BEWARE : Blogdiva at work

I grieve [0], therefore I work.

As a good workaholic, the only way I know how to deal with grief is to bury myself in visual or technical work. That's why I have been quiet here. I've been working on rushing a slight redesign of the sites that involves new advertisement intersticials, as well as better networking among all the culturektichen sites; including some new BlogAds [1] advertisement networks. I know I'm in marketing and tech mode at the moment. As long as I don't write ponderously, I don't get into a funk, so bare with me.

Last Thursday, when I got the news, I had just walked in from a fabulous brunch put together by the ladies of FashionTribes [2]. The fabulous Judy Faber of Showbuzz.com [3] alerted me to the meeting. I was hesitant to go but said, eff it, it's a few blocks from home, how am I not going to go? And of course, being that I am such a huge networking diva, once I got there met up with other people who had no idea I was coming. So I ended up meeting with Nichelle [4] as well as Danielle of Celebrity Baby Blog [5] one of my partners in Amsterdam crime [6] and also one of the bloggers involved in the Brangelina "lost" photos kerfuffle. To my delightful surprise though I was able to hook up with Karen Finney, the genius known as The Budget Fashionista [7]. I am in awe of this woman.

Karen is friends with Chris Rabb of Afronetizen [8], who is related to Nichelle. Nichelle and I met at a bloggers event here in NYC and hosted a couple of Brown Bloggers events. She introduced me to Chris whom I met in NYC during the 2004 Republican National Convention. He introduced me to Karen over a crackberry email. Welcome to the fabulously wired world of the digital ethnorati.

I never meant for culturekitchen to become just a feminist or politics blog [8]. As y'all know, I started out as a mommy blogger, trying to break free from a writer's block that had a stronghold on me for about 5 years.

culturekitchen has always been an incubator for all my creative endeavors. My technology expertise comes from my six years of looking for the best possible platforms with which to expand my publishing efforts. So my forking the kitchen into several blogs ought not to come as a surprise. It's just part of the organic development of this blog. culturekitchen will always be the anchor for my network, aesthetically and ideologically; but it will not be the only blog.

Thusly I announced on Thursday the coming of Hollywoodista.com. I have been mulling a proper launch date for an entertainment blog because there is too much Hollywood juicyness out there that clashes with some of the more profound culture critic work we do here.

I was expecting to launch the beta after coming back from BlogHer [8] but I have pushed it to September 1st given the family circumstances. So I will officially announce the expansion of the network as well as the company that has developed out of these blogging and web development endeavors.

A few more things:

Since I am going to Puerto Rico after a 7 year absence, I am also launching Blogging Puerto Rico.

I am up to something awfully good with Michael of Blogactive [9] and PageOneQ [10]. It's a project I will help develop thanks to years of experience I have working on my network as well as the years of social networking and Web 2.0 projects I've helped developed through my years as a netart consultant. I'm just slap happy excited.

I will be relaunching the Feminist Bloggers Network (aka BlogSheroes) [11] as well as announcing officially several new BlogAds networks; a couple of them co-managed with wonderful Barry Hoggard of Bloggy.com [12].

Also, starting in September I will be at a several conferences here in NYC, Washington DC and California. I will be posting those soon.

Last but not least, the slight redesign for culturekitchen and The Daily Gotham [13] will include new sections. We will have new sections :

event reviews,
fiction and comedy writing (thanks Tara and Lorraine for this one),
interviews and podcasts
book, art, music and movie reviews