popularity

Googling Bear Naked

/ Diane Henders / 36 Comments

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

A Dave By Any Other Name

/ Diane Henders / 19 Comments

I’ve been called a lot of different names in my lifetime, sometimes by people sincerely trying to get my name right; other times not so much.  Like a dog, I focus on the intonation, not the actual words.  “Sweetheart” can sound really hostile, and “Hey, Buttbrain” can warm my heart.

Not that anybody’s ever called me Buttbrain.  This week.

Some people seem to accumulate nicknames more easily than others, but I suspect there are a couple of factors that influence the process.  The truly cool nicknames usually get applied to people who’ve either done something truly cool, or truly dumb.  Besides that (dubious) qualification, it seems to me the quality of one’s nickname says more about the creativity of one’s friends than anything else.

I wasn’t overly popular in school.

Wait, gotta run.  Minions of the Society for the Eradication of Ridiculous Understatement are breaking down my door to drag me away…

Okay, I’m back.  Phew.  Lucky I learned those ninja skills while the cool kids were attending all their cool parties.

I didn’t do anything particularly dumb in school, and I missed “truly cool” by an embarrassingly wide margin.  My nickname in school was “Fender Bender”, which sounds kinda cool now, but in fact had nothing to do with my driving skills and everything to do with the fact that those are the first two words in alphabetical order that rhyme with “Henders”.

Those who knew me in university might consider “Fender Bender” appropriate, but that wasn’t related to my driving, either.  Suffice it to say that you don’t want to narrowly miss running over me in a crosswalk.  I get irate when I’m scared shitless.

Later, I acquired some more predictable nicknames:  “Di”, and, while Charles and Diana were an item, “Lady Di”, which caused considerable amusement to those who knew me well.  Ain’t no ladies here.

Oh, and I was briefly nicknamed “Garbage Gut”, “Mongo”, and “Anklebiter” in university, but those were just passing phases.

My all-time favourite nickname was “Dave”.  Back when I was a geek…  Oh, never mind.

Back when I was being paid to be a geek, the vendors apparently decided a mere woman couldn’t possibly deal with the intricacies of building computers and networks, so they christened me “Dave”.  For the last several years I held that job, most of my outside correspondence arrived addressed to “Dave Henders”.

I didn’t really mind.  I figured Dave was probably a pretty cool guy.  In fact, I developed a fondness for Dave, so I named a character in my fourth book after him.

The rest of my handles were either insults or endearments, none of them particularly interesting or creative.  Though Hubby does call me Gorgeous on occasion, which is just one of the many reasons why I love him.

So, to quote the old chestnut:  Call me anything you like; just don’t call me late for dinner.

Or you can call me Dave.  That works, too.

What are (were) your nicknames?