Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Here we have our latest Geek Girl Blogger, Nikki Curtis… very interesting! Please take the time to read her survey below and check out her blog, http://theimpossibleplace.blogspot.com, brilliant artwork, stories, etc.

Name:  Nikki Curtis 
Screen Name’s:  IMPGirl + Nikki Curtis
Personal Blog:  http://theimpossibleplace.blogspot.com
Social Networks:  Twitter http://twitter.com/IMPGirl + Facebook
Current Employment: Consulting Contractor - Marketing Communication . I currently have two part time jobs, one in Health and the other for an ICT professional body. My roles are part relationship management, part marketing and project development.
Location/country:  Brisbane, Australia

What is your reason/motivation for blogging?

I'm interested in it as a creative platform rather than an opinion platform. My blog is fictional, revolving around different characters and, currently, two different story lines. We will probably introduce more and work with friends who want to create individual characters as well. My husband Chris Worfold www.worfold.blogspot.com does the illustrations, we co-create the characters and I write the stories. He gets to voice more character input on the male sci-fi story Evinrud, occasionally we argue about it but it's a good collaboration.

We're both really interested in the merge of technology and art. Both in digital art forms and in technology as a medium for expanding audience scope. It's really fun to be creating something online and getting feedback along the way. It's also very motivating for someone with a 'real job' but who is also trying to pursue a creative practice. Having a commitment to post once a week pushes you and doesn't allow for princess like self doubt or perfectionism. It's just a blog, can always be edited!

What is it that you find yourself blogging about, mostly the same stuff or does it vary?

As above my blog is based on fictional characters. One of the stories revolves around a character named 'Impossible Girl', it's melodrama, bit dark and broody, readers will probably note the building 'vampirism' references but it's a post modern vampire story, it doesn't follow the same rules. The other story is a Sci-Fi based around an information runner character (Reese) whose transportation mode is a thing we are calling an air-motor. It's modelled off an Evinrude boat enging and the nemesis character rides a dual engine Mercury! Air motors are the new thing in city transportation (although still reasonably rare), but the Evinrud in our story is a unique cy-engine with a bio-connection to Reese the rider. It's all action and intrigue.

What style of blogging do you tend to use: short and regular, or not so regular but long, other? And is your blogging  text + photos or do you also use audio/ video?

We try for regular (one to two posts per week) and text wise keep it between 200 and 350 words. My husband does one or two drawings, photographs them, then cuts and edits in Photoshop so each post might end up having 3 - 6 images. I want each post to be short enough for people to read and view in under 2 minutes. If they spend longer great (and we have longer visit stats because people go back and read the earlier story lines) but I know how busy life can get, you can read a long novel in bed or in a comfy chair but a huge page of computer text is generally off-putting. We want to include audio (music) the boyfriend character in the Impossible Girl story is a musician. One of our friends is a musician and we want to post his songs but we had a bit of trouble with the media player formatting and our friend has been too lazy to have another go:) Maybe one of these days::)) I've also considered narrating the stories and posting them.

How Nikki became a Geek Girl Blogger:

My husband Chris discovered blogging first, he has had his blogsite www.worfold.blogspot.com for about two years now. It's strange because I was always more of an early adopter to technology, he doesn't even have a Facebook page! We had discussed collaborating on fictional illustrated stories. It just kind of evolved that we would do it online in blog format. We'll probably print publish the stories at some point (after a good edit as well::)) We're also producing a range of useable art products in line with the site, small runs, somewhere between custom made originals and horrible mass production, but closer to the custom made:). Launching products and label in October.. hopefully!!!

Thanks for reading our latest GGB survey…

If you are a Geek Girl Blogger, or know that you probably are one even if you don’t consider yourself to be one, and you’d like to be featured in our series, then please contact us and we’ll get back to you. We’re always on the lookout for some new GGB’s so don’t hesitate if you’re interested. We’d love to feature you!