I was a voracious reader as a child, with a passion for comic book heroes and science fiction. Writing seemed a natural progression and I remember my 8th Grade teacher telling me I’d be a writer someday, impressed as he was with a short story I’d turned in. I spent my high school years carrying a spiral notebook filled with poetry and song lyrics, fancying myself a cross between Jim Morrison and Robert Plant. So the creative process has always been a part of my life.
Years of writing articles and essays for countless blogs had satisfied my creative needs, and still does, but I had an idea that was demanding a better platform. This is how it came to be that during a tumultuous period in my personal history, I channeled my energy into fulfilling the improbable predictions of a high school English teacher and set about to publish a book. My first book, “The Biblical God Doesn’t Exist: Argument & Evidence,” is available for eReaders or in print.
I have several projects in the works I hope to publish soon, and I will continue to write for the blog. I have stopped the use of the so-called social media platforms. While I do enjoy the ability to fire off some quick content vs. the more labor intensive blog posts I write, I’ve found that I’m competing in a very crowded space for attention. Shouting into the void if you will. Over time, I’ve taken instead to commenting on articles or posts by prominent figures in news, politics and religion and I’m not always pleased with myself after doing so. It seems all too easy to get ugly in these online brawls and I’m quite convinced that I’m adding no value to anyone’s life, and negatively affecting the quality of my own.
So while I’d love to be able to promote my writing via these mediums, it doesn’t actually seem to work out that way. I don’t spend a lot of time analyzing my site traffic or where my book sales come from–although Amazon is a remarkable business model that essentially allows the books to market themselves, as readers comment, rank and review their purchases–but when I have attempted to use Twitter or Facebook to advertise a recent blog entry I took the time to write, the return on investment is miniscule. I hope my Faithful Readers will subscribe to the blog if they want to hear from me on occasion, and I couldn’t be more humbled by the overwhelmingly positive responses I’ve gotten on my book.
PS I’ve gotten sidetracked more times than I care to count on my pending projects, and hope at some point to put the pedal to the metal and publish once again.
JD Espinoza 