Gaining a Following?

I took a couple interesting screen captures the other day, from the wordpress stats page:

Interesting.  I started this blog on 28 January, so counting the January stats is pretty meaningless.  But aside from that, readership here has pretty much doubled each month.  Neat, huh?  I guess what they say about just being consistent and posting regularly being the key is true.

Breaking it down by day in April,

The peaks and valleys are very interesting.  The biggest day was April 5th, when I revealed how much better my wife is at figuring out movies than I am.  That also corresponded to when I un-screwed myself on Facebook and set up an author page instead of a second personal account.  Telling all my friends/family about it generated some traffic, apparently.  Next biggest was 15 April, when I posted my rebuttal of the Game of Thrones Review in the NY Times.  I guess people cared about that.  Or not.  It’s very easy to see when I made a post and when I didn’t, though.

What’s all this mean?  Probably not much.  I just thought it was neat.

Anyway, I did a first re-read of Masters over the last couple days.  Well, not the first really.  I tend to go back and read what I’ve written, removing typos and such, as I go.  But this time I read straight through.  I found a few glaring continuity errors in the later chapters, a consequence of jumping around and writing out of order, I guess.  I fixed those.  But I need to get outside eyes on it.  So far, five people offered to read and provide feedback, so I sent copies to them.  I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say.

Another thing on the to do list is cover art.  Many people have raved about Jeroen Ten Berge‘s work, so I sent him an email.  He seems like a pretty good guy, his price is in line with the market, and he takes the time to read through the books he’s doing art for.  So what the heck?  I sent him over a copy of the manuscript with some of my thoughts.  We’ll see what he comes up with.

So yeah.  It’s been a good week.

Next week should be even better, since we’ll get the little man home.

I’ve got the next two weeks off to help him recover, so that will be a big help for the better half.  But not going to work should also give me some time to write short stories (I hope).  I’d like to get at least three or four done this month.  That way I can send a couple to magazines and post the others for sale, both singly and in a five-pack with the two I’ve already put up.

Then, in June, I’ll start book number two.  Not the sequel to Masters.  Not yet.  It’ll either be the dragon story I’ve been thinking of or the follow-up to Passing in the Night.  Probably the later, but we’ll see.

So that’s where things stand with me.  It’s been an interesting few days in the book blogosphere.  Now that I’m out from under surgery, I’ll have some thoughts on some issues shortly.