Showing posts with label Today in medieval History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Today in medieval History. Show all posts

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Did We Touch a Nerve?

I set out this morning to do one of those search term posts, the idea I stole from Susan Higginbotham you know, about my Today in Medieval History site, but the search terms people used over the past month just haven't been ripe for jokes.

They have, on the other hand, fascinating for their appropriateness! And in their numbers. For a long time I had been doing the calendar more or less for my own entertainment and hoping to help out suthors of medieval-era novels with some extra prom otion, but suddenly, thanks to a particular angel named Sharon Kay Penman, my stats are climbing rapidly.

Sharon, you see, stated on her own blog that Today in Medieval History is one of her favorite blogs and commented on my often "snarky" headlines and so forth.  I am afraid "Snark", if that means irreverent, is my native tongue.  She liked my reference to Henry II's wedding to "a French divorcee".  Since then my visitors have have multiplied gratifyingly.

I still find the keywords people used primarily in Google that led them to the calendar intriguing.  One person in Kea was looking for "king 1588".  I don't know what s/he was looking for, but I can't help but wonder what s/he made of "King Off, De Guise s in Town".

There were several searches for the unsurprising famous names, Mary Queen of Scots, for instance.  Another couple of people looked for "Catherine Howard, Queen of England" while someone else coincidentally found the blog via "Thomas Culpepper rape".  I mean, Kate was indeed aggressive, but did she rape him.  I doubt it.

The most common keywords were dates.  To wit:
  • may 1291
  • 8th july medieval
  • Jul 7
  • medieval 7th july
  • Jul 4 and Jul 5  were both popular, as well as a few other early dates in July, one specifically interested in 4 July 1187.
I hope they learned what they hoped to.  The fact that several included the word "medieval" in their search as well as there being a couple for "today in medieval history " tempts me to think they were specifically looking for my daily calendar.  you can put the calendar on your site or blog, but I don't know how, if at all, that shows up in the stats.

If Sharon Kay Penman continues her embassy on my sites' behalf, she will quickly go from beloved author to abjectly adored around my kingdom..

By the way, my stats are collected at Statbounter.com .

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Is Your Novel On our Calendar?

Mayhap you have had a chance to check out our Today in Medieval History daily online calendar.

Mayhap you have noticed the instructions on the page that tells you how to add this calendar to your blog or web site?

But mayhap you do not know that if your novel, old or new, depicts a famous event in medieval history -- an d we define that as being between 500 and 1600 AD give or take -- we would be pleased as Punch to at least print your title and ordering information and would also like to print an excerpt from your book describing some aspect of the event!

All you have to do is send us your title, the ISBN and, if including an excerpt, a Word or text file attachment to hawthorne@nanhawthorne.com with the subject line "for the medieval calendar" or words to that effect.

For some examples, take a look at these pages:

19 April 1536
5 August 1192
22 August 1485

The blog is an Amazon Associate site.

Questions? Contact us at hawthorne@nanhawthorne.com!

P.S. We even want to know about books you read about these events. For instance, anyone know of a book that tells how Ben Jonson, the playwright and poet, came to be arrested for manslaughter?

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Announcing "Today in medieval History"

You may have noticed that at the very top of the right hand side of this blog a Twitter feed with dates in medieval history. We just improved on this little feature. Now there is a whole blog dedicated to providing tidbits of interesting events, including battles, births, deathss and matters related to the arts, architecture, astronomy, religion, and more. It is Today in Medieval History, a daily calendar. You can see the updates every day on this blog or visit the blog itself, even sign up to follow the new blog.

Please visit at your leisure and let us know what you think of the new feature. Would you like to put Today in Medieval History on your blog or web site? Just let us know.