I want to thank everyone who took the time to send me comments on this blog entry. I am sorry that it has taken me so long to respond, but being in the hospital, etc. will do that to you.
I received a number of useful insights, many of which I had never thought of. For all of you who responded: thank you, and I appreciate you taking the time.
I want to explain why I missed a couple of days of posting "Conan." On Thursday of last week, I was rushed to the ER completely unconscious. I didn't wake up until late on Friday. I stayed in ICU until Sunday. That was when they released me to regular care. I escaped yesterday, and now I am home.
The diagnosis was "sepsis" from a bladder infection. I am nailed to a Foley catheter for at least another week: I keep pissing blood! Actually, the catheter is not a bad thing: I never have to worry about having to get up to go piss. I can sleep all of the way through the night, and that is a boon at my age of 77!
Anyway, I am taking a general bug killer until they find out just which one it is working at me. At that time, I will switch to a more specific antibiotic and hopefully throw this thing down the drain.
Until that happens, I may disappear from SoL at any time while they try to revive me. However, don't bet on me not coming back. I have too many enemies left to eliminate!
My current story has some confusing stats; at least, they are confusing to me. The story has one of my best download rates, approximately 4.5K downloads per chapter. Now I know that does not compare to what some other people get, and I am trying to roll with the punch.
On the other hand, my scores, both basic and TPA are not as high as some of my other stories with lower download counts. I just wonder what it is about this story and a few of my more recent ones that have resulted in such a high download count. I use download count as a measure of a story's success, and I would like to know what it is that has caused this apparent jump in readership.
I would appreciate comments on this from my readers. I am thoroughly bemused by this turn of events and I am eagerly looking for a logical explanation.
Frankly, the only reason that I currently permit scoring is that Lazeez seems to like to see the scores, and I am just accommodating the man who runs such a fine web site.
I just submitted the first chapter of a new story. This is a Fantasy, not a Western. I don't know why, but I can't seem to stay with a Western long enough to finish it in a single stretch. As a result, I have several Westerns awaiting completion. Some need only one or two chapters and some need about half the story. I will complete all of them eventually, but I'm not doing so good right now, and I refuse to start posting a story until it is finished!
This story is about a teen boy who finds a magic ring, or maybe it finds him. In any case, this is the story of how it gradually turns him into a superhero. I hope calling it a Fantasy genre story does not keep people away, but what is a magic ring but fantasy?
Oh, well, it is a pretty long story, 18 chapters, and I hope a lot of people like it. This story has more sex than blood, so I hope that people will give it a chance.
This is my latest submission to SOL. I had intended to post a Western this time, but I have discovered that I cannot compose stories as fast as I used to. Therefore, this is one I wrote about a year ago, but never got around to posting. I hope you like it.
I will have to cut back my posting schedule some, mostly for health reasons. My new schedule with be new chapters on Tuesday and Friday. I plan to go back to my old schedule as soon as I can, but I have no idea when that will be.