Googling Bear Naked

/ Diane Henders

It’s been a tough week and my idea bank was running low, so I consulted a ‘writing prompts’ site for some inspiration.  One suggestion caught my interest:  Check your site stats to find your three most popular posts, and write about the connection between them.

I checked my stats… and burst out laughing.

Excluding the pages of my official website, here are the blog posts that draw the most visitors, in order of popularity:

We’re All Free! And Naked!

Confessions of a Vegas Swinger

We’re All Naked

Gee, I wonder… what’s the connection here?  Let me think for a nanosecond…

When I went back and re-read those posts, the best part (as usual) was my readers’ comments.  Who knew that my blog would be the #1 Google result if you search ‘naked machete-wielding motorcyclist with fanny pack’?  Searches for ‘naked beer-drinking martial artists on motorcycles’ and ‘polar bear sex club’ also return my blog at #1.

I’m famous!  Or maybe ‘notorious’ would be a better word, but let’s not split hairs.  All this despite the fact that I’ve never been naked on a motorcycle, and my only knowledge of polar bears comes from viewing them from a safe distance at Churchill, Manitoba.

Black bears, on the other hand, are far more familiar than I’d prefer.

You know the saying, “Art imitates life”?  Well, my art imitated life; and now my life has turned around to imitate my art:

In Book 11, I wrote about a bunch of wackos who protect their secret compound in the woods by feeding bears to keep them near the stockade.  That was based on the true story of some folks here in BC who did the same thing to guard a marijuana plantation.

Yesterday I discovered that I now live in a compound patrolled by my very own bear.

I’m less than thrilled.

We just had an 8’ pagewire fence installed around our yard to keep deer out of the garden.  Our crew put up most of the fence, and then ran dogs through the woods to make sure no deer were inside the area before they closed everything up.  They finished Monday around suppertime.

Only a couple of hours later I was walking around the house when I heard a distinctive “Uuuhhhh.  Uuuhhhhhh…” and the sound of heavy footsteps crashing through the forest not far away.

A bear.

Shit.

I didn’t glimpse it, so I don’t know for certain that it was inside our fence, but it sure as hell sounded close.

Needless to say I’ll be cautious around here until the bear decides to leave and pulls down part of the fence to do it.  After we repair the fence we’ll probably be okay, since there’s nothing inside to tempt a bear to return… except maybe a naked motorcycle-riding machete-wielding martial artist wearing a fanny pack.

But that only seems to appeal to random Google-searchers; and since it’s hard to operate a keyboard with paws and 2” claws, the bear will never even know about the internet star on the other side of that inconvenient fence.

I think we’ll both be happier that way.

Have you searched anything interesting on Google lately?

P.S. Preorders are available for Book 12:  Kiss And Say Good Spy!  Click here for links to online retailers

36 thoughts on “Googling Bear Naked”

  2. I just googled myself. Something like 295k returns, none of whom, apparently, are me. Authors, doctors, real estate agents, entertainers of several sorts, and more than a few obituaries. It seems that I am nowhere to be found.

    I’ve always aspired to invisibility. Clearly, I have achieved it at last. Live is too good to waste on mere mortals. To paraphrase Vanessa Redgrave’s character (I think) in the first Mission Impossible movie, “Anonymity is like a warm blanket…”

    Well, until I finally get my stuff published. Then it’ll be more like, “…a slap in the face with a stack of cold unpaid bills.” I’ll let you know.

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    • “…a slap in the face with a stack of cold unpaid bills” – LOL! Yes, that whole ‘published author’ thing does tend to be a bit of a problem for those seeking anonymity.

      I spent years marketing myself as an entrepreneur before switching over to fiction-writing, so the internet is flooded with pages and pages of boring stuff about me. Anonymity is impossible, so I find comfort in the knowledge that there’s a not much chance of anybody bothering to sift through all that crap to find anything incriminating or embarrassing. And there shouldn’t be anything bad out there anyway… I hope… 😉

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  3. Living now in England, bears are, just a little bit out of the equation. So much so that I’d almost forgotten they can be a bit of a pest. Years ago, while in the military in Alaska, black bears used to love turning the big trash cans (some times they had old food in) over at the edge of our Air Force base. Driving by one day with a passenger, I stopped, as usual, to shoo the furry things away and set the cans upright. The passenger was new to the base and from Harlem. He’d barely seen a tree, let alone a wild animal. I shooed the bears away and he had locked the doors of the truck, sat screaming inside and wouldn’t open them. He didn’t know black bears normally just eat berries and if you weren’t afraid (they smell fear), you could walk right up to them – I never had any trouble from them on that score. After about 10 minutes my passenger calmed down and unlocked the doors (he never left the base after that). What fun we have….

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    • I’m giggling at the mental image of your poor terrified city-dweller locked in the truck! He would have scared the bears away just with his screams alone.

