For a little more than a week now, I have been paying careful attention to my blogging, mainly in terms of getting posts done, and out to what I’ve always fondly imagined is my public. I consider that to consist of not only my faithful friends who comment regularly on what I’ve come up with, each in his or her own personal way, but also those many shy or non-commenting bloggers and readers and web-surfers who presumably find something useful or entertaining on my site, since they do keep coming back from many countries across the globe. I have been paying careful attention especially because since the beginning of the summer, I’ve lost a number of readers, or at least my stats (and I do try not to be obsessed with them, but….) have dropped from what they usually are.
I have imagined that perhaps this was initially because I had stopped blogging as frequently as I used to, my time being taken up with some other responsibilities and duties and a few fun activities that I couldn’t drag myself away from. So, starting about a week or two ago, I stopped lagging and started publishing again at my former rate, which is to say around two posts a week, on the average. I guess it’s like weight gain, though: you can put it on in a few days, but can’t take it off for weeks. So I guess once you lose readers, you take a far longer time to regain them or to find others than you did to lose them. My only hope is that maybe people read me more during the school year because they are researching their favorite authors, and find something of use in my posts (though of course I have also to hope they are using my material if at all in a responsible manner). And then, of course, it’s not all about me, as a friend recently pointed out: people tend not to blog or read blogs as much during the summer as they do during the year, because there are so many active outside pursuits to take part in.
Be all this speculation as it may, if you have favorite authors or topics that you’d like to see written upon, and you have any reason to suppose from what you’ve read of my posts before that I might be inclined and capable of commenting on these authors or topics, please drop me a comment and let me know, and I’ll try to do so. (Trying, of course, not to lag again!). Shadowoperator
creativeshadows 
The ongoing juggling game of life. Whenever you post, I always enjoy your take on things. Posting more often just means we get to feel spoilt =)
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Thanks, DJ. And where have your posts been, my joyous young man? I’ve been missing my fix of “True Love’s Last Kiss” and the other one, the one that takes place partly in the American Midwest. I hope you’ll have more time soon to continue your stories, I really enjoy them.
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If you are linked up to Twitter or Facebook or something then that may account for a drop in followers, I do get a bit obsessed with the stats as well, I just want to keep improving year on year with the numbers s I think (although sometimes mistakenly) that my writing is improving.
Summer is usually when I am busiest oddly, even though people tend to do outdoors stuff but if you keep writing they will come back, it sometimes takes a few weeks but word gets about. What with visiting and appearing on the news feed you’ll be back soon, although I get your point about researchers.
I just enjoy you writing as you do and introducing me to unread authors…as well as the odd one I have read. I would enjoy you picking up a light read like a cheesy horror or some such and subjecting it your analytical ways, that would suprise your readers.
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I’ll do my best to find some “cheesy horror” to review in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, if you haven’t had a chance to read or missed my Halloween posts of the last two years, I divide my time pretty evenly between the quality stuff (A. S. Byatt’s “The Thing in the Forest” of 2012 or 2013 posting) and “The Cabin in the Woods” (a cheesy though a bit different horror flic that we took in. I think that was also a Halloween post, and it also was in 2012 or 2013). “The Sutor of Selkirk” is an old-timey traditional (but none the less cheesy) story which I did in 2013. All of these are in Archives for the respective years in Oct. On my theme, the newest posts are at the top of the page when you use Archives, so you have to scroll down the page or click on the blue words “older” or “newer” posts to navigate (at least, unless WordPress.com has changed the system. For true cheesy horror, have you seen what they’ve done recently to the posting box scroll bar? But don’t get me started–just go to the forums and read all the horror stories there!). Anyway, I’ll unearth something, perhaps decayed or undead, or maybe sentient and from another universe, and then I’ll post it for you. Thanks for the suggestion. And thanks also for the support.
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Hang in, Victoria. I think readership is cyclical and affected by all kinds of things. But if you enjoy blogging, don’t stop! My readership is way down too. Experts would say blogging is “out,” but I didn’t start because it was “in,” so that’s not much of an issue.
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Thanks, Richard, for the reassurance. I know that you’ve been blogging now for upward of 6 years, and so you’re certainly in a position to say what’s what cyclical-wise. I started it without any real expectations for how many readers would follow, but one gets spoiled when the numbers go up, and feels deprived when they go down; I guess it’s just part of being human.
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