I was curious why I had so many visitors - initially - from Russia but wasn't able to come up with an answer.

I did find out about a site called Yandex which is suspicious of new websites and which is more popular in Russia than Google.

The site about Yandex is written in Russian so unless I translated it, I'd be unable to figure it out, or what I might have said to attract so many visitors from Russia.

They seem to have fallen off, in any case, and I don't want to attract attention to myself by googling the reasons I may have attracted attention from Russian audiences in the first place.

If you're interested in some Russian news on a couple of later blogs, see here and
here.

I never paid much attention to keywords or SEO other than trying to fit the post to its description. So I certainly didn't attract an audience from Russia on purpose.

I'm very grateful to all my readers and followers, so want to thank those who follow me, but a comment would be great from one of my followers in another country, so I know what I'm saying that you like - or hate.

I suspect many bloggers try to stuff their posts with SEO now that Google and Amazon have made it easier by posting cool keywords. I notice one of those sites is no longer on-line, Amazon's keyword posts.

I've never been very cognizant of SEO or using keywords, but lately have begun to think my blog might be more popular if I paid attention to what people are really interested in.

Yandex in Russia wouldn't really want me to focus on diet, sex and money, as was suggested on one blogger's site I visited, but I wonder what do Russian audiences look for and why was my site more attractive to you at first? What did I say?

I'm a cool Canadian senior woman, don't know much about the rest of the world and am just learning to network. Most of my traffic comes from the USA, and Canada is only slightly ahead of Russia and other European countries. I can understand the USA is the biggest user of the internet, perhaps, and the language is in common.

I love it when people comment and will try to answer all. Perhaps someone can explain to me what brought you to my site?

I've been trying something different recently, just being myself and writing about what interests me. Maybe that isn't of interest to my Russian and other international audiences. I don't want to spam my readers with content about my books and writing. But would you like to know about bees and wasps and Sasquatch aliens lost on Earth? Note that SpaceHive is set to a large extent in India, yet I don't see that I have a large Indian audience.

Kenna searching the globe for an audience

I'm going to experiment with international audiences including what I think my Russian, south American, Asian, European and African audiences might be interested in.

Just because I'm weird that way and I have a B.A. undergraduate degree in Anthropology, the study of various cultures. I was led askew to Classics at one time, but return now to my first love, humanity in all its variations.

Ever wonder about picking out healthy, free range chicken eggs, boiling them for your kids or family at Easter time, and then putting artificial chemical dyes on them?

Ever wonder when you peel that egg the day after Easter and find it's stained with blue or green chemicals?

Shannon McRae posts in KIWI Magazine "Natural Ways to Dye Easter Eggs."

You'll need a troupe of children just before Easter morning and some turmeric or curry powder, blueberries, and beets for yellow, blue and pink Easter eggs. They can put stickies on the eggs before dying them and then take the stickies off to reveal patterns.


Another trick we used to do as children is writing on the eggs with white or colored wax crayons. The wax won't allow the dye to penetrate and you'll be left with cool designs.


The article goes on to say:

"Shannon McRae is a work-at-home mom of three young children whose days are spent wiping mouths, playing Candyland, planning dinners and stealing time in between at the computer for her freelance writing. She's a stickler for healthy eating, with a slight exception for Oreos. She lives in Alabama with her precious children, loving husband and 13-year-old Australian Shepherd named Ricky Martin."

More of Shannon McRae's fascinating and useful articles can be found here.

This is one of my favorite poems. Do you like the message?

Abou Ben Adhem

My author friend, Eileen Schuh, is having an event at Famous Five Plus. Answer a question about her debut novel, THE TRAZ, and win a FREE eBook of THE TRAZ.

It's a great book and you'll find the answer to the question in the comments section. I answered it...

She's also written two other great novels, SCHRODINGER'S CAT, and FATAL ERROR.

Look for this great author and her books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in  bookstores everywhere.

Eileen Schuh at home

Why is it that the Bible is the number one bestseller and yet the world is worse than it ever was?

Something's wrong here, and I'd like an answer. Here's a link to a book that purports the Bible is 666 and created by the antiChrist.

Then I'll wait for the sugar to hit the fan.



Note there are two reviews and both of them pan the book. It's interesting, though, that the authors say we should depend on the spirit of God, not scriptures, and that's what Jesus always said.

I heard a minister say once that evangelical churches today are like the Pharisees.

I've always thought that.

Have you read this poem about a godly man who lives with the spirit of God?

large delicious cinnamon roll tempting a Christian

I posted a comment recently about fundamentalist Christians loving their potlucks and sashaying up to the trough. I wonder if they're fatter than the average North American?

I have a long history with fundamentalist churches and most of them are well meaning and considerate of others in their fold, if not in the entire world (look at the Baptist church which pickets funerals of American soldiers).

My observation lies with dieting and their potential for feeding themselves like little greedy cliques.

I think feeding the homeless and poor is a worthy venture. I do that myself, if I can, buy lunches or coffee for the homeless. There but for the grace of God go I.