      Back in the 1980s we used to camp at Waterton Lakes National Park in southern Alberta, and it was infested with bears. We were lucky to never have a problem – the bears used to wander through the campgrounds regularly, but as you say, they were focused on their own business and didn’t bother anybody other than to occasionally help themselves to any goodies left unguarded by novice campers. Still, though, I don’t want any more close encounters – they make me nervous. You’re braver than I! 🙂

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  4. Diane, this is off the topic of your post, but I wanted to let you know I tried to submit a review to Amazon for Never Say Spy but the rules require me to have actually purchased something on Amazon … I am probably the only person you know who has never done that … so sorry I can’t help with an official review. I loved your book; it was such a smooth read (I mention that first because it’s very high on my list of criteria for a good read), excellent action, intriguing premise, saucy and naughty in all the right places, a refreshing main character and interesting supporting cast, and definitely made me want to read more in the series. Thank you so much for making this first one available for free. And good luck with the one you’re about to launch!

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  5. Yikes. Maybe it’s a friendly bear who likes your fence, Diane.
    I did one of those sad own name Google searches today, and found loads of entries, far more than I should have. Some of them date back to the late 1600s. It turned out to be rather an interesting search.

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  6. One of my biggest hits (continually) was Nude Icelandic Women about some middle aged women in small town Iceland doing some fund raising. It was very tasteful. I wonder what would happen if I did a Diane Henders Naked search?

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    • I dare you. But I take no responsibility for any mental trauma that may result from your search.

      And I remember your Nude Icelandic Women post – it was very tasteful. It’s fun to mess with people’s expectations!

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  7. Well a bear inside your fence will surely make for quite the storytelling. Wow! As for your Google hits we’ll think of it as it’s not easy to rank in Google so take it as a compliment. 🙂

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  8. As you and one other person (me) may know, I did a post a while back on my top search terms.

    Number one on the list was – ahem – “sex with animals.” Where this leads with “bear naked,” I leave up to you and your readership. (Do bears read?)

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    • That’s right; I’d forgotten about your dubious claim to fame! If bears can read, they’ll undoubtedly rush over to your site as soon as they determine that mine doesn’t offer any titillation for bears. (Who invented the word ‘titillation’, anyway? It had to be a man…) 😉

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  10. Well….now I know I have been using wrong titles for my blog post…not sure I have the guts to test it, but would love to to just to see….lol. Not sure how I would feel having a bear that close…all of my hikes in the Pacific Northwest, only came across one bear and it was outside of Whistler…that was enough for me…great post!

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    • Thanks, Kirt! I’ve seen bears lots of times from inside a car, inside a tent, and, more lately, from inside our house when a big one ambled past only about 50 feet away, and I don’t want a closer acquaintance. I really wouldn’t want to meet one when I was hiking with no safe place to retreat – I can see why once was enough for you!

      And yes, they say “Any publicity is good publicity”, but I think there might be some caveats. 😉

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  11. Oh deer! How can you bear it? I hope the bear leaves soon!

    Sometimes when I’m looking for something I’ve read on the internet so that I can read it again or link to it, I google using phrases that are very specific, like the ones you mentioned here. Maybe that’s what has happened …? Otherwise, I got nuthin’ 🙂

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    • There’s a thought! I don’t know if the whole pagewire fence can be electrified, but even a couple of strands of electrified wire at strategic heights might help. (And now I’m imagining our whole fence electrified… and myself forgetting and leaning up against it only to end up with grill-marks like a hot dog…) 😉

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  13. I hope you don’t have a bear 🐻 neighbour, or if you do he decides to move on soon. I think if it was me I’d be looking for a safe place to hide out until I was sure he or she had moved on to pastures new.

    Life here is pretty much the same, I had an interview to go permanent at the current job last Thursday I’m still waiting to hear but the start date isn’t till middle of August so no rush and as I’m working as a temp it’s not like I have to give notice.
    And I will be happy having read book 12 by then hopefully.

    I’m doing a course tomorrow to be in independent visitor, with teenagers in care. Not sure what to expect but I’m sure it will be different. I have got to the point in life where I’m thinking I probably won’t have kids of my own, I’m 39 in a couple of months, but gave contemplated fostering. So who knows if I get the job and move closer to my parents (although a new bookcase is still cheaper) I could look at getting a bigger flat and might be able to both.

    Regards Google searches, if I’m looking up something odd, I have to confess that I go incognito, I live alone no one else uses my pc, laptop, tablet or phone! But I still click go incognito. Maybe I am paranoid, but when searching for a new job, I clicked on an advert for MI5, and was stalked by there ads for about 2 months so I’m not taking any chances.

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    • I’ve often wondered if I should turn on private browsing while I’m researching some of my oddball stuff, too; but since I’m looking up things like untraceable poisons and ballistics and such, I decided I’d maybe seems just a tad less suspicious if I wasn’t trying to hide my identity. So far I haven’t been told I’m on a no-fly list… 😉

      Good luck with both your interviews! Fingers crossed for you!

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