Welcome to BenWoods.com

While there are many things to consider when writing, one of the most important items has to be the audience. If I write the greatest story in the history of literature, and it's a war story, there's a good chance that people who aren't interested in war won't like it.

"The Developers" isn't about war, and it's not the greatest story in the history of literature. Maybe the top 10, but not the greatest. Ha! Even when you anticipate that you know your audience, there's still something that just doesn't fit.

Authors who are either self-published or with small publishers have an extremely difficult time getting the word out about their novels. Most large publishing houses have money devoted to advertising, and well-known authors usually have their own publicists to handle marketing.

You receive a lot of spam, right? Apparently, so does everyone else.

In a recent report compiled by SoftScan, close to 90 percent of emails sent in July were spam. It should be noted that SoftScan is a company that offers anti-spam software, and that it also acknowledges that fewer actual emails were sent in July because of the holiday, according to vnunet.com.

To preview today's book signing, The News-Enterprise ran an article in Thursday's Pulse, its entertainment guide. The article is just a brief overview, but it is an article nevertheless. Here's the text of the preview:

Humor and technology collide in 'Developers' (08/03/06)

Louisville author coming to E'town for book signing

By The NE Staff

ELIZABETHTOWN - Purdue graduate and Louisville resident Ben Woods will be in Hardin County to sign his new book "The Developers" from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 4, at Waldenbooks in Towne Mall in Elizabethtown.

I will be at the Elizabethtown, Ky., Waldenbooks in Towne Mall 5-7 p.m. Aug. 4 to discuss and sign my latest book, The Developers. The humor-fiction novel mixes the insane and obscene with technology, romance and pop culture. But while the book's web development group tries to make its mark on the virtual world, it encounters pre-eminent issues that will soon be shaping the Internet of the future: Are individuals losing their remaining privacy due to the World Wide Web? Will online social interaction eventually replace in-person gatherings as a necessary means?

If you are familiar with the Periodic Table (and if you aren't, please have a chat with your chemistry teacher soon!), you might be interested to know that someone has compiled a list of English words that can be spelled with chemical symbols.

No, the person wasn't me. Actually, the computer did most of the work, but Dr. Nandor's Exhaustive Chemical Words Pages shows a multitude of ways to combine elements to form words.

Authors who are either self-published or with small publishers have an extremely difficult time getting the word out about their novels. Most large publishing houses have money devoted to advertising, and well-known authors usually have their own publicists to handle marketing.

HostGator, it was a good run. But unfortunately, you haven't stayed up with the times.

It's disappointing that your technical support is awful - so much so that for a basic question, I would have to restart a chat multiple times to find someone who had any idea about my question. A few times, I had more success googling and trying random things than asking tech support.

It's bad enough when you can't win a simple game of cards with your family. But when you're a poker champion and have to play against multiple bots colluding against you, well, it's time to take up something else, maybe shuffleboard.

I received an email recently about a new movie and a contest for a trip to New York. The new movie, "Fix" starring Olivia Wilde, seems like it could be pretty decent. It's based on a true story, centering around the director trying to bail his brother out of jail in a single day.