Category Archives: updates

State of the Blogs, 2013

I’ll post a recap of the year’s best reads tomorrow, followed by a look ahead on New Year’s Day. But because there have been some big changes in my small corner of the blogosphere, I thought I’d give a short recap.

You’ll notice that I’ve used the plural form of the word “blog” in the title of this post. That’s because I’ve got four of them. (Yes, I’m nuts.)

The year started out good. Blog traffic continued to climb. By July traffic was setting records. Nearly every post had comments, and the number of followers was slowly growing. I found all of this very satisfying, especially the comments, since a community of regulars had formed. There were some great discussions. Blurbs from Adventures Fantastic were starting to show up on the covers of books by major publishers. I was having a lot of fun, which was a large part of why I do this.

Then Google decreed that Adventures Fantastic was a spam site. I’m not quite sure how they figured that since I went over their guidelines with a fine toothed comb. And while I did include a number of links to other sites, Google was very clear that sites which include links in reviews weren’t spam. The automatic response to the appeal I lodged with Google said it would be several weeks before they even looked at it. Continue reading →

Stopping Spam

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I’ve had so much spam in the last few weeks that I’ve had to implement a spam blocker. Moderating them myself is taking too much time. (I had 75 spam comments today at Dispatches alone.) It’s called Akismet, and it’s supposed to work quite well. The only drawback is that it occasionally stops a legitimate comment. If you comment on something, and you don’t see your comment within 24 hours, please let me know. I’ll approve it. Hopefully, it won’t happen often, but it’s gotten old moderating the amount of spam I’ve had to put up with, especially lately. Of course, the way to avoid having comments classified as spam is to follow. The followers didn’t transfer over from Blogger when the posts did, and I don’t know of a way to transfer them. If anyone does, please drop me a line. There were some good conversations on the old blog, and I hope to have more here.

Ruminations

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Gad, what a week. We’re still trying to figure out if a student sent a stand-in to lab, or if he drove halfway across the state after a death in the family, returned for lab, and then drove back for the funeral. Whoever showed up for lab was cheating big time. And the student this person was claiming to be is in hot water.

Anyway, it’s turning into one of those years. I’m managing to keep up with my deadlines at Amazing Stories, but it’s getting a little tight. I think I can pull ahead over the next week. Deadlines at work, on the other hand, not so much.

I’ve not been posting much because I’m trying to finish a story by tomorrow. That’s the deadline for submissions. Things should pick up here by early next week.

Due to financial constraints and family politics, I won’t be attending ConDFW this weekend. (I don’t wanna talk about it.) The North Texas Irish Festival and Scarborough Renaissance Fair aren’t looking too promising, either. (Ditto.)

For some reason, my thoughts keep drifting back to cons I attended in the 90s. There seemed to be more commonality among folks. We tended to enjoy many of the same books and shows. There was a greater sense of community. Now it’s like I don’t have a clue what people are talking about anymore. I suspect my time constraints have tightened more than fandom has changed so that I’m not able to keep up with as many movies and shows. Living in an area where things were only an hour or two away at most, rather than a minimum of five hours, made a difference, too.

Maybe I’m getting old and tired, but some of the fun and sense of wonder seem to be missing. Probably nothing a good week’s sleep won’t cure. Anyway, this is a glimpse of what’s been going on inside my head lately. Hasn’t been a lot of fun. Since misery loves company, I thought I’d share my life as a crotchety old geezer.

Now you kids get off my lawn.

UPDATE: I finished the story and just sent it off. It’s part of a S&S series I’m calling the Chronicles of Rodrik and Prince Balthar. It’s the fourth one I’ve finished. There are three more in various stages of completion.