Blog Second Anniversary

The second anniversary of this blog has passed. Actually, more than a month ago, but caring for flu ridden children, preparing a child for college while taxiing another in college and teaching dreaded negative numbers and scientific notation to a slightly dyslexic child have kept me away. [I don't need to admit to neglecting my blog for NaNoWriMo, right? I won by the way. That's why you're seeing this new post before December and I'm waxing verbose here.] MOOCs, local classes and critique groups have also dominated my time.

ridden children, preparing a child for college while taxiing another in college and teaching dreaded negative numbers and scientific notation to a slightly dyslexic child have kept me away. [I don't need to admit to neglecting my blog for

My next review won't be until the five year anniversary, since about February I reduced the frequency of posts to focus my efforts to write for publication. Fortunately people have continued to visit here. I guess there's a lot here. If anyone has suggestions for improving access to past posts, or any other suggestions, please share them in the comments. Despite the decrease in posting frequency I still check this blog almost daily for comments and want it to be a good site.

Predictably, the number of visitors has dropped, along with the reduction of post frequency, but since most of the visitors came as a result of the advertising I posted on google community sites, I should continue to be able to increase visitor numbers with new posts.

New Countries - I continue to enjoy visitors from new countries. Last year's batch includes:

Albania                            Macau

Belarus                            Malta

Belgium                           New Zealand

Columbia                         Portugal

Dominican Republic         Qatar

Georgia                           South Africa

Ghana                            Trinidad and Tobago

Iceland                           United Arab Emirates

Since the third year has started I've also had visitors from :

Austria                           Luxembourg

Isle of Man                     Pakistan

Kenya                             Paraguay

That's really exciting for someone, like me, who's never had the privilege and finances to travel out of my own country. I love to see proof of the positive global effects the internet has had.

Search Engine Topics - The search engine topics that led to my blog this year include:

A lot about a dragons and a seaserpent

Acorn diagram 2x

All about birds

Battle of the five armies extended edition

banshee, succubus, valkyrie, furies

Can an animist be a christian too?

christian animist

Disney jokes clean

Duergar brownie                                                        mythological-humanoids-32-trolls-and-33       

Flower fairies books                                                   Rabbit from tops and bottoms

Harry Potter Stamps 2014                                           spring equinox planting ireland

historic photographs of fairies, the "w                           Summer solstice super strong

how does brian make his room in the salamander room   template of chipmunk shape

humanoids mythology demon                                      Tolstoy bloated

les brownies mythology                                              bookwereboar vs wild elf

Mythic humanoids in greek and roman mythology

Future Plans - I want to use my Word Press blog as well. I abandoned a plan to split the focus of this blog since the mythological posts seemed mostly distinct from the education posts. I thought I'd move the more education focused posts over there so that each set of visitors could have a blog geared more toward their specific interest. There would have been links between the blog sites for the visitors who, like me, love the overlap between the mythological side and the educational side of nature.

[I need a word for this overlap, the current focus of this blog. Naspirigination (nature, inspiration and imagination)? Sounds like a medication? Natural wisdom? Ignores the fun side of the overlap? Any suggestions? Any opinions about these ideas? I'll keep working on it.]

I decided against splitting this site. There has been an up tic in the number of people interested in the educational posts and children's book posts here. Rather than move either group, I decided to keep things as they are and use the Word Press blog for something else.

I still want to compare the relative merits of both blogging sites. Hopefully a new blog will encourage more traffic. I have a few ideas for topics for the new blog, but I'd love to hear suggestions or opinions from you. One idea is to focus more on my publications and news, but I've started a Facebook author page for that when I get books published. I'll post the link to the other blog when it's up and running and to the Facebook page when I have something published. [I do have a script published and performed: Peter Pan : The Novel Adaptation. I have yet to submit it to any companies that sell scripts. I'm unsure whether or not I want to give up the rights to it, just yet.]

The closest story to being ready for publication is a picture book, Who Took My Tomato? I have been working on the manga-like style illustrations. I have picked out a few publishers to submit it to and I'm almost ready to send it.

I making good progress on my young adult fantasy series. I've changed the working series title from Sylfae Tree Sagas to Darkling's Plight. Here's a homemade discarded cover idea. Since there is an element of time travel in the series, I need to get the end of the series solidly plotted out in order to write the first book properly. Some of the short stories I'm working on for submission to anthologies are using the same universe, which is helping me flesh out side stories concurrent with the series, but from points of view of secondary characters. All in all I'm using the limited time I have available at this juncture to good effect.