Stats Overload

Last month I paid out some of my hard earned to move my website from the free hosting space my home ISP provides to a paid-for host, along with a new domain (.co.uk instead of .com). One of my reasons for doing this was to get a better idea of who is visiting my site and what they are looking at.

Previously I relied on Google Analytics, which is okay I suppose, and a very simple hit counter which just ticked over by one with each page view. But the new hosts provides three different sets of stats, all good in their own way, which have given me much more detailed information.

So, for the month of January so far, marcnobbs.co.uk has had over three hundred visits, averaging out at about 18 a day, and those visitors have viewed over 700 pages, just under 40 a day. This is nothing more than Google would have told me and isn’t really a significant change from the past year or so, but here’s where the more detailed info comes in…

The most popular day to look at my site has been Tuesday, closely followed by Wednesday. Thursday is the least popular. The most popular time for visiting the site is 2pm UK time, which is odd, closely followed by 3am, which is even odder. Until you remember that the visitors are coming from all over the world, that is.

Most of my visits have come from, get this, Russia, followed by the US, UK and then Germany someway behind but ahead of Australia and China (which must mean that Marc Nobbs gets through the ‘great firewall’).

But, more importantly, I now know that my most popular pages are the Free Stories page and the e-Books page. Which I should really have expected and isn’t that big a surprise. But at least it confirms that it was worth including the free stories on the site. The most popular free stories this month so far have been Measuring Up, Would Twins Do This? and Divine Interview – which I wrote with my friend from across the pond Cassie Exline.

Finally, here are some of the more interesting phrases that people have searched that have lead them to my site - “Twins Snogging”, “do boys have their cocks measured?”, “Nave blue knickers sexstories”, “his cock was enormous twice the size of mine”, “panty worship uk”.

Honestly, I don’t know what to say about that. lol

Time to Come Clean?

I’ve been quiet on this blog and on Twitter for a while now. I’m not going to apologise for it or make excuses. There is a reason. It’s called Life. I have one and it gets in the way of my online persona sometimes.

Because, let’s face it, Marc Nobbs is a persona – one that I use online to protect my offline persona and, more importantly, my family. I know it’s hard to believe, but some people are small minded enough to consider the type of thing I write to be ‘unsuitable’ or some other equally judgemental label and the sort of people that do that wouldn’t stop at taking out their holier-than-thou high moral judgements on the online persona if they knew who my offline persona was.

The truth is that I’m actually very comfortable with what I write. They way I look at it, they are just novels about relationships – all I do is not look away when things get intimate. So why should I hide? Actually, I don’t consider using an online persona as hiding. I see it more as keeping my online and offline lives separate.

But…

The other day, I updated my Facebook profile since I’ve finally come to the conclusion that MySpace is dying a death and Facebook seems to be the defacto place to go. (This is your own fault MySpace. It’s the little things – like considering a Blogger blog as ‘spam’ and blocking the link. YOUR OWN FAULT. Take note Mr Murdoch. If you try and make your newspapers online presence a similarly ‘closed shop’ as you are threatening to, then they will simply suffer the same fate. The world has changed, and so must the media. But that’s a separate blog post – or several – on it’s own)

After updating the profile I started browsing some other profiles. And I found profiles for a lot of the people I went to school with. Note my choice of words. I didn’t call them ‘school-friends’. Don’t get me wrong, I had a couple of good friends at school but for the most part my classmates were just people I knew because we attended the same institution at the same time. I mean, if they were good friends, I’d still be in contact with them, right?

I actually found it amusing looking at the ‘friends’ list for these profiles since most of the people on there would never have been seen breathing the same air as some of their Facebook ‘friends’ when they were at school together. But it left me thinking, should I ‘make friends’ with some of my old classmates using my current profile? Would they recognise me? Would they care? Obviously they wouldn’t recognise the name, but I could add a message to the friend request explaining who I was. Would they remember me then? And how would they react to me online persona? What would they think of the books I write? Would they buy them to see what they are like? How would they react if we ever met again in person? Is that even likely?

Like I say, I’m not ashamed of what I write, but that’s not to say I want old acquaintances saying to each other “Hey, have you seen what that chap we went to school with is up to?”. I don’t want that because the response will probably be “Yeah, I always knew he was a f*^&^g pervert.”

On the other hand, surely it’s a marketing opportunity even if they only buy my book out of perverse curiosity.

