The website evenafterclaire.com is no longer in existence.

Thank you for your visit. I hope you'll find the McLeod's Daughters information you seek. Read on to learn more; I've shared some links at the bottom of this page that might help you...

Why are you here? A little story about a little website...

If you've landed on this page and don't know why, it's almost certainly because you're a fan of the Australian TV show, McLeod's Daughters, and you'd typed some string of keywords into your favorite search engine, one of the results piqued your interest, and you clicked on the link. Close? Thought so.

I'm sorry you haven't gotten the answer you were looking for. (An answer which was almost certainly once offered on the site I recently had to retire.) For those who are interested (turns out there was a lot of traffic going to the site before it had to go away,) I'll tell you the story, in case you'd like to know how you came to be on my site instead of the fan site you were seeking. At least I can give you that! Then maybe I can find a good way to get you to some helpful alternative site or other. Where maybe you'll get an answer or two to your questions. (Of course you might just return to your trusty search engine as before, and find that just as useful. But I'm still gonna' post a few links at the end of this story.)

Once upon a time I became addicted to this TV show that led you to my website. And when a horrid tragedy befell a character to which I'd become quite attached, I wanted to know why! Things had been going so well before then...

My own online search for the answer to that question led to the shocking discovery that not only was one of my favorite TV characters unexpectedly dead, but also that the US network that had brought McLeod's Daughters into my living room was pulling the plug on the series at the end of that season. A lot of people, I learned, were outraged. I found myself pretty incredulous, too. Which led to my perusing, for the first time in my life, some message boards that had been set up for the use of fans of the show. Having suddenly discovered all these people who were expressing their frustration and sense of helplessness concerning a situation over which they had no control, I was caught up in what they wrote. Feeling loss over a television character's death in the way I was feeling it over this one (which I wrote about here in my personal blog, in fact,) I returned to that forum and started realizing what a community had emerged and wondered what would become of these folks once the space they were using to connect with each other was no longer available to them. An idea occurred to me that I could create a site and invite some of these people to come visit it. Perhaps I could enjoy building a new site using some of my expanding web development skills and a fabulous little tool I'd discovered called Squarespace. (If you're looking for a service that will let you create impressive websites with a nominal amount of web dev skill, get yourself over to Squarespace right now. You can try it out free for 30 days and learn, first-hand, just what I'm talking about!)

And that's just what I did. Only the surprising part was still to come. The site that began as a sort of experimental hobby, for me, grew into a real community. The thing I'd already known that we all had in common was that we all enjoyed McLeod's Daughters. What I came to learn, however, while running the site was that many of us had far more than that in common, too. Like I do on this, my personal website, I blogged as frequently as time allowed. (In the early months, anyway...) I wrote here about real-life topics such as strength and those who inspire me, about family and this or that ludicrous observation I'd made on any given day. Sometimes I'd blog about things I'd thought of from the show, and sometimes I'd post something about other pop-culture pheonomena I'd observed. In turn, the site's regulars posted comments, and we got some good discussions going. It was a lively place.

Meanwhile, I opened up some discussion threads where the site's visitors could discuss the show itself, ask each other questions, share their thoughts and obserevations about the show, and also share from their lives. These discussion threads took on lives of their own, and it was at times nearly impossible to keep up with all that was going on at the site.

Over the months, many of us connected and I believe some true friendships emerged from the site I'd named Even After Claire, (and which was later often shortened to "EAC.") A few of us met each other, a number of others email and post to each others blogs regularly, I've talked on the phone to 3 of the site's regulars, and difficult as it was to do, once real life encroached so far that I realized it was time to retire the site, the guilt that emerged was quite enormous. However, as is often the case, it was clear that the time had definitely come to close EAC.

Since I see the traffic that continues to come here to my personal site (where I still write about whatever captures my attention over here on my blog, even though many of my regular readers don't have the foggiest idea what McLeod's Daughters is,) I figured maybe it would be helpful if I shared a few links with you:

1. First, a link to the blog of MD's producer, Posie Graeme Evans. Posie visited our little site on occasion and we became quite fond of her. You can keep up with Posie at her blog, learn a bit about her life, about her writing, and also sometimes about McLeod's-related happenings. Some great reads from a highly creative, multi-talented, truly impressive woman.
   
2. Next, a new forum that's sprung up in the absence of our original evenafterclaire.com where a handful of the originals are continuing to meet up and chat. The site, like the original, called EAC2, seems to have room for people to talk about topics important to them, but it's also got space for McLeod's Daughters discussions; if you're looking for a specific answer you can't find, I'd imagine some of the fans using this new forum might be able to help you.
3. And finally, a little goodbye note to those who used to come visit the original EAC, with a new space for you to pop in and say hello for a while - I'm gonna' set it up so comments are welcome in case people want to post a greeting. (And I'm doing this more than 2 weeks after I closed the site, so sadly I don't even know if anybody will find it... We'll see!)

Thanks for reading to the end. Hope you'll find what you're looking for.

Best,
Melody