The Peeping Parisian

A new story up on the DAC, and a return for Tiberius O'Donnell.

The Womens Lawn Tennis competition in Paris is the settting and Tiberius finds himself having to deal with a blasted ragamuffin.

Read here

More Fridayflash Statistics, Writing and a New Tale From Tiberius...

It's been a few weeks, since I have done a fridayflash. Mainly down to my work in getting the Leeds Savage Club up and running, plus there has been a lot going on around my film Mortus Illumina. I 've also got quite a few longer pieces in progress, including an early transatlantic crossing attempt, an archeologist and a whole load of dead Romans and a return to Break Creek

My Novella progress monitor hasn't moved since December, mainly because as mentioned here, It would always be the first thing to go on the backburner - which it has.

But, A new tale From Tiberius O'Donnell this week, entitled "The Right Rollicking Race" set around the university town of Oxford, and a penny farthing race.  You can also get the first six Tiberius O'Donnell stories for your Kindle here and they will be appearing in the reading room soon(maybe even today).

I also notice, I am up to 22 stories on the DAC (not including Mount Norfolk) and when I did the first 10, I posted some statistics which you can see here, so I thought I would do the same, with the next ten stories.

This Period is December 11th 2009 to February 18th 2010, covering the ten stories posted in that time.
There were a total of 809 Visits (up 52 from last time) from 29 countries (14 last time) with the bulk of my traffic coming from United Kingdom, United States and Canada (Germany knocked down to 6th spot)

The most popular story was "The Nth Page of Henry Lamberton's Journal " with a 138 visits. In the last ten, it was "The Backstreet Berlin Brawl" with 114 visits

The most commented story was "A Northern Swan Song" with 26 comments, compared to "E Tu Brute" which had 22 comments

and the story with the highest comment to post ratio was The Sabotaging Swede with 24% compared to 36%, which was "E Tu Brute" in the last period.

On average, I got 86.5 reads per a story (up 10.5 from last time ) and I can expect 1 in 6 people to leave a comment (down from 1 in 5)
.
The least read story was  Queen of Sheba with just 45 views,  which was just one above The Most Blasted Blizzard  from last time.  This was also the lowest commented with 8 comments, compared to the Blasted Blizzard which only had 4.

Titles	Visits	Comments	Perc
The Nth Page of Henry Lamberton’s Journal	138	19	13%
A Northern Swan Song	112	26	23%
Wisdom From the Chorus Line	102	19	18%
The Complexing Conundrum	99	16	16%
The Foreign Looking Fellow	97	16	16%
The Sabotaging Swede	77	19	24%
At the Village Doctors	71	10	14%
A Letter Home To Mammy	66	13	19%
Speranza	58	11	18%
Queen of Sheba	45	8	17%

Finally, The Top Five stories all time from my fridayflash contibutions are;

The Backstreet Berlin Brawl
Day 8
The Nth Page of Henry Lambertons Journal
Georgie
The Last Page of Henry Lambertons Journal

Of course, what post on statistics would be complete without a good picture of a dangle. Pictured is Brit Ekland and you can find more photos on this unappreciated pose at Film Noir Photos

The Sabotaging Swede

New Tiberius Story up on the DAC entitled "The Sabotaging Swede"

I follow several victorian, Edwardian and history blogs to look out for ideas for the DAC, as well as general interest. One of these, the Victorian Peeper had a post, which mentioned the first body building competition. This was organised by Eugen Sandow  who is called the father of modern bodybuilding.  What struck my attention, was the fact the judges included Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Charles Lawes.

There is an excellent article on the IFBB site, about the competition, which you can read here .

Took a fair time to write this story, so I hope you enjoy it.

New Tale From Tiberius O'Donnell

The Complexing Conundrum, which you can read here 

 The Action takes place deep in the Tuscany countryside in a village called Montespertoli, which was a place I visited last year  where I stayed on the most delightful vinyard Podere Dell'Anselmo. I hope they see this plug and send me a bottle of their great wine ;-)

Talking of drink, As its the sixth Tall Tale from Tiberius, and we all know Tiberius likes one. I thought I would produce this handy Drink A Long list;

The Despicable Beast of Marrakesh	Red Wine
The Backstreet Berlin Brawl	Cognac
The Dabble With The Occult	Champagne
The Most Blasted Blizzard	Bourbon
The Foreign Looking Fellow	Cider
The Complexing Condundrum	Gin & Tonic

* The above picture is of a Murgese Horse, which I rode when I was there, it seemed fitting to place this story here because of the association with the Horse.  Also of note, after you have read the story, is we did indeed meet a Bavarian called Hermann whilst we were there.  Some more photos I took, over here

Dead Adventurer Statistics, Friday Flash and a question.