I do have a problem with overweight adult WASPs who sidle up to the communal dinner table rather than get out there and work with their hands and move their feet for God's world and the people beyond their little cults.

Now that Easter is on the equinox horizon, it's time to revisit Jesus and his actions and what he said or was purported to say, not the misguided words of his followers.

Have lunch with a homeless person or sit down and don't evangelize, really get to know your neighbor there on the main drag, realize they're not so different from you.

Don't just serve food to fill your belly and then feel good about yourself because you've worked at a soup kitchen. That's "them and us" thinking, and Jesus, if you recall, actually sat down with the sinners.

We're all sinners, remember that, and let's not forget gluttony is a sin, and there are no sins that are lesser or greater than others. Baptist church.

Dieting for dummies. I haven't seen that particular book out yet but I think I might write one if I ever find an audience.

Churches seem to be full of cookies, cakes, squares and good intentions.

Read this, too, if you'd like a new outlook on the Bible. 

Raw Dog Screaming Press posted an interview with Jeremy C. Shipp, young Bizarro writer of dark horror books and short stories.

Don't look too long because I found it only once and now the interview seems to be gone from Raw Dog Screaming Press. It's on Jeremy's website, Slices of Bizarro Pie.

Jeremy was nominated for the Bram Stoker award, and is author of numerous novels and short story collections, such as my very favorite weird tales, Attic Clowns, Complete Collection.

Amazon says, "Men, women, children, and things beyond imagination all interconnect in ATTIC CLOWNS, where laughter is only the prelude to the bizarre and terrible."

Fiction horror books fascinated me for a short time when I was writing my own, but I found my talents lie elsewhere. I haven't found those talents yet but I know they're there somewhere, maybe buried in Jeremy's basement far from the attic of his imagination.

Speaking of creepy, I found this on Slices of Bizarro Pie:


Do you have a favorite site or writer?

I will answer all comments. Eventually.

I have schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia. I've been told by a therapist who also happened to be a nun(!) that I had "boundary problems." That was my problem, according to her, and according to a half crazed psychiatric nurse who told me she worked only with "low maintenance patients," referred me to the nun because my delusions were "religious delusions" and she thought the nun would be appropriate to deal with religious delusions. I'm not making this up. The nun lit candles before every session with me and threw the matches in the waste bucket without extinguishing them first. When I suggested that was unsafe she glared at me and told me I had boundary problems. The nun also related to me how a client had hugged her and she was appalled and told him off because he had "boundary problems." I wondered at the time who had boundary problems!

Whew! When I was first diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1978 I was told I would be in and out of psych hospitals for the rest of my life. I was 31 years old at that time. I was also told (by a minister, coincidentally) that I would never be able to work. My psychiatrist told me I should be satisfied with "coping."

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I've worked almost continuously since then, at odd jobs sometimes, at temporary jobs often, but at a school of psychiatric nursing for five years, at a university for two years and then on disability insurance for another two years, during which time I worked so much part-time that I didn't make any money from my disability insurance. Then I worked three part-time jobs to make ends meet, then I was hired full-time and worked for an oral pathologist as a medical transcriptionist for eight years, then I started my own medical transcription business in 1999 and worked part-time often to get my business off the ground. My entrepreneurship paid off and I now am self-supporting with the help of Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan (CPP). I am a published author and live by myself very successfully in a small fancy studio suite in a highrise in downtown Edmonton. I don't own a car, microwave, bathroom scale, television set or property and I am very happy.

I don't have boundary problems, I had delusions and obsessions because I had a mental illness. I never had a personality disorder, I had schizophrenia. So many unfortunate therapists who hurt me over the years.

Yes, people with schizophrenia can work. People with schizophrenia can fall in love, marry, have children and grandchildren. People with schizophrenia can laugh, cry, hurt, bleed, and be outrageous if they choose. They sometimes are violent. "Normal" people are violent much more often, statistically, than schizophrenic people. But we get the media, don't we?

What's your story?

My friend Roy Huff is giving away a signed copy of his great new fantasy/science fiction novel, The First Pillar, for the next two days. Get your copy from Goodreads here.

It's on my list of books to read at Goodreads. I'm presently reading Divergent, a dystopian young adult thriller that I'm enjoying almost as much as the Hunger Games, and almost as much as The First Pillar, I'm sure! I've entered the contest for The First Pillar and hope to win a SIGNED COPY from author Roy Huff.

Wish me luck. I love my Kindle and I love eBooks.

Join me on Goodreads, all you avid readers and authors, and find some really...er...GOOD READS!! No, find some GREAT READS, because they're all there!

Have any of my readers found a great read today? If so, tell us all about it! Don't be shy.

http://cherylktardif.blogspot.ca/p/submerged-blog-tour.html

I'm looking for an agent for this 35,500 word young adult/middle grade novel. Any comments?

I'm giving away a FREE article published on Dr. Raymond LeBlanc's website, and written by me. I just ask that you don't change it in any way and give me credit for authorship. Otherwise, you're welcome to copy it, print it, share, email, etc. at your convenience.