STRANGER THAN FICTION

Luna Mellul, the main character in my novel, A POCKETFUL OF RUBIES, is entirely fictitious character, or so I thought. That was before until someone or something in Malaysia started visiting my blogs. I blog about books, writers, food, gardening. My target readership is not Malaysian. Nevertheless, whenever I use words such as Israel, Israeli, Mossad, as in "the writer lives in Israel, someone gave me a bottle of Israeli olive oil, the book features a Mossad agent," folks from rather odd Malaysian site promptly visit my blogs. As I mentioned before, Google Analytics makes it possible for blog publishers to track their visitors' geographical location, the length of their visit, the way they accessed a blog and more. That is how I know that my Malaysian visitors have very clear Islamic extremist tendencies.
My geek connections suspect that they visit once their bots come across words of interest; I prefer a scenario where Islamic Malaysian extremists crouch over their computers searching for data on cooking, gardening and book writing in America and Israel. That is a more honorable occupation than plotting to blow people up.
Whatever the reality of these fanatics, there is nothing in my blogs to justify their visits except for a bizarre coincidence. Most recently, one of them did a search for Luna Mellul and landed on my blog. It turns out that there is, in real life, someone who used to be called Luna Mellul. She is the wife of a rogue Jew turned Islamic extremist. The guy was not exactly Nobel Prize material. He drove a cab in New York and whether this is the root of his disaffection with America and Judaism I do not know. I do know that he eventually turned coat, renounced his country and his co-religionists to join people disaffected with reality. He converted to a violent brand of Islam and allegedly coerced the real Luna Mellul to do the same. He went on to write and post on the web rather stupid rants against Americans and Jews. No surprise there. As so many religious fanatics, his frothing-at-the mouth rhetoric was meant to disturb, frighten and discombobulate those who did not share his views. Too bad for him. If he got any attention at all, it probably came from folks very low on the the Shin Bet (Israel's internal security folks) totem pole. Americans did not give a hoot about his crackpot pronouncements. Vastly ignored, he decamped to Morocco.
But who are these Malaysians what is their connection with the rogue Jew? I don't really care. I do know that one of them blogs about weapons for snipers. That is something I trust Homeland Security to sort out.
Meanwhile I am changing my fictional character's name. It is not that Malaysian bots influence my decisions one way or another. It's just that I would rather not have the main character in my novel share anything with the unfortunate Luna Mellul.