Crazy Website Activity, and the Opening Paragraph of "Rubbed Out"!
Something remarkable and unexpected happened with the website traffic on JonSay.com this weekend. As of Friday morning, 652 people had visited the site for the week. That is a lower than average total, but not by a lot. Since Flesh Wound was released in July, about 800 people have visited the site each week.
When I checked the traffic on Monday, the weekly total had jumped to 1,512. That means almost 900 people visited JonSay.com from Friday morning to Saturday night! Not just that, the weekly total of 1,512 was the second highest ever, trailing only the week Flesh Wound was released when 1,584 people visited.
The obvious question is why? What happened on Friday that led nearly 1,000 people to check out JonSay.com over two days?
I suspect that Goodreads.com had something to do with it, and here's why. I began a member giveaway for Flesh Wound on Goodreads.com after joining the site on Friday morning of last week. I offered 10 copies and specified a two week timeframe for members to sign up for the giveaway. You'll recall that the giveaway I did on LibraryThing site generated 165 or so members for 15 copies over two weeks.
As of this morning, 330 people have signed up for the giveaway on Goodreads. 330!
That tells me there are a lot more people active on Goodreads, and as my website is listed there along with my blog and other author information, I'm guessing the website traffic on JonSay.com came primarily from Goodreads members. This week's web activity will be telling. Will the traffic continue? Or was last week a newest-author-on-the-site-with-a-giveaway blip? We will see.
Also, I sat down this morning and wrote the first four paragraphs of Chapter 1 of "Rubbed Out", the sequel to Flesh Wound! I drove to the grocery store late Saturday afternoon by myself, which is always an opportunity to think about plotting and characters. The opening line just popped into my head. That's how that part of the process seems to work for me. With Flesh Wound, the opening line popped into my head as I was walking down a crowded street at lunch one day (this was while I was still working at the bank that eventually eliminated my position due to the economic crisis). Anyway, after a day of looking it over like it was a shiny new car in a showroom that I really wanted to buy, I sat down first thing this morning and gave it a test-write. I liked it well enough to keep it, and I present it to you now, along with the rest of the first paragraph:
"She was awake before she heard the knock on the motel room door. The bedside clock glowed 12:04 AM. She rolled over and looked at the twin bed next to hers. Her roommate was asleep. She envied her briefly, then remembered this was the third time she'd done this. Maybe it got easier. She didn't think it would ever get easier for her." - Rubbed Out by Jon Say
So there you have it. I'll be writing more this week and frankly, I can't wait. Have a terrific Monday! Read something today that makes you want to know what happens next! -Jon
