To Blog, or Not to Blog

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A New Blog

Well, this feels weird.

I last posted on this blog on 7th February, 2012. It contained a poem about the perils of Scottish Independence called BROKEN NATION. Two weeks later the blog was invaded by some malware, that inserted some vicious code deep into the PHP coding as well as the server itself. I removed the site in its entirety and put up a placeholder.

I’m not saying the two were connected, probably not, but it’s meant I’ve been out of blogging action for around two months.

So why do I feel weird about this, some 61 days later?

First of all, not having blogged for so long has been odd. I was previously in the habit of blogging daily, but had reduced that to two or three times per week to cope with my writing demands.

Not blogging has seen me free up a whole load of time on my schedule, and has seen me working my way speedily through my back catalogue of books to be read.

On the flip side, not blogging has seen me lose track of all the other blogs I follow. I used the links on my own blog to guide me to the sites I read daily, but with that gone, I’ve become distant from a lot of my inspiring writer pals.

Second, I have been forced into moving the blog from its previous domain. I used to host the blog on my own site, but when it was attacked, Google saw the blog and my website as one entity, thereby slapping a malware warning on them both any time someone tried to enter.

Also, the only way to fix the security breach was to upgrade WordPress, which I was unable to do since my hosting company has yet to upgrade to the level of MySQL able to support the new WordPress database.

It was the perfect definition of a catch 22.

So, I moved the blog to this one. It’s a new design and hosted by WordPress, which means I’ve lost a lot of the control and customisability, but at least all the feeds are working and at it’s secure from attack. Being separate from my main central website will mean that should the blog ever be attacked again, my website will be unharmed.

You may noticed that everything else remains as it was. The export/import functions of WordPress worked a treat, and all my posts going right back to February 2007 when I joined WordPress, have all been safely backed up and restored.

In short, it’s game on!

Where’s Colly Been?

You might be asking what have I been up to while I’ve not been blogging.

It’s been an up and down time. I left the day job but I’ve done a bit of travelling, some visits to friends and family. I’ve been to a few gigs: The Twilight Sad, The Selecter, Stiff Little Fingers, and a god awful display from Cast.

My writing life had to take a rather inconvenient back seat for a couple of months, and only recently has it begun to get back on its feet.

I’ve had two poems accepted (one conditionally) for an internet publication. I had an interview published at facebooklet.ca with accompanying pencil portrait, and been asked for interview for a blog in Jamaica. SLICK is selling well and GREENER IS THE GRASS is due out on 4th May. Final proofing and production of my new chapbook is also running along, and although I don’t have a confirmed date, POEMS FROM A COFFEE SHOP WINDOW will be out soon. BACCARA BURNING has been completed and submitted, and I’m writing a new short story for a competition being run for the inaugural crime writing festival, Bloody Scotland, here in Scotland. Finally, on Friday I’ll be running another kids poetry workshop in Loanhead on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

That’s the run down. Makes me sound busy, but for a two month spell that’s actually not a lot.

So yeah, it feels good to be back blogging.

If you fancy it, you should change any bookmarks or references from www.colingalbraith.co.uk/blog to https://colingalbraith.wordpress.com

That’s about it. Back to the normal stuff from the next post!