The Relâche Hub

"Relâche" is a French word that sort of means "no performance tonight." The Surrealists staged a dance/theater piece with this as the title back in the 1920s. The surreal part is that "relâche" is the word that was put on signs outside old-fashioned stage theaters on nights when the stage was to be dark, that is to say when there was NO show.

I like unusual words and I really liked this one. I first heard it in one of my graduate school classes in the mid-1990s, just before the "dot.com" boom in the Bay Area. It's since become my online moniker.

I do a good amount of web writing. You'll find links to my own web site here, my Squidoo lenses, my latest hubs and different capsules highlighting my most recent features from other web sites where I produce content. I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures!

If you've got a question or comment, there's a spot at the bottom of this page where you can ask or add your thoughts. Thanks for visiting my Hub!

I was profiled by HubPages on Sept 27, 2007 newsletter. Here's the interview:

1. Tell us a little about yourself.

   I'm a former Bay Area resident now living in the Pacific Northwest. Those SF rents finally got to be too much for self-employment. I grew up on the East Coast but my adult life has been spent on the West Coast. A lot of things agree with me much more on the "left" coast.

2. What brought you to HubPages?

   I was over at Squidoo and read a bit about HubPages while it was still in beta. I emailed asking for an invite and Paul Edmondson sent me one. I've just been playing on the platform ever since. I was curious to see how HubPages was the same or different from other sites offering to pay royalties for content building. I also was curious to see how it worked in conjunction with a site like BellaOnline.com, where I've been the body art editor for five years now.

3. What do you like Hubbing on, with respect to topics?

   Hubbing works for a lot of topics. I love movies, and I've been slowly learning to cook, and you could probably tell that from looking at my Hubs. HubPages also makes a good home for topics that I'm not heavily invested in on other sites, odd bits of info like shoe shining or how to tie a necktie.

4. What has been your best Hub so far (in your opinion)? Why?

   My hub on The Best Salmon Recipes wins for being the hub I print out most often at friend's houses while cooking dinner. The roasted-garlic-topped salmon is a crowd-pleaser. I find that a great hub for traffic might not be the top earner, or the one with the most comments, so really, I feel like I've got a lot of different "bests" in my group of Hubs.

5. What is your favorite Hub by another Hubber? Why?

   If there's one thing that's incredibly hard about HubPages, it's picking just one of anything.

6. What is one nice thing about HubPages (the site) that many might not know?

   Diversity of resources (links) really makes for a better Hub and HubScore. Too many people coming to HubPages are just trying to drive traffic to one other place and that's not what HubPages was founded to do.

7. Name one thing you learned about from another Hubber's Hub that you didn't know about before.

   Well, I haven't tried it just yet but I'm hoping to make my own yogurt, courtesy of another author's Hub info.

8. What kind of Hubber do you typically join the Fan Club of? Why?

   I tend to be fans of authors who are doing their own thing, who tend to exhibit something that isn't typical. I'm a fan of things that catches my interest unexpectedly, but also have clear quality of thought behind them.

9. If you could impart one piece of advice to a new Hubber, what would that be?

   I think the greatest benefit from HubPages comes from putting up material that is both practical and personal, like how you'd offer advice to a friend who asked you for help. And if in doubt, keep it simple versus trying to make it complicated.

10. Tell us something that we'd never guess about you—surprise us!

    If I really said the first thing that came to mind, you'd have a non-family-friendly statement here.... LOL! I think I'll keep that surprise to myself for now.

In October 2007, I put together a nearly month-long road trip of sorts. I had a few events in Las Vegas that I wanted to attend, and they took place at either end of the month. So, I found other places to travel and friends to stay with and hit the road for the entire month!

One of my stop-overs was San Francisco, so I stopped by the HubPages home office too! I can now lay claim to the title of "first Hub author to visit the office." At the time, it was nine guys in a room. No kidding, that's Web 2.0 for ya! 

On my second pass through Las Vegas that month, I also got to meet Scott, aka somelikeitscott. If you haven't read his stuff here, I recommend it. And he's just as fabulous and funny in person as he is in his writing and videos too! We had lunch at GameWorks, which is where he worked at the time. He's definitely a kindred spirit and I'm glad we were able to cross paths.

In February 2011, the first Hub Meetups got started and I had the very first one, in Seattle, WA.  Interestingly, the one person who showed up was Linda, a Hubber from Portland, OR.  She was in Seattle to do some geneology research for her family tree.

Rae got to 200 Hubs in the fall of 2010 and decided to stop making new Hubs for a while. In 2011, the Hub Ad program debuted, then the Panda update happened, then subdomains debuted. Despite not making any new Hubs during all that, she's seen her earnings go up significantly. She now does occasionally make a new Hub but when she does, she deletes something that she just hasn't been able to improve over the last five years.

The #1 thing that seems to really enrage people who don't like her is the opening phrase from her profile and her choice to use the word "whatever" to describe the broad swatch of topics she writes about. She's gotten more hate mail and attack postings that quote that line than any other complaint that's ever been raised about her. She finds that hilarious, which would probably make those people even angrier. Whatever...