Harddaysknight: Blog

I have wandered into unfamiliar territory. I am suddenly quite busy again with selling real estate here in Florida. The market is heating up. That leaves less time to write. Add in family obligations and I struggle to find the time for LiR. I am enjoying the hell out of writing it, but I am disappointing readers with my pace. I apologize, but it's the best I can do. Add the fact that I didn't want to end Chapter 29 until I reached a planned point, I wound up with a chapter almost double the usual length for me. Thanks to those that are patient and write to encourage me and those that write to point out errors and those that just want to send me pictures of their wives naked. That's the best way to encourage me! Thanks for reading and laughing.

I have received some feedback on my latest chapter (25) of LiR. Some feel that Kate behaved out of character. As a father of a daughter, I can tell you that they will behave out of character, especially while in their teens. Peer pressure, hormones, depression, and imagination make them do all kinds of odd things. I always appreciate it when readers take the time to express concerns and opinions about my stories, especially when they are polite and sincere. This is a learning process for me. It's like dance; you learn as you go.

I apologize to those waiting for chapters of LiR to be posted. I have been doing some work related traveling, as well as work related work. I have no intention of leaving the readers hanging on this story. I only ask for patience as I write and post when I can. I am very much enjoying this story and appreciating any and all feedback. I want to see it through to the end. That's my goal and I hope to reach it. Thanks for the interest, the patience, the comments, and the time it all requires. Thanks!

I hope everyone has a great holiday. I posted chapter 24 of LiR yesterday. I have noticed that all the stories on SOL have way more downloads than they had last week or at anytime that I have looked at downloads. I guess that means SOL has changed how they count them or something. Who knows?

I have been asked about ending Book one of LiR when the kids start higher education. I may do that to get ahead on my chapters and to recharge the batteries. I will be taking a 2 week vacation from July 2-July 17 and will have limited access to internet. There may be a gap longer than usual in posts. Sorry about that. I do have outlines for the story to go well into adulthood, but will I last long enough to get it written? Thanks to all of the readers that read my story and take the time to let me know they enjoy it. That's all I can ask.

How do writers gauge the success of their stories? I've heard of writers asking people to go to their story and vote a high mark for some sort of reward, like a picture or something. I've seen stories I enjoyed get low scores and I've seen bad stories (to me) get high scores. I have seen some low scoring stories with quite a few downloads and some high scoring stories garner surprisingly few downloads. What's it all mean?

I am trying my first long running story and the score after the last chapter I posted dropped 4 points, which tells me how it was received,.. not that well.. That is one time when the scoring system is useful. Scores should not be too critical to a writer, but they are indicators and when scores rise or drop from a chapter, we deduct how that chapter was received. So voting on chapters works as a gauge for us writers. Feedback is really important. Tell us what you like and don't like. Tell us writers our errors and bad habits and tell us when you love our stuff and we'll bust our asses to write more. "Tell me no secrets, tell me some lies." The number of downloads gives us a good idea of how many readers our story is entertaining. One thing I will never understand is when a reader writes and says the story sucks after 20 chapters. Why are they still reading, or sending feedback? It would be great if this site would post the scores received for each chapter so we writers could go back and determine where the strong ones were, as well as the weak ones, and maybe work on them. Thanks for reading this little mini-rant.