| I CAN EXPLAIN |  |
E.C.McMullen Jr. |
Hey Everybody!
For all you first timers here let me give you the basic rundown.
Feo Amante's Horror Home Page was officially launched in August 1999.
Feoamante.com had been around since Feb. of 1999 and Feo Amante's Horror Home Page was first created in August of 1998 at geocities.com.
Or so I thought in 2008.
The recent discovery of some old packed away back-up CDs suggest otherwise.
Many desktop and laptop computers ago, seems I began dabbling with book reviews in 1997 at geocities and posting them there.
But it was all text.
Colorful Roman Times text because black text on white and white text on black looked "Blah!" I'd no graphics there because I didn't know how to place them in a way that looked good. A stupid little square or rectangle over here. Another one over there. No order. I knew little about Tables and less about making Flash animations. I didn't know how to do much of anything outside of what geocities allowed by default, and Feo Amante - my wife's pet name for me - was a mere placeholder name because I wasn't happy enough with the site to have my own name in there. What if a powerful search engine like Web Crawler, Excite, Yahoo, Lycos, or Alta Vista found it?
I saw it as a prototype. I wasn't sure that my review writing was worth crowing about (I made my first short fiction sale in 1995. I had a nascent reputation to uphold!) and, until August 1998, I didn't feel confident enough to tell anyone. But I knew I had to start and practice. If only I could create a cool design!
In retrospect, nothing looked that great online in 1997, so it technically hasn't been around very long. Well, geologically speaking.
In less than ten years online, this happened -
"Feo Amante . . . Web legend extraordinaire! . . .The Granddaddy
of them all!"
- ReallyScary.com
In Net terms I was called the "Granddaddy of them all" back in 2002! I feel old already. Go get me a beer you goddam whippersnapper! Show some respect for the elderly by cracky, or I'll rise up and cave your head in with my cane!
On the other hand, my nickname had been Feo Amante for some time so I had a certain amount of infamy for quite a while. Even outside of Net terms. In our first year we got over 77,000 hits!
The
site was "killed off" in November of 2000 as it just became too big to handle.
"Huh?" I hear you say.
This site was started off as a hobby. I coded and set up the "tree" for this site in a very basic way, having had no idea at the time that it would grow to be so huge. Fortunately, I had a gentle tutor in the Horror writer, Patricia "Trish" Lee Macomber who helped me with the foundation of HTML scripting.
During feoamante's deadtime (it was still online but no outward updates), I revamped whole code and structure, making everything able to load faster on every page. What's more, I improved navigability so that everything makes a lot more sense. In that year we got over 781,000 hits!
feoamante.com rose from the grave during the Ides Of March, specifically, March 15, 2001.
New stuff as well as archived work was slowly but surely returning to the pages
with lots more still to come. Every week (hell, every day!) brought something new and with this
site, everyday is new as well.
". . . AMAZING
WEBSITE . . . A GUY COULD GET LOST IN THERE AND NEVER FIND HIS WAY OUT - COME
TO THAT, NEVER WANT TO FIND HIS WAY OUT. IT'S DARK AND SWEET IN THERE"
- Simon
Clark: Author of NAILED BY THE HEART, THE JUDAS TREE
People immediately started complaining. New is bad! The site was too streamlined. It lost its roughness. What happened to all the aimless wandering, surprises at every link, and so on?
This was totally unexpected as every book I had ever read on web building and navigation around the website ("Site maps!" They all screamed. "Visitors will avoid you unless you have site maps!") told me to clean up the web site and make it as easy as possible for folks to get around. Apparently this was not the case for the fans I already had. I also had to decide if this would be something "sticky" (an Internet marketing term) that would attract more folks.
I decided that my site, unlike, say, a news site, didn't have the purpose of giving folks the information they wanted WHEN they wanted it, which was RIGHT NOW. FeoAmante.com, it seems, is clearly an entertainment site and what's more, almost a game on the Internet where folks can aimlessly wander my harddrive the way folks like to aimlessly wander around a massive, well displayed bookstore. Oddly enough, I was the last to realize this. Never the less, in 2001 we got over 1,794,000 hits!