It’s a dilemma. And one I’ll probably wrestle with for some time.

Snow, Snow and More Snow

The United Kingdom has ground to a halt. Why? Snow. One word but it seems that as a country we are completely unequipped to cope with it. Schools shut, idiots abandon their cars in the most ridiculous places after venturing out when clearly they shouldn’t have thinking that they are ace drivers so they’ll be okay but then end up in a bush.

But what I find more frustrating is that we don’t seem to learn from our mistakes. When I was growing up I was taught that it’s okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. I think this is one of the fundamentals of growing up. I mean, even wild animals learn from their mistakes – it’s how we are able to train dogs, horses etc. Not learning from your mistakes is the height of stupidity in my opinion. So the people that run this country and the people that live in it must be very, very stupid indeed.

We had a load of snow last February, yet, not even a full twelve months later, we’re having exactly the same problems. Why? Cause preparing to cope with snow when it comes doesn't win votes and not coping when there is snow doesn’t lose votes, that’s why.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The biggest problem with Democracy is that the people we elect to run our country and our services are primarily concerned with STAYING elected the next time around. So rather than do what is best for the country, they do what is best for their election chances.

Case in point, there is talk again today of the Labour party trying to ditch Gordon Brown. Not for the good of the country, but because he might hurt their electoral chances. For God’s sake! You people have a job to do – running the country – can you please get on with doing it and not worry about ‘fighting the next election’ until the next election is actually called! DO YOUR DAMN JOBS!

I swear, when I come to power, democracy will be the first thing to go.

Sorry. Rant over. To other matters. Do you remember my post a couple of weeks ago about being ‘grabbed by the balls’ by a story? I talked about how I’d been writing a story but wasn’t happy with it and then a new idea struck me and it seemed to be a winner.

Since then, I haven’t been able to work on that new story for one reason and another, but one of the side effects of being ‘grabbed by the balls’ by a story idea is that sometimes it kick-starts the creative juices and other stories also benefit. And the University story I was working on and not getting on with is one of those.

An idea. A thought. I think I’ve worked out what’s wrong with it. It’s just an idea at the moment-one I need to explore-but I think it could enable me to finally finish this story that has been with me for years and then move on. I’ll let you know what happens.

Finally, I’m considering doing a Video-log. I’ve tested a few things and none have them have satisfied me yet, but if I can work it out, you might soon be able to hear me talking crap rather than just read it.

I ain’t dead

It’s true, I’m not. I’ve just been enjoying the festive period with my family for the past few days. I hope you’ve had a happy festive period and that you’ll enjoy the New Year celebrations later tonight. I’d say I wish you a better 2010 than 2009 but for a lot of people it’d be hard for 2010 to be any worse than 2009. After all, any year when only having had a worldwide recession is seen as better than the alternative (that being a complete meltdown and collapse of the global financial system) has got to have been a pretty bad year.

In the UK, the start of the year saw the end of high street firm Woolworths just before their 100th anniversary of trading. The end of the year saw us wave goodbye to Borders, who used to be a bookshop but sort of forgot what they were by the end. And in-between there have been too many companies hit the wall to count and too many jobs lost.

I’m sure it’s been the same everywhere else.

The US, of course, has at least had the ‘shining light’ of a new leader in the shape of Barak Obama. So, America finally elected their first black president – and there was I thinking the first black president would be Will Smith. Just two hurdles left to cross now. A woman and an immigrant. Of course, before that Austrian bloke currently running California can be President they will have to change their constitution (or so I’m told – correct me if I’m long). And I think we’ll have to wait a while before we see a woman elected, after all, Chelsea isn’t old enough yet, is she?

But while America has at least had a sense of hope following their election (or part of the country does – I’m told not everyone likes him), we on this side of the pond have not had so much a guiding light as a flashlight with fading batteries in the shape of Gordon Brown.

I can’t remember a time when this country was so in need of an election. I don’t even think it was this bad in 1997. At least back then the country was on the mend and heading in the right direction. But now, the whole country seems in a terminally depressed state. We need an election not necessarily for a change of government but just to shake things up and get everyone interested in politics again. Like it or not, these people make choices that affect us all and right now there are too many people who don’t seem to care who’s in charge.

Yes, things have gotten that bad.

