When my book sold, my agent advised me to get on Facebook. He said it would be important later on with teens. He was probably just hoping I’d find some other people to email/chat with besides him! I’d actually had a Facebook account for six months or so, but I hadn’t visited it since I’d signed up. The truth is, it freaks me out!

Email I can do. It’s one on one, I type at my own pace, if the timer goes off for the cookies, I can go get them out of the oven, but Facebook is like going to the mall. With all your old friends that you used to go to the mall with in grade school, middle school, and high school. They can throw snowballs at you or plants or poke you or instant message you even though you were just dropping in to change your status or send you a message or… In other words, SENSORY OVERLOAD! I don’t do sensory overload very well.

So far I only have two teens who are my friends, and well…I knew them already. Plus one of them won’t even still be a teen by the time my book comes out. What happened was I was hit with a deluge of friend requests from people I knew from theatre, high school, and college. At first I was very reluctant to reconnect with all these people from my past too. I mean, I can barely keep up the email correspondances that I currently have. How could I add all these other people into my life again?

But then I found out the beauty of Facebook. No one wants to talk to you, they just want to add you to their Friends page and then post about themselves! So now I zip over there every time I think of someone from a zillion years ago and search for them before they can find me. It’s like a game!

The weirdest thing about Facebook is that now I find myself dreaming about all these friends I haven’t seen in fifteen or twenty years! Also, it’s very odd when they write things like, “My oldest child is a senior this year.” and in my head, I’m still picturing this friend at sixteen.

Some really cool things have happened though too. I’ve reconnected with a couple of people I accidentally lost touch with and I’ve heard from my cousins in Denmark too. That’s pretty neat.

So now the Facebook conundrum. My agent told me to get on Facebook, but does that mean I should ask to be his friend? Or is he there for personal reasons and not publishing business? What about my editor? Would they feel obligated to say yes? Or would they say no and then I’d feel like an idiot? I took this question to my friend who is a literary agent and she said that initially, a lot of people in publishing were using it socially, but now it’s become so important to the business that publishing folk are becoming almost forced to drop the personal side and let writers and other people in the biz “friend” them. Still…the way I figure it, my agent and editor know how to search for my name and ask to be my friend if they want to. I’ve had enough rejection in this biz to last me a lifetime! I don’t need to hear, “Ummm…my Facebook profile is personal!”

What about you? Are you friends with your editor, agent, or boss (if you’re not in publishing)? Who initiated it? Is it weird or fine?