Reluctant_Sir: Blog

To answer a few questions:

* I am living in Florida.

* Yes, replying to this (or any) blog of mine is a perfect way to get your home counted.

* No, just the country if you are not in the USA, the state if you ARE in the USA is all that is needed.

* If you just reply USA with no state, I will use a random number between 1 and 50 to assign you a state ;)

Speaking of states, this is the state of the survey...

We have replies from 362 readers residing in 42 countries!

The top five are:

1) USA..........200

2) Canada........32

3) England.......24

4) Australia.....21

5) New Zealand...13

For those Americans who are curious, we have heard from 43 states and the top five states are:

1) Texas........22

2) Florida......16

3) California...12

4a)Washington...10

4b)Virginia.....10

Funniest trends:

A) Almost all Texans replying "The Country of" or "The Republic of"

B) Most Californian replying either "Southern California" or "Northern California", but no "Central Californians" at all and only one who just said, "Cali"

C) EVERY reply from a Washington resident said some version of "Not that hellhole DC, the real Washington"

D) The reader who made sure to stress that she or he was from NOT AUSTRALIA (Austria)

One final note, thank you to everyone who included notes with their responses. I can't respond individually to every person, but I DO read them and they are appreciated!

We are now 36 hours in, a mere day and a half, and getting some very interesting results! I will wait to create the final map until the week is done, but as of right now:

192 Respondents from 30 different countries!

The top counts per country so far are as follows:

1) USA...........99
2) Canada........21
3) Australia.....14
4a) New Zealand..10
4b) England......10

If you have not responded so far, I would appreciate hearing from you. Stand and be counted!

P.S.:
Since I am in the US, I added the extra layer for them and we have checked in from 33 different states so far!

I have spoken, in the past, to readers from England and Germany, so I knew that this website received international visitors. I got a recent email from a New Zealander today as well and that got me thinking.

Call it a bit of vanity, but it tickles my sense of the ridiculous to think that my stories have 'International' appeal!

So how about it, oh glorious readers, where are you from? I'd like to do a wholly unscientific and totally unofficial poll and find out how many countries come to SOL!

We'll run this for a week, posting every other day (since the story is posting every other day as well) and we'll see what kind of response we get.

And, since this is primarily an English language website that resides in the Americas (I think?) then for the US readers who want to play along, let me know what state. I'll see if I can find an interactive map to thumbtack all the responses.

Magic 101 got a great response from readers no matter how you count such things and I couldn't be much happier about how it was received.

Literally hundreds of emails, and well over a hundred public comments, and the vast majority of them were positive.

Just among my stories so far, this one has crept up into the top five in every category that counts, including the number of libraries it was added to... in that category, Magic ranks number one on my list.

I would call this a success so, for everyone who took time to read, comment, email and vote:

THANKS!

[EDIT] I have uploaded a corrected version with reader-supplied updates and changes.

The final two chapters of Magic 101 will be posted tomorrow. I thought it would be fun for the story to end on Leap Day.

Because I was playing with the scheduling headers when I posted this story, the first chapter will post in the morning, the second (and last) will post with the evening batch. Sorry about that.

Dark Days 2: Dawn's early Light will begin posting next week. I will be posting a chapter every two days and see if that significantly effects the numbers. If it does, I'll go back to every three days for subsequent stories.

I have two more stories that are completed and out for beta. It might be a bit before they actually get edited, but at least you know there is something in the hopper.

Happy reading!