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| Notes from Paradise - Isla Mujeres 500,000 page views! |
Thanks to all of our faithful readers, we rolled
over to a half-million page views on our blog this week! Woohoo!
It is amazing how a funny little weekly email
that we started sending to twelve people in 2009 has grown to a weekly blog
with anywhere from four to eight thousand readers a week. (Some articles
interest people more than others.)
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| June 2009 - we started writing weekly emails |
When we started in June of 2009 it was to keep family members up to date on our newest adventure, our life in Mexico. The email list grew as family members asked if they could add their friends, and then those people wanted to add other friends. By September of 2011 the email list had grown to almost five hundred names.
When our neighbour Ronda Roberts started her
blog, Isla Mujeres News, a translation of local news in June of 2011, she suggested
that we switch over from a weekly email to a blog. Here's the link to Ronda's blog http://aboutislamujeres.blogspot.mx/
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| July 2014 - Sunset cool down for islanders |
Then in 2014 Google labelled our emails as
that dreaded word – spam. They shut down our list, refusing to deliver the
weekly articles to our readers. By our estimation we had sent out around seventy-five
thousand individual emails over the five years, but never to anyone who hadn’t
asked to be included in the list.
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| 1984 Great Horned Owl - who had an ambulance ride |
In the meantime we also created two more
blogs targeted to specific stories that interested us: European Adventure, and
Animals and Other Family Members. As you can probably guess by the titles these
are not Isla Mujeres-based stories, one being about our travels in Europe and
the other funny stories about pets and wild creatures we have befriended. The links to those stories are listed under My Blog List, on this webpage.
About eighteen months ago Tony Richardson,
editor of the popular on-line Mexico News Daily started re-posting our blog articles.
In his publication our stories are reaching a wider audience, some having been
shared thousands of times. Pretty heady stuff for two amateur scribblers. You
can find the direct link to Mexico News Daily on our list of blogs that we
follow. Or at this webpage, http://mexiconewsdaily.com/mexicolife/caribbean-treasures-found-on-isla-beach/
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| Insider's Guide to the Best of Mexico - FREE! |
Several of our articles have been included in
two on-line anthologies; Insider’s Guide to The Best of Mexico, and the second Insider’s
Guide which will be published soon. Here's a link for your free copy: http://sombrerobooks.com/?p=3908
The collection of feel good stories about Mexico are the brain-child of well-known novelist Carmen Amato. Check her Amazon page for a complete listing of her works. Our current favourites are the police procedurals featuring Detective Emilia Cruz in Acapulco. Here's the link to Carmen's webpage: http://carmenamato.net/
The collection of feel good stories about Mexico are the brain-child of well-known novelist Carmen Amato. Check her Amazon page for a complete listing of her works. Our current favourites are the police procedurals featuring Detective Emilia Cruz in Acapulco. Here's the link to Carmen's webpage: http://carmenamato.net/
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| July 2014 Diego and I toasting arrival of books |
In between the weekly blog articles, island
friend Diego Medina and I created the bi-lingual book for children, The
Adventures of Thomas the Cat / Las Aventuras de Tomas el Gato. Diego and I won a silver award at the International Latino Book Awards in Las Angeles for best picture book bilingual. The sequel is underway. https://www.facebook.com/TheAdventuresofThomasandSparky/
But wait there’s more! In 2016, I wrote and self-published my first
novel, Treasure Isla. Treasure Isla is a fun beach read, an adventure set on
Isla Mujeres. The e-book sales on Amazon are doing well, prompting me to write
the sequel, Trouble Isla. Trouble Isla
will be launched in late August of this year.
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| Amazon E-books, Treasure Isla and soon Trouble Isla |
All of this creativity started with a weekly
email to a few friends and family members. We discovered we like to write
stories and paint pictures with words.
Most of all we like to entertain people,
to provide a bit of information mixed in with light humor.
Thank you all again
for your on-going interest in our off-beat stories.
Cheers
Lynda & Lawrie
4 comments:
Lynda & Lawrie
Keep up the writing, I must say,after meeting you in Richmond aa few weeks ago, I am enjoying all of the blogs. Hoping to see the Isla later this year, also wanting to HUNT for burried treasure.....well maybe not..
All the best to you both, waiting patiently for the next on line book.
Cheers Bob
Hi Bob: Good to hear from you. Thank you so much for the nice comments, Cheers L&L
Thanks so much for your blog! I started reading it several years ago. I used to go to Isla every year, from 2001-2014. I have since retired, and now live in Puerto Morelos, but I look forward to reading your blog weekly. Keep up the good work!
Thanks.
Janet.
Thank you Janet. We like Puerto Morelos as well, enjoy your retirement in paradise. Cheers Lynda & Lawrie, and The Sparkinator our almost-famous beach mutt.
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