Gwen Florio has been on my List of People I Want to Meet for a long time now and I’m thrilled I was lucky enough to hang out with her recently at Bouchercon. She did not disappoint. She had me the minute she showed me a picture of her dog, the proud owner of the longest tongue I’ve ever seen .

Gwen leads a fascinating life in Montana as an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and her mysteries and crime fiction are favorites of many people … me included!

Soon to be one of your favorites too, I suspect!

Subscribers to my mailing list get the chance to win this signed copy. I have many more spectacular books from many more spectacular authors which I’ll give away every month, so if you’re not a subscriber, sign up today. And if you are a subscriber, keep an eye out for my So Seldom It’s Shameful News. Your name will be in the next issue if you’ve won. (Keep me out of your spam folder because I can’t breathe in there.)

Facebook alerted me that today is the day, eight crazy years ago, that I started this blog.

But then when I went to look at my first post, I see it’s dated September 1st. My memory is like a sieve, but I suspect I loaded a bunch of posts on there just to see what was what and then pulled the trigger a few weeks later.

So then I took a little trip down statistic lane. I rarely check my stats, although they are interesting. I used to be able to see a map of the world with a little flag that popped up anywhere someone clicked on any of my pages. Haven’t done it in years (and can’t find it now), but back in the day, it was fun to see I had visitors from almost every country on the globe.

Except one. I’m looking at you, North Korea.

Of the stats I don’t have to, you know, search for, I see I have 416 posts published right now. I had more but I deleted a bunch when I redid my website the last time.

People don’t talk to me much on the blog, but 1,434 folks stopped by and left a comment.

There’s more spam than seems reasonable, but I have a great Venus flytrap spam blocker so I don’t see those messages, only the number.

The most views I had in one day was on January 30, 2015 when 1,124 people read Dear Frontier Airlines. It still gives me a thrill when people share what I’ve written with their Facebook and Twitter friends. Pingbacks are near and dear to my heart.

Over the years I’ve had 38,807 unique visitors to BeckyLand.

In the last week, the top searches that led people to my blog were: “pinky toe broken”, “shemar 2014”, “bravo zulu quotes”, and “scrabble equipment.”

I’m still amazed that my post about my silly pinky toe gets an average of 100 hits every month. I’d like to know the percentage of people who also thought they broke their toe vs those with simple foot fetishes.

Here are the All-Time Top Searches leading folks to my blog …

Do you sense a theme??

At any rate, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading some of my nonsense as much as I like posting it.

Now let’s have some blogversary cake!

• I put on my workout clothes at 8:00 a.m. so I don’t have to change for my 6:00 p.m. workout

• I line my pans with foil before cooking anything in the oven

• I refrain from lining my pans with foil before cooking anything in the microwave

• I cancel the remaining 18 seconds on the microwave because I can’t do anything in 18 seconds but I’m tired of standing there. Plus, it’s probably hot enough for something you reheat in the microwave.

• I use my camera phone selfie-style to see what’s stuck in my teeth instead of walking ten steps to a mirror

These are just a few of the things I’ve done in the past few days. So, what do you think? Lazy … or efficient?

This was a fun read … cute without being cutesy. Main characters I want to hang out with, especially Jake [insert growling noises here].

Funny lines I liked:

• I survived the bridal shower, but only in the most literal sense of the word.

• If life hands you husbands who don’t work out, make millionaire-ade.

• And it [the couch] was hideous. The diamond-and-square, brown-and-orange print made me feel like I was having a seizure.

Check it out … and other stuff by Cindi Madsen.

I read the obituary of Janet Dailey, a best-selling romance writer. I didn’t know her or her work, but this line caught my eye:

“According to various estimates, she enforced a writing quota of 10 pages per day to produce novels at a rate of about one per month, with an occasional work knocked out in just over a week and others taking longer.”

My, my, my. I feel quite slug-like.

The article went on to say that in 1986 her books sold in 90 countries at a rate of about 43,000 per day.

Can you imagine? Hmm. I can. Unfortunately, it probably also takes actual prioritizing and work ethic.