A Quick Stat Update, New Glasses, and Some Behind the Scenes Info...

Good morning dear readers! (At least it's morning here so roll with me.)

To start with, for those who enjoy numbers here is a quick stat update regarding Blade's Edge:

• Blade's Edge is up to 22 votes for the month so far, which is great, and has it holding steadily at #45 for monthly votes
• It's at a total of 141 votes overall which takes us up to #108 out of all the serials currently published (approximately 600).
• The elusive top 30 is currently at a threshold of 37 votes (ie the current number of votes for the #30 slot is 37 so to bump it out of place I would need 38)
• Getting a single new reader who decided to read all of my chapters would put me just shy of that number.
• If everyone who has ever plus voted at least one of my chapters came back and read (and plus voted) the rest of the book I would have 312 votes!

So those are some fun stats. Thanks to everyone for the support that has made those stats possible! It's really fulfilling to know that someone out there is being entertained by your work.

Recently one of my readers asked me where I was able to find this data and I realized that those of you who are readers only on Jukepop are not privy to the interesting author backend that we have. Jukepop compiles rankings of its authors, which only authors are allowed to see. In addition, it compiles reader statistics (or at least it has done so since February) and Authors have access to those statistics as well. The idea is to let authors know how well their serials are doing at keeping their readers engaged, chapter by chapter, as well as how close they are to hitting the elusive top 30 for the month (actually it only shows the top 50 for the month so this is the first time Blade's Edge has even made the rankings for me to know how it's doing).

Anyway, for those of us who like numbers, and occasionally get competitive about them, it's fun.

In other news, I ordered some new glasses. This is nothing particularly interesting, but I ordered them online from a store called Zenni Optical and for $28 got frames, prescription lenses, a UV protectant, anti-scratch coating, and shipping to my door. No, I did not forget a zero on that number. I was, as you might guess, somewhat skeptical as to the quality of these glasses prior to their arrival (but hey, I was only wasting $28 if they sucked). However, they arrived on Saturday and they are awesome. Clear, perfect lenses, frames that looked like I expected (they have a little app to show all of their frames on a picture of your face that you upload) and a free case and wipe cloth thrown in. So, for all of my friends, family and readership who wear glasses and are tired of spending hundreds of dollars every few years, I enthusiastically recommend Zenni Optical.

I for one, have decided that glasses this cheap mean that I can have multiple pairs that are fashionable (not something I usually bother with) because I can buy three pairs for under a hundred dollars!!!

For those who are curious here is a shot of me and my new frames:

Note that the second picture exists to show off the DRAGONS!!! Yes, that's right, I ordered glasses with dragons on them. Why you ask? Well, when I first decided I liked the frames I had only seen them from the front and I liked them but was debating whether they were better than this other pair when... I clicked on the bigger image of them and saw that they had dragons on the sides. Deal. Sealed.

DRAGONS

On my glasses.

Life is awesome!