Having said all that, 2009 hasn’t been a bad year overall for me. Yes, I didn’t get a pay rise at all this year, but the plummeting interest rates saw my mortgage payments fall and that more than made up for now pay rise. On a writing front, Charlotte’s Secret and Lost & Found both continued to sell steadily if not spectacularly, Kissed by a Rose was released and voted Erotic Romance Novel of the Year by the members of the Erotica Romance Connection. Phaze also confirmed that they’d be taking the book to print in March of 2010 – which can’t be bad. 2009 also saw me complete Eternally & Evermore, which has been accepted by Phaze for publication next summer and I’m well on the way with the next book.

So, no, 2009 wasn’t a bad year for Marc Nobbs.

But, that’s it from me for this year. Here’s hoping I’ll continue to hold you attention in 2010. Thanks for spending this year with me.

Grabbed by the Balls

Okay, so, the title got your attention right? I haven’t literally been grabbed by the balls since… well, for a very long time. Thankfully, I haven’t pissed any woman off enough for them to want to do that to me (and ladies, there’s not much worse you can do to a man to punish him than abuse his balls – ain’t that the truth). But what I’m talking about here is a story idea. A new story idea has grabbed me by the balls and I doubt it will let go now until the story is finished.

It’s great when that happens, isn’t it?

Let me elaborate.

In recent weeks I’ve been working on rewriting an older story, College by the Sea, which you can read the ‘original’ of on StoriesOnline. This is because of the success that I believe I’ve had rewriting another older story, Reunion. Reunion is about five years old and you can read it on StoriesOnline or download a .pdf here.

Now, Eternally & Evermore, started out as a simple rewrite of Reunion. I wanted to make it longer, add subplots and take time to explore Matt and Kelly’s relationship more. What actually happened was that Matt morphed in Will, Kelly became Amy and the whole story got turned on its head and is now so far removed from Reunion that it’s a stretch to believe that it ever started out as a rewrite of such.

And it’s not just the plot is so much different, it’s that the characters are totally different too. It wasn’t just a case of changing the names. I also changed their personal circumstances. I don’t want to give away too many of E&E’s secrets (and their are a whole host of surprises in store, believe me), but Will and Amy are older, wiser, and have been through more in their lives than either Matt or Kelly. And that has made them very different people from Matt and Kelly.

I tend to think of it like this… Will and Amy are the people that Matt and Kelly would have been had their lives taken a different path. Consequently, they have a very different story to tell.

And, honestly, I’m so pleased with the job I did turning Reunion into E&E that I figured I could at least as good a job by starting with College by the Sea.

The problem though is two fold. First, College isn’t that good. I started writing it over ten years ago and have never finished. I’ve actually written more of the story than appears on StoriesOnline, but I got so disillusioned with it that I found a sort of convenient place to stop and did just that. It’s too long winded. It lacks focus and the story really doesn’t go anywhere.

So while I knew where I was taking the story with Eternally & Evermore, I didn’t have that same single-mindedness with the rewrite of College. Hell,  I didn’t even have a clue what the title was. Not the first idea.

Second problem was that I have been working on this story in some shape or form for over ten years. It was the first story I ever started writing, and it’s based very much on some of my experiences from my time at University. College is set in Aberystwyth, in the same hall of residence that I stayed in and features many of the places I used to go. I mean, the lead character, is a physics undergraduate – like I was, and while he isn’t me, part of him is. But then, there’s a part of me in all my heroes. And some of the characters in the book are very much based on people I lived with.

For the rewrite I moved the action to Westmouth – the town that is rapidly becoming the centre of my ‘universe’ (can we call it the ‘Nobbiverse’, yet?). I kept some of the characters names the same, changed others, and cut the cast list by either simply dropping some of the extras or merging some of the more prominent ones.

But I couldn’t bring myself to change the two central characters – Dylan and Joanne. I was too close to them. And so the story suffered from my lack ability to let go. My friend and editor said I was doing an okay job, but the story didn’t grab me. It didn’t feel right.

Then, earlier this week, something happened. An idea struck me. Utterly different from Dylan’s story, this idea is fresh, and exciting and I damned if I’m not looking forward to writing it. It’s got me by the balls.

As the delightful Mrs Cole says on that god awful L'Oreal advert – I’ve got my mojo back.

So, here’s hoping I can keep up this enthusiasm for the story. It’s got a lot of development to go – I need to map out the story and work out the ending – but I know who the main characters are and what the conflict is and that, for me, is the main thing. With great characters and a compelling conflict, I can nail this thing.