Little, gentle oldbones, how dare you Grandad.

Now with my perm, blue rinse, and a gra for twinsets and pearls, pleated tweed skirts and size two shoes, I am no way as you say! (huff)

So far, Robert seems to be the only one who is blatantly open about his identity [with the exception of Ian, but I would consider that a special case - his is as much a business blog as anything ]

And two cases of authors who regret losing anonymity… Stephen and Jefferson.

Herself has become a bit apprehensive now that I am known in the neighbourhood and is reluctant to post now, which is a pity.

Me? I’ve reached the stage where I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to advertise myself in the locality, but anyone who knows me knows I’m a bit insane, and they tolerate my rantings with a knowing smile. They know I don’t mean any harm. I hope.

Bit torn at the moment as I really don’t want to stop but am worried that I will be “outed”.

I think I prefer not knowing who people are, just little snippets. All wizard of oz for me, don’t want to pull back the curtain.

My name and the city in which I reside are plastered all over the net, but I leave important facts off of my blog and the net (Hopefully).

In hindsight, I wouldn’t have used my real name, when creating a blog. Although, I get around 150 hits a day, from Google and other search engines, just because my name is Jefferson Davis.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of telling local people about it, along with family, ex-girlfriends, and co-workers, so I can’t get away with anything!

I tended to blog for myself more or less. The fact that people could read it didn’t bother me. A random comment from a passing stranger was welcome and helped to make sure I wasn’t going insane.

The fact that friends started reading it did bother me. What’s interesting is that so many of my friends took a completely different viewpoint on what I wrote than that which I intended. That disturbed me. The end result is that I probably would have blogged loads over the past few months if I was still using a pseudonym.

I have trouble blogging at all now.My raison d’etre is gone and it’s hard to find something to replace it with.

An author I enjoy, Terry Goodkind, leaves all the details like pronunciation of people and place names, and character description fairly ambiguous in his books so people have licence to come up with their own images for the characters and places.

None of you know what I look like, who I really am, and only the people in the real world who know that I write a blog and who I really am know the full truth. Like Terry Goodkind’s books, I think it’s best if you don’t tell everybody everything about yourself. That way, people fill in the gaps.

And I’d hate to disappoint them.

I think Claire sums up my attitude very nicely though [thanks, Claire!]. There are some blogs I read on a regular basis, but I think that if I met the author it might detract slightly from my own personal image of them.

Take Grannymar for example - I picture her as a sweet innocent little old lady in her rocking chair by the fire. In life, she is probably a right malicious old battle-axe that would scare the cr*p out of anyone. Am I right, Grannymar?

Again, from Claire’s point, I have found that I am becoming more guarded in what I write now that people [particularly neighbours!!!] are discovering my identity. I’m not saying that is a bad thing, but I do have to think twice. Or maybe it is a bad thing because some of my more insane flights of fancy can never take to the air?

When I started, I always worked on the assumption that I would be sussed so I tried never to give away too much [very] personal information. There are lots of things I could have written about friends, neighbours and family that would possibly have been very entertaining, but wouldn’t have been fair on them.