The gurus say that writers with blogs should not dedicate every post to a description of their latest books or pleas for people to buy it. Instead, they suggest that authors dedicate a fair number of their blogs to mini-articles about the locations and themes of their stories. This, they say, will draw the kinds of readers who want to read your novels.

When I started my four-novel Florida Folk Magic series, I focused some of my posts on the Florida Panhandle where the books are set, some on the environment created by the KKK in the 1950s, and some on the art of conjure.

This seemed to make more sense than displaying a static photo of my latest book cover.  As the gurus said, “If every post you write says buy my book, you’re pretty much posting SPAM.” Heaven forbid. So, I wrote about the subjects I thought prospective readers of the novels might find interesting.

The posts got a few hits when they were new. I have no idea whether anyone clicked on the links to my books. Months went by. Then years. Now suddenly I’m getting hundreds of hits on every post that has anything to do with conjure. Yes, I appreciate that, but the point is, I had no intention of setting myself up either as an expert on conjure or a clearinghouse for rootworker information.

Perhaps the gurus steered me wrong. My current posts are receiving a fraction of the visitors of posts written months or years ago. This is not good. Now I wonder if I should delete all the conjure techniques posts or just ignore them. If everyone asking Google search “what is goofer dust?” bought a copy of one or more of my novels, I could live with the skewed statistics toward conjure.

But they don’t. They learn how to cast a spell and move on.

The gurus never said this would happen, that all those posts related to your novels’ settings and backgrounds would take on a life of their own and create, say–a hoodoo resource blog. I don’t know enough to host such a thing. So, what say you? Should I delete all the old conjure posts that are getting all the hits? Or should I take a deep breath and ignore them?

Or, should I put a hex on all of them so they go away?

There are a lot of options, but I really need for this blog to get out of the conjure biz. Or else.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the satirical comedy “Special Investigative Reporter.”