Okay, so it’s been what, about six weeks since I launched four blogs, two new and two that had been hosted at another site?  Something like that.

Time to take a look at how things are going. Traffic is down somewhat but holding fairly steady, all things considered. Of course, that’s for Adventures Fantastic and Futures Past and Present at the old site. The traffic for the new posts is pretty slim, as is the traffic on the two new blogs.

None of which surprises me. I knew the old sites would continue to attract hits. Unless I’d posted something new that either someone at a high traffic site linked to or was pretty controversial, most of the pageviews on any given day were older posts, usually ones someone had linked to at a high traffic forum. I’m surprised and pleased that I’m still getting that many hits there.

I knew it would take a while for traffic to pick up here, and I’m not too worried about it. I had my hands full with getting the semester off the ground after the new site went live, so there wasn’t much new content the first couple of weeks.

I’ve gotten dozens of comments here, but almost all of them have been spam, including something like half a dozen in Japanese. (I’m too lazy tonight to go back and count.) That has surprised me a little because I haven’t heard from one or two of the regulars who would comment frequently. I’m wondering what’s up with that, although I’m not taking it personally. Probably something about how things changed over.

I have gotten a couple of new comments on the other site. One was from Henry Kuttner’s great niece, which I posted about here.

The other comment was from William Jordan on One Fearful Yellow Eye:

Great review. My first McGee was the “Green Ripper”. I was hooked, would stay up most of the night reading McGee. Then I read them in order. I love them all, but my three favorites are: A Purple Place For Dying, Nightmare In Pink, Bright Orange For the Shroud, The Green Ripper. Also in the non McGee, The Drowners-1963, Where is Janice Gantry-1962, and April Evil-1956 are great, they all are. Boo Waxwell from Bright Orange For The Shroud, will get your attention.

So things aren’t going too badly at the moment, although I wouldn’t complain if traffic and comments picked up some.  I’m going to try to post between the three fiction blogs more regularly, with at least one post on the science fiction and noir blogs every couple of weeks.  I’ll still try to post here every few days.  Dispatches should get a new post every second month or so, since those will involve some research and probably travel.

So what’s in the queue?  I finished reading and sent a review of a first novel by an Australian author to the David Gemmell Awards.  It’s a bit late, so I’m not sure if they will even run it.  (This is what happens when you have stacks on top of stacks.)  This particular book didn’t make the short list and final voting closes tomorrow.  The plus side is I won’t have to wait a couple of months to run a slightly longer version of the review here.  I’m going to post some things related to Halloween.  These will be different than the 6 Weeks of Scares posts I’m running at Amazing Stories.  I’ve got a science fiction novel I’m trying to read in the next week to ten days, Joshua P. Simon’s latest novel is in the queue for later this month, I’m going to tackle at least one Heinlein, maybe two, plus some detective fiction and short stories.  Plus one or two special topic posts are in the works.  I also still need to write up the post on the Menger Hotel for Dispatches From the Lone Star Front.  That will probably happen this week.

Plenty of things to keep me busy, in addition to taking my WordPress skills to the next level.  And somewhere in there I’ve got a crime story to finish and some fantasy to write.