Debbie Howell - author

One of the people who tweeted for the longest time in the gigatown competition was Debbie Howell. She started tweeting for the competition back in 2013, which meant she was doing it for virtually a year. 

I came into the competition quite a bit later, in March 2014, and during the course of tweeting back and forth discovered that Debbie was also a writer. I've just bought a copy of her first book, Healer's Touch, a gritty fantasy novel that I began to read a few months ago, and now need to get on and read properly.  It's available as both an ebook and a print title. (I'll explain where you can access it shortly.)

I apparently introduced the word 'twibe' during the competition after rediscovering it on a blog post I'd written back in 2009! Unfortunately, the blog, Webitz,net, appears to be having trouble loading at the moment. I'm hoping it isn't about to vanish off the face of the Internet as the companion blog I used to have with the same provider recently did.

The twibe, that is some of the people tweeting for the competition, got together regularly during the last several months for 'tweet-ups' and social face-to-face contact. I didn't attend many of these meetings, which always involved coffee and food, but I did meet Deb, and discovered an interview that the Time Warriors site had done with her in October this year. It makes interesting reader as it reveals the evolution of the book (and its sequels), her methods of working and more. It also shows her delightful sense of humour. 

Check it out. It's given me the idea of doing something similar with people from the Self-Publishing community on Google+. 

Stats at the all-time high!

Got my readership stats from the Orble.com site today and was pleasantly surprised to see that they were the highest they’ve ever been. Curiously enough, these high numbers are never reflected in their counterpart over on Google Analytics. I’d love to know why the two don’t match, but it’s not the end of the world. I presume Orble’s stats system knows what it’s doing.
Top of the list of posts on WorkReport.net is the one about the Titanic Museum. It’s been top of the list every time I’ve checked the stats. Again this is a curious thing: why does this particular post get picked up time and again? I don’t come up anywhere near the top on Google with this particular item, so how is that a bunch of people find my post each day? And what’s so hot about the Titanic Museum anyway?
I know that the movie, Titanic, is one of the all-time most-loved movies (don’t even consider asking me why), so does that have some kind of offshoot to the Museum? Who knows? As long as it keeps bringing one of my posts higher up the list, I’m happy!
The other top post, the one on Webitz.net, is called 69 Ways. It talks about a blog run by a 13-year-old (at least he was when I wrote the post back in 2007) called Make Money Online with a 13-year-old.
I’d love to know more about this guy – my suspicion is that he’s actually rather more than a 13-year-old. More likely he’s a smart adult cookie who thought that passing himself off as a teenager would have more effect. It obviously does! I wonder how long he can remain a teenager, though? Or won’t people care?
Anyway, his site is still a lot of fun to visit: full of money-making schemes, some of them typical of the Net as a whole, some of them workable. He also has an article on there written by someone else on driving traffic to your blog. It’s the sort of thing ProBlogger does well, and it’s the sort of thing that does drive traffic – just writing about it seems to do it!

Gareth Farr: naked AND poor...?

A post on my other blog, webitz.net, about the relatively frequent appearance of ‘Gareth Farr’ and ‘naked’ in juxtaposition on Google searches, elicited an amusing response from the man himself, who now gets a chance to appear in my otherwise nondescript blog yet again.
I quote it in full:

Poor Old Gareth??!!
As a starving artist I may be poor, but at 39, I'm not that old, am I? Well, it's good of you to think of my feelings and show concern about my "beleagueredness" (is that even IN the dictionary?) but please don't worry - I haven't noticed any telescopes aimed at my house lately, and my nakedness hasn't been noticed by a soul (it only happens twice a day). And for your peace of mind - garethfarrnaked.com is not on my list of things to do anytime in the near future. All the bestGareth Farr (not naked)

I replied as follows, (though I’m not sure whether he’ll notice – hopefully he’s off composing more energetic music, music such as a man of his youth should be composing):

Sorry to hear you're starving, Gareth. I'll have to add that to the 'naked' factor and see if we can get a fund started for you!
Nah, 39 is a pretty good age, really, these days. Could be considered positively young, in fact.
'beleagueredness'? Yup, you may be right about its lack of dictionary placement, but I've used it more than once in my lifetime...
Thanks for dropping by.