If I owned a little bookshop…

“Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.”

-Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting

If I owned a little bookshop, and my blog readers were my customers, we could sit around with coffee and discuss books all day. I’d have a latte with soy milk and I’d ask you what you are reading right now and probably not mention the two dogs with their noses pressed up against the window.

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In the past two months, 1800 people have been through the doors:

July

827 unique visitors

400 from New Zealand, 300 from the United States, 80 from India, 70 from the United Kingdom and the rest from 65 countries around the world.

August

923 unique visitors

300 from New Zealand, 300 from the United States, 100 from the United Kingdom, 80 from India and the next 100 from the EU, Nigeria and South Africa.

Behaviour

People find me through Google (60%), WordPress (20%) and Pinterest (10%). All the rest were from social media.

People seem to stay a while and browse around. The coffee must be good. Top posts in the last two months have been International Writing Competitions 2018 / 2019, my article about writing active settings, Showing Character Through Setting and Read over my Shoulder, a tour through what I was currently reading.

I made it to 100 blog followers in the last couple of months so I’d like to thank everyone who reads my stuff. I’m still amazed anyone reads what I write. Thankyou thankyou thankyou!

Chat

If you came into my shop, I’d tell you that I’m still 75% of the way through my novel. I’ve been writing short stories and flash fiction in August, as well as blogging. I’ve submitted something to the Heritage Week Short Story Awards. I’d mention that I’m loving interviewing all these New Zealand authors on my blog. Coming up next is Gareth Ward, who wrote a wonderful steampunk Middle Grade novel, The Traitor and the Thief.

I’d tell you that I’m going to (what my son calls my ‘nerd convention’), a talk on writing about time travel, given by Ted Chiang, Whiti Hereaka and Michael Bennett. I have always loved Chiang’s clever short story of a linguist sent to decipher alien speech, which appears in Stories of Your Life and Others

and was made into a film, Arrival.

I’d enthuse about the weather, which is slowly heating up heading into spring here in New Zealand. The sun is starting to show its face in the weekends, meaning it is time to start taming the triffids weeds in the back garden. A few bulbs are tentatively craning past the clover, pleading for someone to help them out.

I’d probably tell you that I watched A Wrinkle in Time with the family, a wonderful uplifting story by Madeleine L’Engle, which has been made into a Disney film. Definitely recommend it for all ages. I’m about quarter of the way through The Immortalists

, by Chloe Benjamin, at the moment. It’s a gripping read so far. It is a family saga of siblings who learn the date of their death. It asks the reader to ponder the question: What would you do with your life if you knew exactly when it would end?

So, that’s what I’d say if I had a bookshop and you came in. I can only dream, can’t I?