Siram

Jim Wright asks in one of the comment threads: "What's the Blog name mean?"

Short answer: It's the name of one of my fictional planets. I have a whole fictional star system that I created in my early teens, called Swodonia. Alas I wasn't as good at coming up with workable characters and plots as I was at worldbuilding, so there are no stories set in that star system (yet?).

Longwinded answer:

Originally this was "The Blog of Sodor." See how the address is "kayara.blogspot.com"? Well, "Kayara" is the name I started using for all my writing-related online haunts after Nanowrimo 2004, including my gmail address where I intended to store offsite backups of my writing (but never did). The blogname suggester picked the address as its default; this was just a test blog while we figured out how Blogger works while finding a place to set up a private family blog. Kayara the Blue is from Sodor, so it made sense to call the blog that. (So is Nerwen the Green, incidentally, for everyone who knows me elsewhere as Nerwen (and no, I didn't steal that from Tolkien - it's a coincidence. I hadn't even read Tolkien by that point).) (Also, Sodor bears no relation to Thomas the Train's home island. I originally changed the name from Sodoron to Sodor to get away from them, but then they changed it too!! I refuse to change my planet's name again until just before publishing something that mentions it.)

Kayara and Nerwen have only been in one fictional place thus far, and that was an online freeform roleplay area set in an interdimensional space bar and grill called Indy's. It's long gone now; the forum it was on died in 1994. Someday I might get around to writing up my characters' story.

Anyhow, last June I decided to start a daily blog. Partly it was to see if I could actually do it on a daily basis, and partly because I had curious relatives who were apparently grilling my brother about my life. It's impossible to tell someone else about one's life in a couple conversations, so I figured a daily blog would show it to them in small glimpses. (Ironically, I don't think any of them are actually reading this.) As it happened, I still had this test blog lying around unused... But I didn't want to use "Sodor" because that name is tied in with my characters, and a blog about Sodor should rightfully be about the planet and stories set there and the rest of Swodonia.

So I went with Siram. Siram was the first planet, before there was a star system, created with my sister when we were children. The name is derived from Mars spelled backwards. It fits a lot better for something that's more about me and my life, rather than the life(lives?) of my fiction.

And that's how the blog got its name. :)

Thus far I seem to manage around 5 posts a week, which is close enough to daily for government work. I started with "stuff I think about while driving" to give me topic ideas, but it has broadened from there. Now I go with three guidelines: a) emphasize the topic and de-emphasize my relation to the topic; b) try not to talk about the same things too many times in a row, so that there's a broad range of stuff to peruse at any given time; and c) try to stay general, because the potential audience is very diverse (people who know about this blog include family, coworkers, a few roleplayer friends from RPoL, a couple small writing communities, the Whatever, former gaming buddies, and assorted other friends). It seems to be working out overall. Although I don't get that many comments (until Jim showed up :) ), I do get feedback via IMs and IRC chat channels; everyone seems to like different posts. And I'm always open to suggestions for topics, which ones people like or dislike, etc.

Also I try to write much shorter posts than this one. In my other blogs, I tend to just go on and on forever, and I'm trying to cut down on that. This'll (hopefully) be one of the very few lengthy ones.