According to my stats page, this week my Homepage Access Count topped 1,000,000. (That's not all in a week. That's my lifetime count.) At the same time, my blog reached its 250,000th viewing. Wow! Thank you all. I hope you found what you wanted.
According to some of the email I got this week, that wasn't always the case. So, I'll posture myself and do a little lecturing. No. Let's call it sharing what I know because this stuff is complicated.
Last week, I reposted the entire Model Student Series, complete with edits and re-organized books. As a result, the previously three books in the series became six books in the series. If that wasn't enough, Books 1, 4, and 6 bear the original publishing dates back in 2012 and 2013, while Books 2, 3, and 5 bear the 2020 publishing date. So, going to my page and sorting my 41 stories by date does not put the books in reading order.
There are two ways to figure out the order. The first is to access my homepage and locate any of the Model Student stories. At the top of the description, it will have a highlighted link that says Model Student and a number, 1-6. That number is the order of the book you are looking at.
The best way is to click that link. The new page displayed will be the list of all the Model Student stories in reading order. The far left column, which is untitled, contains the number of the book in order.
Why is it so complicated? Because I'm stupid.
When I originally wrote the series, I had no expectations for it other than reading on SOL. But when I released the story in eBook and print, some years later, I discovered the books were just too long for getting people to buy them. So, I broke up the first one into three books and the second one into two books. When it came time to update the series on SOL, I didn't want to delete the original three with all their scoring info, so I just added the new ones and updated the originals. That gives them the out-of-sequence dates.
Okay, so what's next?
Well, I'm not going to do that again! The only other story that would potentially create that kind of hassle is Living Next Door to Heaven and I'm not going to update that story at all. If you want to read it as ten separate books instead of three long serials, you can do that on my website or by buying the eBooks.
I am in the process of re-editing the Wonders of My World series and posting it on my website. I won't be updating it on SOL. The changes are two-fold. First, I've re-proofread everything and corrected any errors. Not terribly significant. Second, I've added in all the photos of my travel and tall tales. Those will only be available in the online format on my website where I can store the photos and keep things together. US Highways will start appearing on that site next week.
There is something new in the works. New to you, that is. It's actually a Wayzgoose book I published in 2011. Next week, I'll begin serializing Steven George & The Dragon under the author name Wayzgoose here on SOL. It's a young adult book, but at 70, I still get a kick out of it. A series of fairytales told as part of a journey by our intrepid dragonslayer. It's a fun read. No sex, like most Wayzgoose stories. However, some of the subject matter gets too mature for children. Think Grimm's fairytales, not Disney's.
Sweltering in Place
Temps here in Pharr Texas have topped 100 degrees three times this week with yesterday hitting 105. I'm looking forward to the relief of temperatures only hitting 90 this week.
Back in the early 90s I was teaching a seminar that included people from Alaska who had come to freezing cold Seattle to get warm. They'd been experiencing temperatures of -90F. We asked what -90 was like. The answer was, "It's just like -60, but faster."
Now I look at the temperature of 105 and can say, "It's just like 90 but faster." As my deceased mother-in-law used to say, "We'll die of heat prostitution!"
Be well, my friends!