There is never a good time to assess a cluster of posts. The first one had longer to get discovered than the last one. This seems like as good a time as any to tally up some results that won’t teach me a damned thing.
Every year, I’m baffled by the results, and this year is no different. My favorite is never your favorite, and that’s okay. I’m not going to change my novel writing schedule based upon the assessment of 1000 word blog posts.
Your favorite story was the one called Flipping. It involved a property flipper who had a ghostly encounter inside his newest acquisition. I have to admit there was a strong character in this one, and I think that carried the banner to victory.
Your least favorite one was All the Time in the World. This one involved a time traveler who screwed his own timeline up beyond repair.
Dishonorable mention to Companionship, that involved a ghostly dog waiting for his owner in a rest home. It only had one more view than the time travel story did.
The rest fell somewhere in the middle. My favorite was Our Secret lives about two werewolves who hate each other in their human lives, but are mates when the full moon shows up.
You also liked the Halloween Pack about the app that created a monster. It had a certain Goosebumps quality to it that I thought was fun too.
What does it all mean? Nothing actually. Maybe it involved the day I posted, and the results would be completely different if I’d changed the order.
I’m leaning toward doing it again next year. It all depends upon life and what it throws at me. I write them for my own entertainment as much as anything, but I hope you enjoyed them too.
I’m not going to scrap any works in progress, or storyboards, and rush right into another haunted house story based upon these results. They’re just for us to have fun. Maybe to start a discussion.
There are a couple of points to make here. If you missed one, or just want to revisit them, they are under the “Short Stories & Vignettes” category in my sidebar. You might find some other interesting things there too.
Lastly, I want to touch upon the point that I have books available. If short stories and micro-fiction is your thing, I have either two or three collections depending upon how you score them. I say this, because The Enhanced League stories serve to tell a bigger tale overall. The Experimental Notebooks involve more true collections.
All of the short fiction is .99¢ on Amazon.
Lisa wants to know if there are any tricks to removing “Sharpie” marker from your skin.
It’s amazing how everything turns out. Halloween Pack was definitely my favorite out of the list. Have to admit that I kind of forgot about Flipping until you mentioned it again. Was it only views that you used to gauge popularity?
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Just views. I had fun, and hope others did too.
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Looking forward to next year, so I hope you can do it again.
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I’ll send Lorelei a text so she can help me come up with ideas.
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Lisa, first spray Pam, then acetone or alcohol, but either way, it’ll take days to fade completely.
I liked the werewolves best 🙂
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The werewolves were fun. Maybe I’ll give Lisa the Pam and drink the alcohol.
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Funny how things turn out sometimes! It’s always interesting to see the differences in opinion!!
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Every year is like this. I can’t predict what is going to click. If I could, I’d be a bestseller.
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I’m not sure I had a favorite. I really enjoyed all of them. And I hope you do them again next year (but no pressure).
Tell Lisa to try nail polish remover or toothpaste.
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Hadn’t heard of those solutions. She’s trying peanut butter right now.
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Eat the peanut butter. Use the remover.
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Check.
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I am always surprised by which posts of mine do the best, Craig. It is also different for all my social media. The posts of my fondant artworks do the best on Facebook and Instagram. My blogs are inconsistent and I also think it depends on the day and time.
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All of it makes sense to me. The dogs do better on FB than anything else.
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I liked werewolves the best but enjoyed others as well.
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Appreciate it. Team werewolf for John.
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Need to get the t-shirt.
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Flipping was definitely my favorite. I’d like to see a longer short story version of it, where the promised conflict plays out. Or, even better, a novel version where the two characters (and/or the people they hire) need to team up to face some greater threat.
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See, that’s a big win for me because I made you think about it.
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I like All The Time In the World. Nothing wrong with it IMO
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I don’t know that anything was wrong with any of them. It’s just fun to see which ones got the most traffic. Makes me happy that you liked it.
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I loved Flipping. I didn’t see any of the twists coming. Fun! I think Lisa looks good with zigzagged skin, shows off her tatttoos. She should just go for it!
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She may have to for another week. Ha ha.
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Reblogged this on Where Genres Collide.
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It’s difficult as you say to tell what’s going to resonate with readers. I suppose it’s the same with books, you never know what’s going to hit.
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Thanks for sharing. If I had that crystal ball all of us would get rich from our writing.
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It would be nice, wouldn’t it? Lol.
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I enjoyed all of them. Although companionship is the one I’d have to pick if you wanted us to pick a favourite. I hope you’ll be doing it again next year, and look forward to when I get a chance to catch up on reading the books of yours I haven’t gotten to read yet.
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Thanks. Hard to assess these every year, because other factors come into play. Date, saturation time, etc.
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It seems that everything in this business is subjective. My favorite was Companionship, with Flipping coming in second, but I enjoyed them all.
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It’s sooo subjective. Thanks, Jan.
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Companionship!!
Would it be interesting to compare “likes” vs. “clicks?” Or even comments — although maybe if they “like” it the comment would automatically be positive.
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Multiple ways to look at them, I suppose. I don’t know if there is actually anything to learn from it.
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I thought they were all excellent, but I had a special fondness for Companionship. You rock at these, so I have fingers crossed Macabre will be back again next year!
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Thanks. I needed to hear that too. Now I just need to spot some macabre things in 2019.
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I’d have to agree that Flipping was probably my favorite – but I’ve always had a weakness for haunted house stories.
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It’s always strange the way things go. Our writing is never (not usually) received the way we think it will be. I’ll be honest, I had a tough month and wasn’t online much but did read and like Flipping. Also, short stories and micro-fiction is definitely my thing. 🙂 I have all three of those. I’ll stop saying how I NEED to get to them and just surprise you one day.
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* short stories and micro-fiction ARE definitely my thing
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Short stories are great. They have made many into movies even. I’m glad the format hasn’t died off. Read them at your leisure.
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They are great. I love them. Novellas, too. There have been movies (The Body by Stephen King, off the top of my head). Har. I don’t think the format of shorts (stories, novellas, novelettes) will die off. They’ve been around too long and people still love them.
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I think Amazon gave them all a new lease on life too. Big publishing didn’t want them, magazines were disappearing, and along came Amazon.
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Hmm… True. And now big publishing not only wants them but has their authors writing shorts as a 0.5 or 2.5 or whatever in a series.
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Funny isn’t it. Europe has vending machines for micro-fiction. I think it’s a cool idea myself.
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I know! I’ve seen those. That is SO cool. (Sorry this is getting to be a long string of comments but had to say something about those.)
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I enjoy the comments. No worries here.
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