It was time. My first book-related website, Life Traces of the Georgia Coast, went online in September 2012, just before the January 2013 publication of my book bearing the same title (which was totally not a coincidence). I’m still darned proud of this weighty tome, which took four years from accepted book proposal to holding it in my hands. So promoting that book with a website was an added pleasure, one that likewise celebrated the natural history of the Georgia coast through the perspective of plant and animal traces: rootings, burrows, tracks, nests, and more. A blog on the website was also essential, allowing me the freedom to share thoughts related to the main themes of that book, such as how the traces of the Georgia coast connect to the vast record of trace fossils and the history of life.
But then I wrote more. Since the debut of both the website and book Life Traces of the Georgia Coast, I’ve written and published three books, one of which is coming out later this week. The blog was key to this authorial productivity, as it helped me exercise my “writing muscles” while also giving the flexibility to explore other natural-history topics that led to book-length ideas. For instance, I started writing Dinosaurs Without Bones in 2012 and it was published in 2014, a briskness I credit to regular blogging, which sharpened my previously elusive author “voice.” The Evolution Underground (2017) followed three years later, and parts of that book adapted concepts and content from my blog while further establishing my writing style. By 2018, I had gained enough new insights about the Georgia coast to warrant another book about its traces, and I had written enough on my blog that these insights could be gathered into a thematically linked series of essays. So I took that content, updated it, cleaned it up (editorially speaking), and added new material.
Hence the birth of my latest book, Tracking the Golden Isles (University of Georgia Press), along with a new website that reflects how I’m not “just” a new author anymore, but just an author. Will the website still have a blog? Yes, you’re reading it (and I appreciate that). Will the blog fulfill the original intent of the one I did with Life Traces of the Georgia Coast, by further honing my writing skills and experimenting with topics while sharing those with readers? Oh, most definitely yes. Are more books to come, whether inspired by this blog or other writing endeavors? We’ll see. In the meantime, enjoy reading what is already here, and learning more about our wondrous planet and the traces left by its life.
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