Recently I noticed a slight but gradual uptick in the number of people visiting each consecutive Spanner installment, judging by the numbers on the Blogger dashboard. Then, a couple days ago, the page visits stopped altogether. They reset to zero. It's almost like everybody's left the theatre. I can almost hear my voice echo...
Was it that last part of Chapter 12, wherein Shira passes on one of her favorite perversities (her childhood passion for getting in trouble solely to get herself spanked) to the adoring loli who ran away to be with her? Was that too beyond the pale for a story that lives on "beyond the pale" (as the third-draft "wham episode" revisions of Chapter 1 exemplify, starting with that cannibal hitman getting beaten up by our bounty-hunting naked streetfighter)? Did Google somehow block it, or is it just a bug in Blogger (possibly related to Blogger not working on Firefox)? Whatever it is, it is not an obstacle.
The show will go on.
I'll continue to post each installment daily right up to the end of Chapter 23, and with it Book 1, with just a week or two to spare before NaNoWriMo. After I finally post the still half-written Chapters 22 and 23, I'll begin posting Book 2 with new full chapters every Monday and Friday starting on November 1, when NaNo begins. And this NaNo, I'll be writing Book 3. Later this year, the first third of Book 1 will be available as a "light novel" type ebook in all your favorite online bookstores!
Maybe I'm just writing this entry to reassure myself. But mark my words, I will continue to post a new installment of Spanner Book 1, Second Edition, right up until the shocking cliffhanger ending! If you're still reading Spanner, keep reading. The journey continues, and the Captain will catch his white whale no matter what...
Does the dashboard include feed subscribers? (If not, Feedburner could help with that.) I find Google Reader very convenient for subscribing to updates, so I almost never visit the site itself.
ReplyDeleteThe dashboard only counts hits on the actual page. I've checked Feedburner, and it tells me that this blog's got well over 400 subscribers. It's just that for some reason or other, either nobody actually visited the story posts themselves or the hits never got counted.
ReplyDeleteAs I write this, this very post has about 15 hits, somewhere close to the usual page visit count. So who knows...