IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE?

The life of a writer is by its nature a solitary one. We sit at our computer (or notepad - if there are any authors out there who still write longhand) and put our thoughts onto the blank page and bare our souls, never sure if anyone will be inspired by what we write - or even read what we write. Some of the events or people of whom we write are autobiographical, and writing about them dredges up people and places that make us remember with fondness, or remember with sadness. So, we bare our souls and wonder if there is actually anyone out there who reads the words we type in the solitary existence we inhabit.

In this age of Facebook and Twitter, we do get some feedback in the form of the ubiquitous 'Likes', but what do these really mean? Has the sender of a 'Like' read and appreciated the snippet we have placed before them? Or is the clicking of a 'Like' just a reflex action to say that they have passed by? At a time when the choice of reading material is a veritable smorgasboard, do the reading public become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice they have and, just as in the cheese aisle at the local supermarket, when faced by the twenty feet of cheese choices, simply grab the plain old cheddar that they always buy and think that maybe one day they will give one of those strange, foreign cheeses a try?

In the world of erotic writing, which is my chosen genre as written under the name of Rachel de Vine, there is even more of a disconnect with the reading public, because of the anonimity of using a pen name. Rachel was once a stranger to me, but now I am coming to know her. I now see her as a character in her own right. She is the woman I imagine myself to be - intelligent and sophisticated, sensuous and sexy - but of course much of that is fiction just like the stories she writes. I want other people to get to know Rachel and her writing, and above all I want to know if there is anyone out there reading what I write.