Three Highlights from 2019

After surviving the Spring floods (that's the start of my favorite local bike trail near the Missouri River in the picture), 2019 turned out to be a good year for writing. Here are three highlights.

1. Lots of People Dropped by the Blog

The blog received over 16,000 hits in 2019. February was the busiest month (2265) - too cold to do anything except reading online, I guess. August was the worst, which makes sense because I was on vacation and wasn't posting. The Book Reviews page continues to be a big draw, with 41 reviews covering over 11,000 pages.

It's great to have so many drop by, but on the other hand, that's a lot of people watching every time I fat-fingered a post or my auto-correct function had some fun with me.

2. Killer Proves to Be A Killer

Killer in the Retroscape (https://books2read.com/u/3npP0P) proved to be a killer in the awards, with recognition as:

• A Montaigne Medal Finalist;
• A BRAG Medallion Honoree; and
• A third-place finish in the Eric Hoffer Awards, eBook Fiction.

It was also selected by Indie Missouri as one of the best independently published books in the state. It's available with your library card throughout much of the state's public library system, but it's still tough to find (use this link: https://bit.ly/2xRyQTs). Indie authors are making progress in the public library system, thanks to groups like IngramSpark, Biblioboard, and Library Journal, but it's a slow process.

3. Off to A Good Start

Mind in Chains was released on November 4 and early sales pushed its rank as high as 45 in the Medical Thrillers category (https://amzn.to/302l1Ch). It continues to do well, but not like that early spike. Guess I need to publish a new book every couple of months - as if I could.






Now, enough looking backward. On to the next 20s. May they also roar!