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Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm writing the same stuff over and over, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Here are the scores of my most active posts, based on weekly downloads:
6.99, 6.86, 7.09, 7.00, 7.80. 6.81, 7.01, 6.67, 7.18
So, at least I'm consistent. I guess I've found my lane and should stay in it, even though it can be frustrating. The last time I tried something different, a no-sex, horror story, it bombed, at least based on downloads and votes.
When I think about some of the real authors that I like, John Connolly, John Sanford, Riley Sager, Michael Robotham, for example, "staying in their lane" seems to work for them, so perhaps I should forget about experimenting and just do what I seem to do well, even though occasionally I get the urge to let my secret 'Stephen King' persona out.
Well, this is weird. I didn't expect a no-sex, horror story to be very popular, and I was right about that. 'Spiders' has only had a little over 350 downloads so far. The really mysterious part is that it doesn't have enough votes yet for the score to show. I don't remember ever having a story sit there for four days without getting a score. Not sure what that means - do people download it, start reading it, and just bail? Come on, readers, give me some feedback, even if it's a 1 or 2.
On a happier note, this morning I hit 500,000 downloads! It had been my goal to get there before the end of the year, and now it's not even Halloween. A small yippee! for me. I'm not embarrassed to post that, because we all know that the main purpose of blog posts is ego-stroking.
Now that I've got my horror story out of my system, I'm working on the next chapter of 'Daisy and Me', and a new story with NO teenagers, but plenty of sex.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled reading.
I've had the feeling that I'm getting into a rut. A lot of my stories lately have been about naughty teens. They're still fun to write, but I wanted to try something different, so I decided to try a no-sex horror story. I've always wanted to be a horror writer, but I lack confidence, and smutty stories are easier for me. This one kinda creeped me out while I was writing it, kept me awake for a couple of nights, so maybe I should stick to my wayward teens.
Since I assume that most of the people who read my blog posts also read my stories, I would like to get some feedback from some of you regular readers.
I was originally going to enter this in the SOL Halloween contest, but I decided I'm not ready to go up against the popular writers here.
Hope you enjoy the cover illustration.
Sometimes, if I'm really lucky, I find characters in my brain that I fall in love with and enjoy writing about. Daisy and J.C. are two of them. I have no idea where the idea to write about teens in a small town in Southwest Georgia in the 1960s came from, but once I found myself there, the rest has come easily. I hope some of you are enjoying their exploits as much as I am.
"Banana Anna" is a story I posted 16(!) years ago, but now I feel the urge to go back and add to it. I hinted at that in the endnote to the original post, but I almost forgot about it. A couple of recent comments have ignited my interest. I'm unsure whether I should post the new part as 'Chapter 2', even though the first part wasn't posted as a chapter, or if I should create a new story, something like 'The Further Adventures of Anna Banana'.
Oh well, since I haven't even started writing it, and I have three others in the works, I guess I have time to figure that out.
As the Orange Mussolini likes to say at the end of his social media posts, "Thank you for your attention."
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