While you ponder, there are links to 3 Fargate stills at:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/sdwolfpup/154285.html

One, change your address. Two, get it off the webpage and reformat it so people have to type it in manually. Make a contact page that says: "write me at ' writer --at-- storytelling --dot-- com ' ... the smart readers will figure out the "at" means "write @, you dolt" and not whine about writing "---at---" and getting an email bounce. You probably don't want to hear from them, anyway, then!

Every place you post your address, spammers can/will find it. Having it as a contact on a page is one way; willfully putting it into the "email address" box above is another way I can let you contact me but I'm also opening myself up to spammers. I figured in another month or so, I do a spam-count-check; if it's more than 10% of my mail, I delete the address and open a new one, usually variant on the first, like mahav1dyas or some close-enough one.

This is what I would (might) do if I had the time/technical know-how*: change my email address, give it to my friends and family; for my fans, create an html form that will capture their message and contact information and also verify that the sender is a real person (by doing that verify the letters/numbers in the picture thang.)

*Oh, and if I had fans.

Eh, but you don't want to create an HTML form unless you're using a process page (in ASP or PHP) to send the email on. Any code in an .html or .htm page can and will be read by spiders. So even if you do something like [[email protected]] where the square brackets are replaced by angle brackets, that's in the html, and can be read.

I'm not sure entirely how you'd do it with a blogger page like this one; I only know the coding for PHP and ASP on a straight-up site (as opposed to one where the majority of code is done for you). Basically, you create a form, and then send this information to a second page (proc.asp or proc.php), which then processes the form and sends it on to your address. Because that second page doesn't have 'html' or 'htm' or 'shtml' as its ending, it's invisible. The only one who sees it is the originating server, and thus, impervious to spiders or hackers etc et al.

Yes, that's a bit much, and probably not worth it if you don't have a large number of people writing you via your page. Failing the curiosity (or time) to figure out how to do that, I would:

1. Change email address. Use an odd combination of numbers and/or letters, mispell it in an unusual manner, and notify friends/family and anyone else who should know.

2. Do not use this email address on any webpage, EVER. That's the best way to prevent spam: keep the email private.

3. Set up a 'disposal' email address and post it on the site spelled out: tiemeup28 -at- storytelling -dot- com.

4. Set up a third 'disposal' email address for those times you absolutely positively must put an address on a webpage. It also means you can tell when someone's snagged your address from elsewhere: '[email protected]' - ah-hah, they must've sold my address because I never signed up with these people!

Hope that helps, and good luck with your delete button not wearing out in the meantime. If you do want to know about coding for a proc-page, let me know & I'll suggest some urls with info.