Hourglass Year In Review 2025
The Hourglass completes its second full year on a high note. December 2025 set an all-time high for views, and the arrows are pointed up and to the right: visits up 37% year on year, unique visitors up 34%, and pageviews up 36%. Daily views are modest overall, so there is plenty of room for growth. Not so great is my bounce rate, which grew 2% during the year -- I need to do more to keep visitors on the site after they arrive.
Here's every article published in 2025:
The top ten articles of the year, measured by engagement:
Anna Scotti Interview: It's Not Even Past: My interview with Anna on release of her short story collection probably drew more clicks than it drove, but I was happy to support her publication. The collection hit a bump almost immediately with the closure of Down & Out Books. Maybe I’ll get Anna back for an update.
Shamus & Buster: Likely the most popular story I published this year, and it was in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, so it makes sense the article ranks highly. Also: it’s about a cat, and I put a cat on every thumbnail. Cats rule the Internet.
Tech For Writing: External interview I did early in the year about the “tech” I use for writing — mostly free websites and basic spreadsheets.
Frankenstein Speaks!: Another external interview, and what would prove to be the first of several with Magazines and Monsters, discussing movies and comics. All of my podcast and YouTube appearances have their own page.
The Silver Surfer Is Silver Age Gold: A Longbox Graveyard reprint, published the week of a new Fantastic Four movie release.
The Sky Falls Up: My first science fiction story, published to little fanfare but with great personal satisfaction. Sometimes you just need to write a dinosaur story.
Buster By The Numbers: Details behind conception and publication of Shamus & Buster. Also: cat.
2024 By The Numbers: My catch-all summary of creation time and publication history for everything that came out in 2024. My 2025 edition will be up in a couple weeks.
Agua Fantasma: A flash story I published at Pulp Asylum early in the year, and a personal favorite.
Joe Kubert's Tarzan: Another Longbox Graveyard reprint, published to mark the 150th anniversary of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ birth. A lighting flash of interest in ERB and pulp in general also birthed The Sky Falls Up, above.
Worth noting: the year's top-performing articles at The Hourglass were from prior years. The Wisdom of Wally Wood was by far my most active article, followed (with a significant drop off) by Judge Dredd. I'll have another Wally Wood article later in 2026, and I will judiciously sprinkle in Longbox Graveyard “reprints” as there seems to be an appetite for them.
In the year ahead, I plan to dive deep on my first novel, Gumshoe Frankenstein, laying the foundation for that book's anticipated publication in 2027. In social media, I will continue to grow my Bluesky presence, and maintain my Twitter account. I will be testing a new approach for my Instagram account, centering on capsule book reviews. Overall activity at The Hourglass will likely decline, as I have fewer stories scheduled for publication in 2025 than was the case in 2024 -- time will tell if organic growth of the blog will offset diminished publication.