I signed up as a test pilot for Google email in 2005, and thank goodness I did it then or I might not be using my real name - more on that in a minute. When I Googled my name, back in the day, I was the first Kay Spencer to show up - the only one, in all my Project Greenlight and Atlanta Screenwriters Group glory. They were the only ones uploading anything to the Internet in those early days. Now, when it is beginning to matter, it's a struggle to find me. Pages and pages, and keywords like "writer" don't even help because someone is using my name as a PEN NAME on every available form of social media imaginable. Her real name is Debra and she lives in Colorado (just like I used to, weird). She is a writer of cowboy romance books under the nom de plume of Kaye Spencer. Sure, she put an e at the end, fancy and all, but that's a lot of who you get when you look for me now. As I've said, she's everywhere. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Or just a thing? Will writing professionals turn away if they think I'm writing cowboy romances? That's not my area.
Is it just me or are there others out there who are from a generation of no computers, when having a website presence didn't matter, when getting your novel published wasn't a popularity competition or a Google analytic chart? Some people collect friends on FB like it's a declaration of relevance. I've never done that. I am wary of friendly philanthropists who want to sell me a kidney. It's never been about quantity for me - it's been about quality. And personally, it always will be. But professionally, I need to think differently. I feel like I am late to the game of book publishing, that the time of graceful transcendent literature has been settled in to a dusty old throne, like a delicate elder, to rest while all of the younger genres multiply. At a recent conference, 80% of the books crowned by publishers and agents were YA (the other 20% memoirs). I get it - they are in the business of making money. And what is selling faster than YA right now?
Still, I have finished this beautiful story that I love so much, and which is loved by others. Not all maybe, but certainly others. And so I begin doing what does not come naturally to me: having an online presence.
Welcome to my blog. That's Kay - without an e.