I was going to start this post off with a pretty graph, but numbers is really p*ssing me off so instead, for your enjoyment is a picture of Virna Lisi showing a textbook example of 'the Dangle'. More examples of this highly unappreciated pose can be found at Film Noir Photos

Now onto the statistics. I have pulled this together as I'm debating which three stories to submit for the fridayflash anthology and, well Im a bit of sucker for numbers.

The Stories I am condisdering submitting are the following:

"An Unsent Letter from a Tommy"
"The Backstreet Berlin brawl"

and then im torn between

"Et Tu Brute?"
or
"Break Creek"

I would appreciate input on which of those two to choose, please drop us a comment.

Now onto the statistics; I am looking at  the period of 2nd October to December 10th 2009 and the ten stories I submitted in that time.

I have had 757 Visits in Total from 14 different countries. The bulk of my traffic comes from the United Kingdom, United States,  Germany and then Canada *

The Most popular story by number of Visitors is Tiberius in "The BackStreet Brawl" with 114 visits and my most commented story is "E Tu Brute?" with 22 comments.  This story also has the highest visitor/comment ratio at 36.07 %

On average it appears that I get 76 reads per a story and an average of 14 comments. I can expect roughly one in five visitors to leave a comment.

The Lowest visited story with 36 visits was Tiberius in "The Most Blasted Blizzard"  and the lowest commented: Tiberius again in "The Dabble With The Occult" with only 4 comments

Here is the complete table

Title	Visits	Comments	Perc
Day 8	112	14	12.5%
The Backstreet Berlin Brawl	114	17	14.91%
The Last Page of Henry Lambertons Journal	70	9	12.86%
Georgie	82	17	20.73%
The Dabble with the Occult	50	4	8%
Break Creek	67	7	10.45%
An Unsent Letter From a Tommy	83	15	18.07%
The Most Blasted Blizzard	36	10	27.28%
A Cocktale	82	21	25.61%
E Tu Brute?	61	22	36.07%

As mentioned I'm curious to what people think about Break Creek Vs E Tu Brute so please leave a comment. I am also curious to see how these figures compare to other fridayflashers - I've shown you mine now you show me yours ;-)

* also on my site appears two non fridayflash stories, Mount Norfolk and The Despicable Beast of Marrakesh which were not excluded from the country figures

The Foreign Looking Fellow - First singalong #fridayflash

A nod to the old Music Hall Songs in this Tall Tale of Tiberius O'Donnell entitled "The Foreign Looking Fellow"

If you want to sing along,

Two Lovely Black Eyes

Where Did You Get That Hat?

The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo
youtube
Lyrics

image courtesy of NLS "Word on the Street"

The Next Tall Tale...

Gave a read out of "The Most Blasted Blizzard" last night at the Leeds Writing Group. The story is another installment in the Tall Tales of Tiberius O'Donnell and is the first historical outing for Tiberius as the action takes place in The Great Blizzard of 1888

My Tiberius Voice was not on form last night - was a bit clunky but it got some laughs in the right places.  Ideally In my head I have a very posh public school voice that occasionally slips into a Irish twang and a drunken slur. The drunken slur, I have no problems doing.

A lot of these early tales are going to be more giving back-story and introduction to other characters in Tiberius world.  One of the things I am most pleased with "The Most Blasted Blizzard" is I finally got a mention of Tiberius pal Hans, who has been deleted from all three stories so far.

Might sound a bit odd, but I have a self imposed 1000 word-ish limit on the Tall Tales and Hans has been the main victim of cutting.

In "The  Despicable Beast of Marrakesh" Tiberius meets Hans for the first time and shares a cabin with him on the Steamer to Marrakesh, which I have made canon in the Tiberius universe.

In "The Backstreet Berlin Brawl", Before Tiberius starts telling the tale,  Hans was going to be mentioned in Tiberius thoughts about the Germans. Finally in "The Dabble with the Occult" I was going to have another attempt at introducing the character, but I swapped that out for the three rules Tiberius mother told him.

Hans is going to be a recurring character as much as Tiberius and his Zeppelins investments will be, so I am pleased to finally get a mention in at last. I will be posting "The Most Blasted Blizzard" this friday as part of #fridayflash so check out the DAC then.