International Connections

I had a couple of international pen pals when I was growing up...from Germany and Mexico. I never met these people, but made a connection with them through the Girl Guide and Boy Scout Organizations. Given that this was a good number of years ago, we corresponded by ‘snail mail.’

Young people today can communicate so easily, where in my day, in addition to walking all those miles in the snow to school, we had to make the time and effort, (and bear the cost) of writing and mailing letters. To keep the postage down we used a special air mail paper. Blue in colour, it was thinner, therefore lighter than regular paper and some even allowed you to write a one page letter that folded to create its own envelope.

It was so exciting to find one of those blue envelopes in my mail.

When I got involved in all this internet and E-mail technology, I really wanted new pen pals; and hoped to make friends with people that lived in all different corners of the world. But it didn’t happen.

One of the things I liked about Austin Briggs and his 55 Word Story Challenge is that a large number of the people submitting to it were the same each month, and we corresponded, in our way, through the Comments section. And it was a very international group as Austin was based in Europe.

From the beginning, when I started this blog, one of the aspects that fascinated me the most was the international scope of it. Every day I check the world map on the Blogger Dashboard to see where my readers live.

So many countries represented, and it makes me wonder. Who are you? Where do you live? What is your occupation? I would love to know all about you.

This month, on three different occasions, I offered free books, copies of my E-PUB novels. I was excited to see readers from seven countries took advantage of this offer. European countries like the UK and Spain, not far from there was Denmark. Across the other side of the world there was Japan and Australia. The bulk of the readers were from the United States, and then Canada.

Thanks for all the support, with the blog, with the free books. If you wanted, feel free to drop me a line using the Comments section, I’d love to know where you live. If not, I’ll keep checking the map and live in wonder.