14-JUNE-2011 As the headline says, this is personal. This is not supposed to be some Pulitzeresque op/ed piece.  I can’t possibly keep up with almost 2,000 facebook feeds which is why I was trying to reduce the number of “friends” on my profile. Twitter is such a probability factor when it comes to posting; someone has to be watching at that moment you post because it’s pretty unlikely people will take the time to scroll back.

I bring up all the excuses for missing people’s posts because there something that grinds at me. I promote a lot of other people and I think I do it pretty well. My goal, if I were to have one on the internet, is to promote different types of creators (not just writers and artists but all things crafted I find of interest). It’s a bit hurtful to see a social circle that promotes each other’s work like a group of popular students in a high school clique and just like those awful years, I’m out on the sidelines. Because of geography and expenses, I can’t network any other way than the internet and the three or four conventions I attend a year.

Yet here I am like that dork in high school, pimping other people’s links to interviews they did or their podcasts or their events, etc. without seeing the same effort reciprocated. This is extremely evident in October when I’m doing the PR for Wonder Woman Day (the annual fundraiser for domestic violence) and I have only one friend that writes about it and I don’t mean copying and pasting the info on someone else’s site. ONE person wrote about it. Just one.

A few months ago, I decided I’d had enough of this but I mulled over the idea of posting about it. If a community can’t be supportive then I’m going to distance myself from that community, plain and simple.

Wonder Woman Day is the biggest example. We need people to talk about the event and to encourage bidding on the art. We get a significant amount of art donated by the comics community to our little shop in New Jersey. I think what we do is impressive and it’s the most important thing I do every year. So when I see that the links aren’t even shared or other blogs don’t spotlight what we do yet they do it for other people, it hurts. I don’t want to hear, “Don’t take it personally,” because it is personal. This isn’t just a meet up for the geeks of the area; it’s not just a sale to make profits on art. All the money from the auction goes to our local domestic violence shelter. Science can work on cures for diseases but there is no cure for this. I did a series of interviews and spotlights on some of the artists who donated to us and I don’t think a single one of them was linked anywhere.

So I’m asking you podcasters, forum mods, bloggers, and popular people to reflect on your posts and see if there’s any room for anyone else; if not, that’s fine. If you don’t find my interviews or coverage interesting enough for your site, fine. I’ll take the hint and I’ll move on but please don’t expect me to cheer you on just because you’re on a panel in San Diego, you got published, you’re voicing over some spectacular video or interviewing comics’ biggest name. I left high school behind me, and in my middle age, I’m not about to continue living in that sort of toxic energy-sapping environment.

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.