Since I have moved away from doing webcomics and turned my focus toward my prose writing, I’ve felt a little lost and isolated, on the web. I’m finding it hard to make connections with other writers, because so many of them are worried about losing their audience to another writer and won’t so much as trade links with him. Some webcomics artists are equally jealous of their readerships. I don’t see my readership that way. The pool of readers is not a finite pie. It’s an infinite loop, and one reader can be interested in many different writers and styles and genres, and they usually are. Every single day, potential new readers arrive at a reading age that is appropriate for our kind of stories! New readers (who often become friends) are not in short supply. They are in abundance, my friends! Why not share them and raise the happy quotient all around?

Introducing one’s current readers to other writers in no way hurts the relationship between the first author and those readers, but it does broaden and strengthen the entire writing community by exposing people to new works, which in turn encourages the creation of more new works. Readers benefit by having more content to read and enjoy. Writers benefit by having more chances to be read and enjoyed. It’s a total win-win situation, so why are some writers reluctant to link to their peers, or even to those who write in different genres? It makes no sense to me.

I’m not going to be one of those insular writers who jealously guards his small pool of readers, as if they are items instead of people. I would love to be able to point someone in the direction of a storyteller whose work they might enjoy, but I’d like to have that same nicety in my direction, as well. Thus, to that end, I am in the process of setting up a links page, and I’m looking for quality links! I’m particularly looking to exchange links with sites that have something to do with the Old West, writing or books, in general, and at first, I am going to have to be somewhat persnickety about who I link to, because of time and space constraints. I don’t want to be exclusive, but circumstances dictate that I must.

So, if you have a writing or Western-themed site and would like to trade links, or know of one that participates in link exchanges, please let me know! Either comment to this post, or email me at kai at kaistarr.com and tell me all about it. I need some trail pardners!

And now, for the update! Today, in Rustler’s Roundup, Josh and Jenny find themselves scolded by an indignant Chewy Bill Roberts, which urges Joshua to do the right thing a little faster than he might have, otherwise.

Today’s Updates:

Rustler’s Roundup, chapter 45 (Desperado novel)