Last Monday was not a good day.

Most of you will be aware that (until recently) I had two websites. One is my lynnestringer.com site (where you’re reading this right now). The other was verindon.com, a page dedicated to my trilogy, which linked to the individual pages for all three of the books in the Verindon trilogy.

I had it set up nicely and the website address was printed on my bookmarks and t-shirts, providing a wonderful way for people to find out about the Verindon trilogy.

But the internet can be a pain in the neck. And because of that, the verindon.com site is no longer mine.

Admittedly, it was my fault that all this happened. You see, when we set up the verindon site, we linked it to an old email address attached to a business that we sold recently. So we don’t get those emails anymore. When we sold the business, I didn’t think of changing it on the verindon site, as I didn’t go into it regularly. So when the domain expired, the renewal was sent to the old email address and we never saw it.

Someone told me when my site was down. We contacted the domain name hoster, and they told us it was in the redemption phase. I could get it back, but I had to pay $150 for it, and I didn’t have the money at the time.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said my internet savvy husband. ‘It’ll be back in the general pile in a couple of weeks. Then you can pick it up for much less than that.’

‘Yes, but so can anyone else,’ I said, ever the worrier.

‘Yes, but who apart from you is going to want a site called verindon.com?’

On the surface, his logic seems sound. Unfortunately, he failed to take into account that there are people out there who shop around for sites that have had a good number of hits in the past and buy them as soon as they become available. And one of them got to the verindon.com site before I did.

There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth when this was discovered.

So this means that, for at least a year, I can’t use verindon.com. It also means my t-shirts are useless. It also means I have to put a sticky label with my lynnestringer.com site address over the verindon.com website address on all about 500 of my bookmarks. It’s not fun, I can tell you, and will probably wind up costing me as much as the redemption payment would have cost, if not more.

At least I can learn from this experience. If this happens to one of my sites in the future, I will know to find the money somewhere and redeem it straight away. The alternative is simply too painful and too much work.