Now that Suite 101 is being re-born, it seems appropriate to write about the famous re-baptized martyr, Dirk Willemsz.

"The Death of the Mennonite Martyr, Dirk Willemsz" has an extremely brief biography. Most of what is known about Willemsz, is known about his re-capture and martyrdom.

I decided to include a map for the village of Asperen, where Willemsz lived and died.

I always display my original art here prior to an article being published at a third-party site. This helps to establish my copyright for that image.

You will have to judge whether I succeeded, but my writing tip for writing about a martyr is to help the reader understand the motives that a person may have for choosing to suffer and die, rather than live.

This would be a foreign concept for most of us, and we may be fascinated or repulsed. We might never consider that this would be a choice. I'm reminded of Admiral Kirk being asked to join the prisoners' club when jailed on the Klingon penal colony. "He wants your loyalty to...". "He's got it".

The general writing tip is to lead your reader to feel an emotion through empathy for the main character.

Remembrance Day 2012 should be such a big deal that I wrote two separate articles about it in DeHaan Services.

They are split by geography, as the titles make obvious. "Choose a 2012 Remembrance Day Ceremony in Toronto" shines its spotlight on the big city, but "Parades or Ceremonies for Remembrance Day 2012 in the GTA" looks at three different municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area.

My articles also explain a bit about Remembrance Day itself.

My Xanga blog continues the tradition of promoting my articles, in "Plan for Remembrance Day 2012 in Toronto and the GTA".

Regular readers know that I write an ongoing series of articles about annual Toronto events, with a focus on the inexpensive, unusual or under-publicized.While Remembrance Day always gets some attention in the mainstream media, certainly no-one spends a fortune advertising it. So I think it's worth my while to give it some free publicity. In a small way, it's part of the contribution I would owe. See the "...in Toronto" article for more of my own feelings.

My writing tip explains why I ventured into the GTA, when there was more than enough material just in Toronto.

Something else had reminded me to check my Alexa statistics last week. I was surprised to see that "in [town]" was rated as an important keyword, since the [town] was not "Toronto".

Yes, I had indeed mentioned that city before.

Standard SEO ("Search Engine Optimization") and AdSense (Google advertising) wisdom recommend using "long tail keywords" to drive readers and advertisers.

So I made the decision to use that type of keyword in at least the one article. I'd already researched the Toronto events, and decided that covering more would be fairly straightforward. It was not, partly because the various GTA municipalities have different sources than those I usually find for annual events in Toronto.

Nonetheless. I found enough material to make a decent, if small and far from comprehensive, article.

Here's a bonus writing tip. Although a long-tail keyword like "in [town]" has benefits, it also limits the likely audience. If you write an article using "in New York" as a keyword, you have a potential readership of millions of local residents and other millions of onlookers...and hordes of competitors.

If you use "in [town]", both the readership and competition are drastically reduced.

You can aim to be a big fish in the ocean, or a goldfish in a small aquarium. Either way you have the chance for a meal (of readers), or to be swallowed by a larger predator.

Regardless, thanks for reading my "Remembrance Day 2012" articles.