Hmm. . . there's some kind of 7 thing going on here. Or possibly even a 1 or 0 thing.
In 2002, over 4,000,000 hits.
In 2003, over 7,000,000 hits.
"THAT SITE IS F*CKING AMAZING! IT'S THE GUY WITH THE BALD HEAD, RIGHT?"
- Guillermo del Toro director of HELLBOY, PAN'S LABYRINTH, and more
In 2003, I'd long realized that hits were meaningless in comparison to actual visitors and how many pages those visitors were reading. So starting in May of that year, I began counting visitors as well as the pages they viewed. That meant cookies, something that, at first, I found intrusive until my counter software could make a cookie to put on MY hard drive and not on the computer of my visitor. From May to December of 2003, FeoAmante.com racked up over 450,000 page views. How many pages my visitors were actually reading. As you can see from the hit count, the difference between "hits" and page views can be enormous.
In 2004, I only counted visitors and page views. That year we had over 485,000 visitors and nearly 1,000,000 page views. The hit count jumped into the tens of millions - which gives you an idea of hit counts.
"I wanted you to know that your website is wonderful! It's a major stop
on the horror highway, like one of those weird buildings that looks
like a giant chicken you just have to stop and look at, and when you
go in it's full to the rafters with really neat, strange stuff."
- Al Sarrantonio - Editor 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense and author of TOYBOX
So here we are today, February, 2008. I guess I made the right decisions, all based on the feedback I get from readers. The month of January alone got over 115,000 visitors. Slowly this site is growing and being noticed. In fact, we are growing against all common "Net Wisdom". We've never had investor money and yet we get more visitors than the commercial major funded Horror sites falling by the way side every year.
In 1999, when the dot.com bubble froze, our numbers kept growing. In 2000 when the dot.com bubble burst, our visitors kept growing. In the following years when nobody knew what to make of the Internet, our numbers kept growing. Today everyone is going nuts for online videos, which are just a blurry low rez version of TV, except it's TV with home movies. Websites garning thousands of people looking at themselves are burning through millions of dollars of bandwidth every month and people have no idea how to make money from it - but they sure know how to lose money on it! Meanwhile, as the other dot.coms and specifically Horror Thriller sites rise and fall, we continue to grow.
I've never gone for the fast thrill burn out of a particular gimmick - I've just kept doing what we all love, talking and promoting the genres of Horror, Thriller, Mystery, and Suspense. I'm not worried about the competition from other Horror Thriller sites. In fact - if you don't like me - I'd rather you go to them than just not have a place to satisfy your interests.
". . . you are truly a terrifying figure in the genre (which I mean,
of course, in a GOOD way!)"
- Ed Lee
author of INFERNAL ANGEL, CITY INFERNAL and more.
Why do I keep saying "I" and "we"?
One of the main reasons for the success of feoamante.com, is the people around the world who send in reviews, news, interviews, and other articles. From countries like Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, England, France, Ireland, Italy, as well as states all over the U.S., people find feoamante.com and contribute. It promotes their own talents, sure, but that is what we are all about here, promoting Horror, Thriller, Mystery, and Suspense in every artistic fictional form.
Some of the people who started on this site when we were unknown (just a few short years ago!) are now seeing their own books in print and on store shelves. Writers like Ryan Harding (co-writer of PARTNERS IN CHYME), Mike Oliveri (DEADLIEST OF THE SPECIES), Brian Keene (GHOUL), Judi Rohrig (editor of STONES), Monica J. O' Rourke (editor DECADENCE), and Brian Knight (editor of both RARE and RAW anthologies).
We have also had the help of more established talents like Michael T. Huyck Jr. (editor of HASTUR PUSSYCAT, KILL, KILL), Linda D. Addison (CONSUMED, REDUCED TO BEAUTIFUL GREY ASHES), David Whitman (DEAD FELLAS), Weston Ochse (SCARECROW GODS), Harry Shannon (writer of DEAD AND GONE), and Christos N. Gage (co-screenwriter of THE BREED).
