For some unknown reason over a hundred thousand people have found their way to a blog of mine.

Who would have thought it?

So, what happens when that many people read your work?

The first thing is simple.  It makes you want to keep writing.

The particular post just happened to be a chapter in The Lazarus Deception, a college football murder mystery I am rolling out on VG Serials. For me that is doubly sweet because it isn’t just a blog, it’s a small snippet of novel-writing.

That’s what is so great about serials.  They walk somewhere in the middle ground between blogging and long-form fiction.  They are “real” writing, or at least an attempt at it.

Second, that sort of readership opens up a new world of friends.  The result would never have occurred were it not for folks at StumbleUpon who found the piece and took the extra steps of sharing it with other people on the site. It is a pure form of social media. Readers who take the time to study what someone writes, and then give it a thumbs up.

The third thing is that it energizes you to keep executing your business plan.  The writing gig is a business, and the hardest thing for authors is to figure a way to get their names out in the absence of a mega budget or some other form of celebrity.

For most of us, this brand-building pursuit is two parts sweat, one part fatigue, one part hopelessness.

Caleb Pirtle and I at Caleb and Linda Pirtle take our assignments seriously.  We aren’t playing.  We get up in the  morning and work at building what we call VG into a place where readers and Indie authors can meet, find something interesting to read, engage each other in dialogue about all things having to do with books.  Whatever success we have had so far stems from the efforts of those of you who take the time to visit us, to check out the news of the day.

For us, VG is an online magazine of Indie fiction.

We also owe a great debt of gratitude to those authors who have seen fit to jump in the serials fray with us.  What they get out of it is a chance to let readers find them.

What more could authors want?

A place to write something that maybe more than a hundred thousand people will read.

How cool is that?

(Stephen Woodfin is an attorney and author of legal thrillers.  Two of his books, The Lazarus Deception and Last One Chosen, are available as VG Serials.)