After not getting a whole lot of sleep last night, I had to get up fairly early today, because on new year’s day we always visit some friends of my parents at Teufelsmoor just north of Bremen. First we went to a very nice Greek restaurant, where I had baked feta cheese with onions and pickled chili peppers and a baked trout with tomato rice. Afterwards, we had coffee at the house of my parents’ friends, a restored farmhouse in the middle of the moor.
I should really write a story set in Teufelsmoor sometime, because it’s such a unique location and I know it quite well, since I spent quite a bit of time there as a child. I’m thinking of a ghost story – will o’ the whisps, bog bodies, moor fires, ghosts of dead moor farmers wandering across the fields by night. Perhaps throw in some Worpswede artists for good measure. I already took some photos that might serve as potential cover images.
Talking of books, over at the Pegasus Pulp blog I have a post detailing my sales figures for December and taking a look at my overall e-book sales in 2011.
Finally, here are the ten most popular posts on this blog in 2011:
- I accidentally corner the market for Strunk/White fanfiction from July 11, 2011
- Strunk, White and Sex from January 31, 2011
- Women writers, international writers, marginalized writers from July 20, 2011
- Book fair interviews, sex scenes, tragic endings, Tarzan and cultural omnivores – yes, it’s another linkdump from March 23, 2011
- Winter Wonderland from December 19, 2010, which is still among the most popular posts of 2011, even though it was published in 2010
- Game of Thrones and genre-unfriendly critics from April 18, 2011, which happens to be my birthday
- Good Sex, Bad Sex and HBO Style Sex from April 1, 2011
- More Game of Thrones Reactions from April 23, 2011
- Misfits Season 3: Episode 1 and Vegas Baby from November 12, 2011
- The Bacon Cat Law of Internet Popularity from July 12, 2011
So what do we learn from this?
Putting the word “sex” in the title of a post always works and when a post with the word “sex” in the title intersects with a popular webcomic, your hits might just go through the roof.
Blogging about popular TV shows always works as well. Hereby, it is not necessary to have actually watched the TV show in question (I still haven’t seen Game of Thrones, since it’s not on TV in Germany and I’m not interested enough to seek it out). That said, I’m glad that my Misfits posts (more coming soon) have found such a resonance.
Once in a while, a post just hits a chord and is tweeted, facebooked, stumble-uponed, Google-plussed and linked on various popular blogs. This is what happened to the women writers and international writers post.
If all else fails, photos of pretty snowy landscapes bring a lot of visitors as well.
sending...
Hmm, the Winter Wonderland title might also bring people looking for the song. I wonder what would have happened if you had called the picture post “Pretty Winter Landscape” or similarly.
Most of the hits on the “Winter Wonderland” post seem to come from image search engines via search terms such as “snowy winter landscape”. Though the song probably contributes a few hits as well.