Front Page News

This whole big writing adventure began about two and a half years ago, in February, 2006, when I decided to start my own blog at Foxsports.com and see if anyone in the world might be interested in what I had to say. I called it "Half-Baked Ravings" and was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that, yes, people were in fact interested in my somewhat off-kilter take on the various happenings in the world of sports.

While calling into question the judgement of these people, this discovery fueled my writing jones and by October of 2006 I had begun writing fiction as well as my sports blog, all of which led, in kind of a meandering, roundabout way, to where I am now - the author of two as-yet unpublished manuscripts and many short stories, hustling and searching for an agent to represent me.

I mention all of this as background for my exciting news - I made the home page at MSN.com! I wrote a blog at Foxsports on Tuesday night, August 19, titled "Top Ten Most Beautiful Things in Sports," which was featured Wednesday at the Fox Funhouse page and which was picked up by MSN Wednesday night and made into a photo essay which they ran on their front page!

This exposure earned me nearly six thousand hits on my Foxsports blog Wednesday (5,802 to be exact). This number is by no means a record for me - I wrote a piece last November in which I poked fun at Terrell Owens of the Dallas Cowboys, and set my personal record with that one - over 13,000 views in one day.

Nevertheless, six thousand hits on my blog in one day is pretty cool, even though guys like Lee Child and Lawrence Block probably get that many on their websites every day before they're done drinking their morning coffee. Of course, it doesn't get me any closer to snagging an agent or a publishing deal for either of my books, but still, it is extremely gratifying to know that the people at MSN found my writing good enough to use to try to draw people into their site.

It makes me wonder how many hits my piece got when featured at MSN for several hours last night. I have no way of knowing, of course, but it had to be in the hundreds of thousands, based on the number of comments it drew and the fact that I looked at it myself at least a hundred thousand times.

If you're curious as to what the ten most beautiful things in sports actually are, at least from my perspective, you can check out my Foxsports post here, minus the photos of course because I had nothing to do with those and the piece has now disappeared off MSN.com.

It was an incredible rush seeing my words featured so prominently, and comes as validation for me that, yes, all of this work might actually pay off at some point. I wonder how many agents read Foxsports.com?