bath to see if that made you feel better, or worry that people would think you were weak for asking for medical help. You’d just go to a doctor at once. The same rule should apply if you have depression symptoms. Maybe you can’t get in to see your therapist in person, but maybe you can do that ‘telemedicine’ thing. And for goodness sake, if you are currently on an antidepressant don’t get so depressed you quit taking them! 

I am trying to make a point of having some human contact every day using the internet. I’m on MeWe (and also on Facebook which I hate, but my family members are all there and FB is the only way I have contact with any of them.) I’m working every day on my MeWe, making sure to post something daily and ‘like’ some stuff friends have posted. (MeWe is cool because you can ‘like’ posts with a wide variety of emojis, including a fleet of cat emojis with different facial expressions.)

I try not to listen to news crap broadcasts that talk about the ‘new normal’ because being cut off from other people is not MY idea of a normal. At least not one that human beings find livable. Social isolation is called cruel when we put the worst criminals in isolation in a supermax prison. But I guess some people think it’s OK for the rest of us? But let’s be strong, be tough, and find a way through this we can live with.

Greetings from at least 6 feet away,

Nissa Annakindt

* Aspies = persons with Asperger Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder

*comorbidity = some other damn thing that’s wrong with you

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Come with me if you want to live! To MeWe, a great alternative to FB and the rest of the exploiting pack.  https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt

Short Posts, Long Posts & Your Blog

When you are keeping your blogging schedule, there are two main types of blog posts you will be composing. One is the briefer and lighter short post. The other is the more comprehensive long post. Most of your posts will be short posts. Most of your posts that go evergreen and keep pulling in new readers over time will be long posts.

The short post is may be just past the minimum of 300 words. It covers a narrower topic. It can be more personal, fun, or frivolous. One way to find topics for such a post is to look at other blogs in your niche. Write down five topics you have seen other blogs cover lightly or briefly. For each topic, think of a way that you could do that topic differently. Or perhaps you may think of away to do a slightly different topic in a similar way.

Once you have a list of five or more topics, pick the one that you feel like writing right now, today. Start a new text in your writing software and start writing. If you need to, before you begin the writing process, make a short list of the topics you will cover, or important points you will make. This may give you the idea to turn your topic into a list post.

The long post is where you will have evergreen posts on your blog. Unlike Twitter, where a tweet will vanish from sight within minutes, your long posts may be drawing new readers in for years. The long post can cover a topic more broadly than a short post can, but it still needs to be narrowed down. You cannot write about life, the universe and everything in one blog post. Not without making it so long that its gravity will create a black hole.

A long post may be far past the 300 to 500 words you will find a short post. However, when you start getting up towards 1000 words, slow down. If a post is too long, most readers will not finish it. Is there a way you can get to the point of this post more quickly? Perhaps a bulleted list would you help organize your post if you tend to ramble like I do.

This post is a short post, and it is coming to an end. I hope it will help you compose the two kinds of blog posts that your blog will need period

Happy blogging,

Nissa Annakindt

This blog post was dictated using the dictation feature that came with my (older) Mac.

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Want tips to improve an author blog? Join my FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/310331253293318/

Learning About Poetry in an Anti-Poetry World

Even way back when I was in school, they didn’t teach poetry very well. I don’t remember learning much about poetry at all. I know my 6^th grade English book had a short poem at the beginning of each chapter, which the teacher ignored. Some were by e. e. cummings, which was a major influence on the absolute lack of capital letters in my early poetry.

I know we had an assignment to write haiku in 6^th grade, but I do not remember us ever being asked to READ any haiku in translation. It was more a syllable-counting exercise. I doubt any of us wrote anything that a real haiku poet would recognize as haiku. 

In high school, I had a teacher who gave us mimeographed pages with the words to Beatles songs in lieu of poetry. At the time I didn’t care much for Beatles songs— the Beatles were so OVER. I liked the Carpenters, Frankie Yankovic, and the Monkees instead. 

I also liked real poetry. My mom had a book called ‘The Best Loved Poems of the American People’ and I did read in it— at least the short poems, and the funny ones. 

Used to be some people thought that all poetry had to have rhyme and meter. Later, some people turned up their noses at poetry like that, calling it ‘greeting card verse.’ It IS hard to write rhymed-and-metered poetry without sounding trite, but some people can do it. Louis L’Amour, the famed Western writer, published a volume of poetry with many sonnets as his first book. I could no more write a sonnet than I could flap my arms and fly to Chicago.

Reading poetry, ideally from an early age, is the key to writing poetry. Think of it this way— poetry is another language, like German or Volapük. You learn a new language better if you start it before age 12— and if you don’t learn ANY language before age 12, as in the case of feral children, you likely will never learn to be a language user.

