And all six of them were virtually identical.

Not surprisingly, when one considers that they all from the same person. I scrolled down. The next four tweets were more of the same.Now vaguely intrigued (and thoroughly annoyed), I scrolled on—and, perversely, counted as I went.

Of the twenty-five tweets I counted, twenty-four were either tweets or re-tweets from this person, all more or less screaming (you’ll never believe this) BUY MY BOOK! The tweets were neither original nor amusing; they were merely strident cries for attention. None of the tweets even so much as thanked any who had recommended this person’s work (though some did later, along the lines of “@xyz @pdq @you @png Thank you!”) But even those feeble efforts were few and far between. Fascinated, I watched as every couple of minutes, another tweet would arrive at the top of the list: “BUY MY BOOK!” They varied little, and often repeated almost verbatim.

And this from someone I’d pulled from the twitter stream and deemed worthy of special attention! That’s what I found to be both surprising and more than a little disappointing.

Of course, I removed him from the list and chucked him back into the stream immediately.  (It could as easily have been a “her”—I use the pronoun as a matter of convenience.)

Now, I’m not in a position to cast the first stone—neither, I suspect, are most of my writer/twitter friends. We all do the BUY MY BOOK! thing to one extent or another; that, by and large, is why we’re here in the first place…and every one of us must decide for himself what is right and proper.

And what about you, Spencer? What have you decided for yourself?

Fair to ask. Currently, I limit myself to three shameless self-promotional tweets a day—at ten a.m., two p.m., and four p.m., taking a page from the Dr. Pepper ads of old, which suggested you drink their product at precisely those hours. I change the time zone often, but three tweets a day is the limit, and that includes retweeting the kind words of others. I’ve fallen from grace once or twice since instituting this program a while back, but not often…not often… And no, I’m not selling a million books this way (though I am selling a few!)

Doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. The point is to remember to Have Fun…and a generous helping of the Golden Rule hasn’t hurt, either. I’ve tried to keep the these points in mind. If nothing else, it makes living with myself a heck of a lot easier.

And I’m not here to tout myself as some kind of expert who claims there is only ONE TRUE WAY to do it (if I was, I’d write a book about it and maybe tweet you a hundred time a day to go out and BUY IT).

But at some point, isn’t it clear that “too much” is too much??

That’s a 30.

[Unfinished Business: In our last post, we described the startling discovery and subsequent treatment of a tumor that had somehow found its way onto the left temporal lobe of my brain. Without making a big deal of things, I did want to clear matters up for those who might be interested:

We described the tumor in our last post (you can find it easily enough if you wish) as "resting placidly" on our left temporal lobe.

Placid is the one thing it was not.

The tumor was a Grade 4 (top score for malignancy) glioblastoma (pronounce the first syllable glee and stress the first and fourth syllables). While that's not good, what is good is, as I described, they got it early, and removed ninety-nine point several nines percent of the thing. The radiation and chemo treatments went well. The MRI two weeks later was inconclusive (though necessary for the study we signed up for): no way to tell yet whether what showed up was simply return from the radiation itself. Nothing showed up anywhere else. In short, no news is…no news. At least, not yet. For what it's worth, we feel fine, We'll keep you posted.]