Quite possibly the best halloween site ever. Extremepumpkins.com is safe for work, but a major time killer.

A few people asked about the move from the old site design to WordPress. And yes, The Wife counts as one source of the queries.

The biggest problem with the classic design: search engines had no means of indexing content. In English – unless someone typed the exact URL, as far as the Internet was concerned, samhilliard.com did not exist. Good from a bandwidth conservation standpoint, at least.

Now that many blog entries are indexed, people can discover the site with a variety of search terms at google and other fine search engines.

For instance, below is a small sample of keywords people used recently that led them here.
1) meter – ah, the word count meter.
3) puss – Oedipus, I presume?
4) attack – not sure about this one.
5) 1964 – a great year, a great band.
6) bobbit – is he still alive? is she still alive?
7) remove – the jersey trash joke.

Can’t wait for the November crop.

Almost nine hundred words today. A little more than seven scenes left.

A bizarre week leads into an even stranger weekend.

The manuscript progresses slowly for the right reasons, i.e. lots of book sales, late seventies Honda style quality assurance controls. What lives on the page is tight. At this point in the story, every scene ends with a cliffhanger. Finding the best moment for a cut away is almost as challenging as writing the entire chapter.

The Wife has some sweet pictures of her Honduras trip for sharing. As soon as everything is burned on CD’s, I’ll post a small, enticing selection. You too can experience the waters of Roatan without risking the sting of sea wasps.

Oh, signs of new life on TV abound.

Quote of the day:
“I kind of lost the plot a little bit there really. I wasn’t very happy at all. I don’t think alcohol can make you happy.” – Kate Moss.

Despite several rounds of antibiotics and complementary antihistamines, steroids and drops, my ear infection returned. Tenacity like that is impressive, yes? My only wish is that the bacteria picked on someone with a more robust immune system.

All these drugs flooding my bloodstream, I feel like losing the plot a bit myself. Rereading that above sentence reminds me that Kate Moss and I have something in common. Now that really scares me.

The only good news on the writing front this past week – given the woeful page count – a proper replacement title for Velocity. A temporary one served as a placeholder for the past few months, since Dean Koontz released a book by that name. Be the similarity coincidence or fate, it annoyed me; I dug that title. Now since the working title no longer matters, it shall be forgotten, burned and buried in a box. And maybe wrapped in tinfoil and shipped to Abu Dhabi.

As much as I liked Velocity, the latest title is more appropriate. And nope, not a whisper of until its on a query letter. ‘Tis the season for secrets.