Try to Keep Up!

It is a long time since I paid any attention to this blog. Some of you might have noticed I have begun making changes already! (It desperately needed some love.)

Clustrmaps has diappeared from view without explanation. MapMy Visitors has taken its place. Let's hope it works well.

My most recent titles are listed on the sidebar, and now they have a direct link to Amazon so you can click to find out more about  them. 

There will no doubt be more changes coming down the line. Every update seems to bring changes where I didn't expect them but I shall try and keep up!

Unseasonable weather

A few of my blog friends appear to have given up on blogging in favour of other forms of social media, so I'm clearing out the attic, so to speak. No hard feelings. I've enjoyed their words of wisdom for a year or two, and if they come back on-stream, no doubt I'll find them again.

As I find new and interesting blogs, I'll add them to the list. Talking of changes - if I could discover how to put new photos up in the Jen's Holiday pics feature (on the sidebar) I'd refresh that too, but as of this moment I have no idea how I managed to get them up in the first place.

I know the north American continent  has snow already, but we still have temperatures that are unseasonably warm. I tend to dress for the season rather than the actual weather, and that is proving a huge mistake. I seem unable to adjust to going out in November without a sweater or a fleece. Madness.

And this too shall pass away...

Where have all those interesting snippets gone from Facebook? There was a time when I saw something every day - at least one thing I didn't know or had never thought about. These days it seems to be all about videos of animals or people sounding off about American politics or politicians or silly "can you think of a city beginning with E and ending with A?" games. Perhaps I have picked up a lot of unintentional  "friends" by accepting "friends" who have 795 "friends." Maybe I should be doing a little judicious weeding, and then I may get some interesting posts again. .

I hope Twitter hasn't gone the same way while I've been on holiday. I haven't been Twittering - its gets too complicated about passwords sometimes to bother with everything. Plus which I haven't been on the internet  all that much - far too much to do out in the fresh air and sunshine. Everything is so small on a laptop! I can't wait to get back to my big screen.

The feeling is growing on me that Blogging is not as ... how shall I say? as interesting as it used to be. More and more people have stopped blogging and readers seem to be fading away too. They've probably all migrated to something else that I've never heard of so far. There is a feeling of change in the air, but is it mega or only the usual drift away for the holiday season? Who knows?

Facebook, Twitter and blogging

Crinan

Is it me, or does anyone else think that interest in blogs, Facebook and Twitter is dwindling? Facebook is less and less interesting but that is possibly because Facebook is narrowing down the posts that I see. Certainly the variety of posts is not there any more. If I click on something, I get more posts of a similar nature, and I'm now up to my nostrils in videos of cute animals doing cute things. Nothing wrong with them in and of themselves, but too many is just ... too many. Likewise the pics of cruelty to animals. I can do without those images haunting my dreams. If those pics help the animals by stirring the conscience of someone in America to help the poor creatures, then that's good, but there's nothing I can do from the UK.

Twitter seems to have been taken over by American authors advertising their books. Perhaps my choice of followers has something  so with it. I haven't exactly been active in seeking a wide variety of Twitterers. When someone follows me, I usually follow back, so I suppose I can only blame myself there. Must widen my circle of interest.

Blogs I used to follow seem to have tipped over into oblivion, with no posts going up for the last few months. There are less followers coming to my blog, but that might be because the blog posts are linked to both Facebook and Twitter. If people read the blogs on either of them, I don't see any record of it back on my blog. So I could be read by more and more people and not know it. Or I could be read by fewer and fewer people, and be aware of it. How can I be sure which is really going on? Anyone know?

The mysteries of Blog stats

Does anyone understand the stats on Blogger?

I have the Clustrmap counter on my blog, which gives me the number of visitors to my blog and which country they are from - which is fascinating in itself. Russia? Alaska? Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific?  I assume they are chance encounters and dare not think I have regular visitors from those places - but it would be cool if I did!

Then I looked at the post stats on Blogger and see something called View Counts is given there. Now, I think I can understand the difference between a visit to the blog and a how many posts/pages a visitor looked at once they got to the blog. But why do the view count numbers change from day to day? Is that because Blogger adds one day's views to another day's views? In other words, it totals the view counts made against a particular blog post? If so, that is very clever and an indicator of what readers want to see on the blog, which is useful to me and all other bloggers.

But I'm not totally sure that is what is happening. If a knowlegeable person out there  can explain, do let me know!

Twitter type woes

Have you ever wondered how successful your blog is? If anyone every reads it? There's a link that grades your website or blog here: http://websitegrader.com/

Naworth, sw corner of the present day garden

PR is a huge part of an aspiring author's life these days, and can easily take up more time than actually writing if you subscrbe to Twitter and Facebook and the many other things that I've heard of in a vague sort of way but haven't investigated because if I did I'd never get any writing done. And I don't have a full-time (nor even a part time) job to absorb most of my waking hours! Pity the poor writer who does.
Is it really necessary? Must I understand RSS Graffiti, Bebo and Good Reads to be a success? I gave up on MySpace a long time ago, but it seems there a many others springing up to take its place. Sometimes Facebook is fun, and its a good way of keeping in touch with other writers. I enjoy doing my blog. But that's it for me. If my stories aren't good enough to stand on their own two flat little feet, then so be it.

Soft landing required

Choose the right option and you could be a student living in Durham Castle above the River Wear. I couldn't get in because I hadn't studied Latin, which was deemed necessary for the English Lit course I wanted to do, but that was quite a while ago and may not apply now.

I sent off a full ms for Treason today, with fingers crossed as usual. Let's hope it receives a soft landing ~ as in We Love It!

I thought Shadows was going to on the website today, but it looks as if there's a hitch, because I haven't found it yet, and even if New York is 5 hours behind me ... Duh! Arizona is possibly 8 hours behind, so that means it's only noon there. Incredible, isn't it? Especially when I think that Australia is already trotting out into tomorrow. Perhaps I should be patient a little while longer; it may yet appear.

I regret clicking the button to change to Internet 9. It may be me, but there are so many things I now find difficult to do that were easy-peasy in IE8. For example, I cannot go back, highlight Shadows and change the font to italic. It simply will not do it. Today I couldn't use red font in an e-mail. Simple things, nothing extraordinary but so annoying. Working on this blog in IE9 is a real pain. Ah well. Maybe it is me, and all will become clear in time. There's probably some dinky little button somewhere I haven't clicked, but I'm danged if I can find it. Even the usual save and delete options have vanished.

Changes and Jane Eyre

I've made some changes so visitors should be able to comment much more easily now. I've been playing around with colours, too, so if you find anything a struggle to read because of the colour, let me know. I'm a wee bit doubtful about the list of my favourite reads - I love the violet shade, but how 's the legibility?

Tonight BBC4 shows the second half of Jane Eyre. I'm looking forward to it. Toby Stephens (left) makes a fascinating Mr Rochester. Not classically handsome, perhaps, but with a charm and carisma all his own. Works for me!

His Jane is an actress called Ruth Wilson, shown on the right. Not a name I'm familiar with, but she held my attention all the way through the first half. Tonight she will go and visit her dying aunt, the hard-hearted Mrs Reid, and if memory serves, she is informed that she has inherited a good deal of money. Also showing tonight on a different channel is Bride and Prejudice, at which I may take a peek. I can't imagine Lizzie Bennet in a sari, so I must have a look even if I don't watch it. I have a suspicion they will burst out into one of those wonderful Indian dance sequences with bare midriffs and gold nose rings!