See a photo of Kim, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.
Q&A with Kim Pearson, Question 3:
Q: The culture is abuzz about Web 2.0 and social media. To what extent do you participate in social media (such as through LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Second Life, blogs, etc.)? To what extent and in what ways do you feel these venues are storytelling media?
A: I’m active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and I’ve been writing a blog called From the Compost since 2006. I blog about writing, history, and storytelling, with some haiku thrown in.
On Twitter, I have two accounts. One is for me,
@storykim, as my “real” self, where I tweet mostly about writing (specifically ghostwriting) and history. My other Twitter account is for my dog, Goody Beagle. I wrote a book about Goody, called Dog Park Diary, which is “told” by Goody — in other words, I ghostwrote the book for her, about her adventures at the local dog park. We worked with a professional photographer to illustrate it with real photos of Goody and the dogs she met at the dog park. I started her Twitter account @dogparkdiary to promote the book. It works pretty well – I do sell some books. I tweet in Goody’s voice, and what a fun voice it is — a dry comedic voice, much different than my own. She focuses on what’s important to her — smells, food, her run-ins with “The Cat” who steals her sofa and “The Baby” (my 1-year-old grandson) who pulls her ears. She makes comments about her human and that human’s failings. Did I mention smells? I love tweeting as Goody, and now Goody often “guest blogs” on my blog too, where she can expand eloquently on the same subjects. I have a future project in mind – another Goody book (again with photos) based on Goody’s tweets. By the way, Goody is at least three times as popular on Twitter as I am. I’m not sure what this means. But I’m not jealous.