If you are older and haven’t much experience with poetry, you may never become a full ‘native speaker’ of the language of poetry. You may end up speaking the poetry language with a prose accent. But even if you are age 99, reading widely in poetry is a good step, for cultural literacy reasons even if you don’t plan on expressing yourself in poetic ways. 

What is YOUR history in reading poetry and learning about poetry? Share in a comment!

Poetic days to you,

Nissa Annakindt

 

Author-bloggers! My new FB group about author-blogs needs more victims (members.) Join at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/310331253293318/

What’s Your Blogging Brand?

What is a blogging brand? I picture it like this: first, you hot up the branding irons. Then, you roust the cowboys from the bunkhouse and set them to rounding up the bloggers. When the bloggers are all lassoed and hog-tied, you apply the red-hot branding irons to bare blogger butts.

OK, it’s not like that exactly. Think of your blogging brand is what you deliver to your readers— whether that is humor, political rants, encouragement, cute cat pictures. Your blog niche relates to your brand. If you decide that your blog niche is hard-hitting political commentary and you post nothing but pictures of your cute kitten (or puppy, snake or murder hornets,) you are not putting out a political commentary brand, but you are delivering cute pet pictures (unless your pets are murder hornets.)

Your blog’s readers come to you because they can read things they are interested in on your blog. If you had an angry-atheist blog that mocked non-atheists, and you switch over to a devout Catholic conversion-story blog, you will probably lose all the old blog’s readers and find new readers. Probably MORE and nicer new readers if you mocked on the old blog and don’t do that now. 

Most blogging advice I have read says to focus on one topic for blogging success, but that leaves me torn. I am too much of a Renaissance woman to confine myself to one topic. And though I have other blogs (for low-carb/keto living, for Esperanto, and for other odd languages) I find it hard to keep up with lots of blogs and so no longer start new blogs anytime I become interested in something.

So on this blog you will find blogging-improvement posts, writing/authorship posts, posts about Asperger Syndrome (autism spectrum disorder,) poetry-related posts, and faith-based posts including ones on the Lutheran rosary (I am an ex-Lutheran who prayed the rosary in my Lutheran days, and only dared to tell one other Lutheran. Who said, ‘Me, too.’)

Back to YOU and your blog. Whether your blogging brand includes one major topic or many, it’s good to have an image that relates to your blog plastered all over it. For author bloggers, I’m afraid it will have to be your author photo. Sadly, I have always been so ashamed of my body that I hated having pictures taken. So there are few old photos for me to choose from. And I can’t get new pictures taken— since my health problems last February I make Ruth Bader Ginsberg look young and sexy. I’m thinking of commissioning a manga-style ‘cartoon’ portrait of me with variations so I can be different races (like Klingon and elven) and different ages and stuff. 

Some people who would rather be anonymous use logos to help establish their blogging brand. Hey, it works for corporations! For example, a corporate wage slave who writes things that don’t share the corporate brand, or perhaps doesn’t ‘believe all women’ or support same-sex marriage, may need to blog anonymously to keep the day job. 

Also, some people, like Gundi Gabrielle, use a color to establish brand. For her, it is a vivid pink. (Ugh!) I’m thinking of using a blue in the teal/cyan/turquoise family as part of my brand.

Well, I’ve rambled on a bit about blogging brands. This was intended to be a 350-word quick post and I’m nearing 600 words. So it’s time for me to stop now, and let you-all say what you think or know about blogging brands in a comment.

Thanks for reading so far,

Nissa Annakindt

 

My new FB group about author-blogs needs more victims (members.) Join at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/310331253293318/

Can Aspies Make Money Writing?

Some years back I went to a big bookstore in Green Bay, Wisconsin and saw a book on Asperger Syndrome (an autism spectrum disorder.) In the section on career advice it suggested ‘writer’ as a career for Aspies*. But popular wisdom suggests that writing is something that costs money, it doesn’t pay.

Poverty is a big problem for us Aspies. I read that Aspies had a 80% unemployment rate some years ago— even though by definition all Aspies have at least normal intelligence and can use language, unlike low-functioning autistics. Some of us even have high IQs— mine is high enough to qualify me for Mensa membership, though I never wanted to join since to me it seemed like Mensa was a bit intellectually elitist.

I have had difficulty with maintaining a gainful employment and am currently on SSI disability. (The government insists on believing that my Asperger Syndrome started in adulthood and so I am not able to get Social Security disability based on my father’s employment. And since I tried to hold down real jobs before turning to government charity, the govt takes that as proof that I didn’t have Asperger Syndrome back when I had a teaching job right after college.)

