Eighteen years on (also: US availability of The Furaha Book, and Furaha at DinoCon 2026)

 This blog started with the post Why are there humans on Furaha? on 22 April, 2008. That is 18 years ago, suggesting that the blog has now left adolescence and has come of age.

Apparently, Blogger started in 1999, so the oldest blogs could be 27 years old by now. Google bought Blogger in 2003, so the oldest Google blogs can be 23 years old by now. Still, 18 years is a respectable amount of time to maintain a blog.

The last ‘birthday commemoration’ such as this one was published in 2022. I used to publish a list of most popular posts, but will not do that now, for the simple reason that there are probably so many bots about that the numbers provided by Blogger may not mean much. For what it’s worth, Blogger reports that the blog has been seen 2.63 million times in all, but I have no idea how many bots were among these visits. However, some data are still reliable and meaningful: I have written 328 posts that together evoked 2970 comments. Not bad, I feel, for such a niche subject.

As I read that Google Analytics provides a more reliable view of blog visits and visitors, I activated that 18 days ago. Over that small period, my blog attracted about 1600 views a week from 522 users. Most active users came from the USA (38%), followed, to my surprise, by Singapore with 24%, and the UK with 5%. The blog is in English, so a preponderance of Anglophones is to be expected. I wonder whether that large Singaporean interest is caused by a local interest causing a temporary spike or whether Singaporeans are simply the world largest fans of speculative biology. If any Singaporean readers like to comment, please do!       

Anyway, I aim to continue blogging, even now that The Book is out.

As for that, readers in the USA may have noted that the Furaha book could only be ordered from British sources by was not directly available from a US distributor. I was told that this is becaszue of contractual reasons, and that the delay would be at least six months. The people at Crowood Press now told me that Simon and Schuster will start selling the book directly in the USA on 28 July, 2026. I am sorry if that is later than you would like; it is certainly later than I would like! 

Finally, I will be at Dinocon on July 25th and 26th, 2026 in Birmingham in the UK, where I plan to sell items there for the first time! DinoCon is of course mostly about dinosaurs, and promises to be even larger and even better than last year!