Yoosa guys gonna love this. Itsa bombad random!

Based on Cooper's suggestion, let's make a revision to the pool of titles we're picking from. Rather than draw from a huge list of hundreds, everyone picks a book for the Jar. That's up to nineteen titles (if everyone currently active in IW participates) to choose from. A number of balls equal to the titles offered up go in the Jar and we draw from those. When a pick is picked, the picker picks another pick. Rinse and repeat. I'll keep the monster list and get it up on the website for folks to peruse for ideas. It might get up this week as I'm off, but there's a couple of projects ahead of the website in the queue.

I vastly prefer this as it winnows down the choices to those the group wants and increases the odds of each title being selected while keeping things random. So think about it and send me your choice, say, by January 19th. If there happens to be a duplication, say Julie and Robert both suggest The Silmarillion, first one in gets it.*

*No purchase necessary to enter. Need not be present to win. Open to legal residents of the Gould Belt** only.

**Gould Belt? As in System Lords? No wonder SG-1 was able to pick so many off, we're right in the heart of their territory.

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I'm curious if anyone can access the ImagiCon forum? The front looks normal, but all I get is a blank page when trying to read a thread. Tried on two machines. Is there anything new on their Facebook page? (I don't want to sign up for FB just to check.) There's only one little bit on the front of their homepage about the artist guest-of-honor for this May's (supposed) con, but that's the only sign of life. They've not even begun selling memberships yet. Smells like they've gone tango-uniform and like Borders, just haven't dropped to the ground yet. C'est la vie.

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Looks like a sizable chunk of the cast of The Lords of the Rings will be returning for The Hobbit. The latest addition is Elijah Wood reprising his role as Frodo Baggins in a framing sequence for the films. Peter Jackson's definitely working to tie all five(!) films together as a single piece. I know there's been some issue about Christopher Lee returning as Saruman, but if the dude can take a role in Season of the Witch ("Oh no!"), he can come back for this. Just shoot his stuff in jolly old England and splice it together in post.

Digging up the link for the Wood bit, I saw on Collider that HBO has set a premiere date for A Game of Thrones, April 17. They also have a post with 28 images from the series. Winter's coming... apparently Sunday night here in Alabama. Eight inches of snow and ice!

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Okay, I lied about the graphs, but let me pass along the year-end stats for both the main Inner Worlds page and the blog for 2010. You can see the website's had well over 100% growth in the number of visits and while I don't have the 2009 numbers for the blog at hand, it's seen an even greater percentage of growth.

InnerWorldsbhm.com — Page Requests
Yearly
2009       1189 (4.2 per day — this number is inflated because I hit the site a lot during the set-up)
2010       3064 (8.39 per day)

Quarter
            Q1        Q2       Q3        Q4
2009    67        252      397      473
2010    454      698      833      1079

blog.innerworldsbhm.com — Total Visits
1/07/10 - 1/07/11:      4055 (5.42 per day)

As I mentioned in the last post about this, there's no way we'll see the same percentage of growth in 2011 and beyond, but as long as we don't slide backwards, things will be fine.