I must admit I have never made money with my writing or blogging. Of course the only books I currently have out are 2 poetry books and a very newly published e-book on blogging. And when I applied for an Amazon affiliate account I was kicked off in a month for not making sales. 

There are plenty of people selling ebooks on how you can make money blogging, or make money writing nonfiction ebooks, but I think a lot of these guys just write that stuff for money whether they make an income that way themselves or not.

Freelance writing or working for a newspaper is more like a real job and more likely to pay, but not all of us Aspies can handle it. I don’t think I have the social skills to handle working at a newspaper (even an online one.) And freelance writing can be a constant struggle with a lot of rejection in it. 

Still, if you have developed writing skills (or are willing to work on doing that) you at least have a possibility of making some income that way. You need to make writing and/or blogging and book/online marketing into your *Special Interests to gain the knowledge and discernment you need to make it work.

Thanks for reading this to the end and God bless you,

Nissa Annakindt, poet, Aspie & cat person

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*Aspies: persons with Asperger Syndrome (high-functioning autism with no delay in learning language.)

*Special Interests: An intense/obsessive interest in a topic or field of study, a characteristic of Asperger Syndrome.

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Author-bloggers! My new FB group about author-blogs needs more victims (members.) Join at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/310331253293318/

Christian Author Blogs: Papa Don’t Preach

Author blogging is a major step forward for a lot of authors (and aspiring authors.) And Christian authors are authors too, and may experience discrimination in the mainstream writing world where publishers want strong LGBT characters even in YA children’s books, but would turn up his nose at a writer who put in an Evangelical or Catholic character without saying what ‘haters’ they are. (‘Haters’ — the new hate-epithet to use against people you hate and are bigoted against.)

Christian fiction is accused of being “preachy’ even by people who have never once read even page 1 in a Christian book. And, yes, some Christian fiction is. Check out Salem Kirban’s novel and-or sermon 666, which as a novel is a great sermon on the Rapture doctrine. Evangelical fiction has ‘preachy’ roots because some Evangelical/Fundamentalist churches used to teach that when you get saved you give up ‘worldly’ novels the same way you give up alcohol, movies and owning a pack of playing cards.  (Most of these groups are far less strict now— women can even wear makeup!)

But ‘preachiness’ is less tolerated in fiction, even by the most devout Christians. And so your blog shouldn’t be too preachy, either. You can mention faith-related issues, but if you are putting up sermons or devotionals, you may find that many of your book readers and fans don’t really want you playing pastor for them.

It’s understandable. I’m a Catholic convert but in my obsessive reading life I will gladly read books by Evangelicals and LDS/Mormons and Eastern Orthodox Christians and Mennonites— so long as they can tell good stories. But I don’t want to get into denominational debates with these people and have them preach at me. If I want preaching I’ll go to the church of my own choice. If I want a devotional I will buy a devotional book, usually a Catholic one. 

Now, of course if you are a full-time pastor of whatever church, perhaps someone with years of seminary training, perhaps someone who does his daily Bible reading in Hebrew and Greek, then your preaching will be worth blogging, but perhaps not on your author blog. You might have a pastor-blog and a Christian author blog to keep the one topic from overwhelming the other. But if you are far too busy to maintain two blogs, a preachy author blog may be right for you, especially if you write fiction with a lot of faith content. 

If you are NOT a pastor, you might want the faith content on your blog to be less overwhelming. Just because someone read your Amish romance or Bible-based fantasy doesn’t mean they welcome your views on whether Cain or Judas went to hell or whether God doesn’t listen to the prayers of Jewish people or the One Right Way to have morning devotions. 

This doesn’t mean denying your faith. It means being more subtle. If you can. With my Asperger Syndrome subtle may not be my thing. Which is why I’m writing about Christian author blogging instead of something not explicitly Christian. Perhaps something that would promote my blogging book. (See blog sidebar or books page.)

Of course not only is each Christian author blogger going to have a unique style, people from different church backgrounds will have different traits in their author blogs. Not just Catholic author blogs being different from Protestant/Evangelical ones, but Southern Baptist author bloggers may be a bit different from Freewill Baptist author bloggers. But preachiness, unless you are a gifted preacher, may not be your best blogging style.

Bloggy greetings from

Nissa Annakindt & her cats

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You will notice this post introduces a new topic with a new graphic. Graphic self-inflicted, made on Canva. I’ve decided to write some things specifically for Christian author-bloggers, not because I’m not keen on Jewish persons or Buddhists who author-blog, but because I personally am Christian & know lots of Christian authors & author-bloggers so I have perspective on it. 

New author-blogger FB group! Members wanted!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/310331253293318/