On every major search engine, under the search words, "Horror Thriller" (quotes not necessary) feoamante.com comes up as first choice. I don't respond to many of you and I apologize for that, but despite appearances, I'm really only one guy answering these emails. One guy who gets an average of 150 emails every day. Though I can't take the time to write a response to every e-mail, be assured that I read every one (every one that gets through at any rate - sometimes my e-mail carrier gets stuffed).
"FEO! HOLY SHIT, YOUR WEBSITE IS FANTASTIC ! ! I MEAN, I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT
IT WAS GREAT, BUT NOW ITS FANTASTIC."
- Douglas
Clegg, Author of: HALLOWEEN MAN, THE ABANDONED
Where am I going, Feo?
Where would you like? Every one of the main sections below has its own subsections. Enjoy exploring
If you click on the Story Eye, you will go to the page that has stories and links to underground or small press publishers of some of the finest and most difficult to find Horror, Thrillers, Mysteries, and Suspense around. These are the books that generally win the Stoker, IHG, etc. awards and as such, become very valuable extremely fast. Collectors know.
When you click on the Movie eye, you will go to our Horror Movie review page. The review page, in addition
to the Movie reviews, also features a list of upcoming movies in the Horror/Thriller/Mystery
vein. We are particularly interested in independent and underground movies.
There are also comments concerning big doings in the Horror Film community.
If you think that your movie is good, by all means send us a copy and we will
watch it and post our review if it scores high enough (3 or more or Negative 3 or more). If you send us something bad we will
simply chalk it up to "At least you are trying" and not make any comment
at all. Check it out, I'm sure you'll like it.
*Trashing lousy movies from major studios is one thing, we don't trash unsigned indies
and underground movies.
The Comic Eye will take you to Fanboy Of Fear. It features news and reviews of comic books and graphic novels as well as animation in the Horror, Thriller, Suspense, or Mystery vein. We welcome indie comic creators / publishers as well as animators. We also welcome reviewers and article writers. Get yourself some recognition and stop arguing in the local comic book store, the chatrooms, on the message boards, and at the conventions. If you're review is good enough, we'll post that sucker and you can then point to yourself as the FINAL authority on the subject! HA! Won't your enemies be green!
The News Eye will take you to Feo Amante's Horrible News. Real Headlines - Lampoon News. No kidding gang, some of these headlines, just by themselves are ridiculous. This also gives me a place to rant. Ah! The joy of having one's own website! But remember, the news items are not actual and not to be taken seriously. If you insist on taking them seriously then you are an idiot.
The Con Eye will take you to the Conventions page. All conventioneers are welcome to send their photos, reviews, and articles on the conventions they've attended. If you have a decent looking photo gallery (That is not blurry or difficult to look at) we'll post a link to your web pages where you keep 'em! We won't post links to anyone who charges visitors to see their stuff. If you want to charge money like that, fine. Pay ME money to advertise your product in the first place. NOW we are talking mercenary!
All of these
pages are growing and more are added each week, with some pages being
updated as often as five times a week.
If you think you have something to offer in the way of reviews, drop me a line at feoamante and tell me what you have to offer.
All our reviews are written by published writers, most of them published Horror/Thriller/or Mystery writers and fans who have never been published anywhere, ever. I hope you like their unique perspective. I look forward to the message boards and getting your feedback.
Stay safe you all, and let all of the Horror be Beyond Your Door.
Individual items such as Videos, Books, Tapes or CD's, etc. sent to us become our property (the medium itself i.e. the video cassette or DVD, the Book or tape, and the Tape or CD, not the intellectual work or other property.) Feo Amante (feoamante.com) will never make any claim to the rights of any intellectual property that is sent to us. That belongs to the original copyright owner. For the purpose of free press, we do retain the right to present a representative image of the work with the review for reason of identification for the visitor.
STORY TIME MOVIES FANBOY OF FEAR HORRIBLE NEWS CONVENTIONS
Feo
Amante's Horror Home Page and feoamante.com are owned and copyright 1997 - 2008 by E.C.McMullen Jr.
All images and text belong to E.C.McMullen Jr. unless otherwise noted.
All fiction stories belong to their individual authors. All artwork in
The Gallery belongs to the individual artists.
