Welcome to the fiftieth post here at The Elephant and Macaw Banner website!  This post also marks six months since the official website launch.

For those interested, I’m going to use this post to give a rundown of those first six months, and talk a bit about what is coming for the future.

First off, I’ll share some numbers.  There have been over 4000 page views since we’ve launched.  That includes close to 1000 unique visitors from 67 countries.  If you add in the Live Journal statistics, that adds a few hundred more unique visitors a couple thousand more hits.  I don’t have data for Twitter and the RSS feeds, but I know those have been active as well.  We’ve had two big peaks to date, one after Cory Doctorow tweeted about the story launch and one after M. G. Ellington interviewed me for Apex Book Company.  Thanks again to both of you for your support!

And most important, thanks so much to everyone who has dropped by, especially those who have linked to or friended the site!  EAMB also has over 70 followers on Facebook, Twitter and LiveJournal.

I hope everyone has enjoyed the artwork so far, I know I have.  I won’t be posting any more for a while, although some is waiting in the wings for the next story launch.  I would like to take this chance to publicize the artists, all of whom do freelance work and all of whom are a pleasure to work with.  If you enjoyed their artwork and have some potential jobs for them, please look them up on the “Links” page.

Coming up: For the “World” section, I still have one more set of posts to wrap up all the references from “The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara”.  Specifically, I’ll be writing posts dealing with the final arc of the story: the encounter of Gerard and Saci-Pererê.  After that, I hope to start putting up posts about the other stories.  There is much, much more to come.

More stories are on their way, I promise, but the publishing world moves at its own pace.  Even though publication takes time, I still hope to publish the stories through magazines.  Not only do I want to expose as many readers as possible to the series, I also to want to make sure the stories are top quality by the time they are published.  The editors do a great job of pushing me to make them the best possible before they go to press.

So thanks again!  If you have any questions, just drop a comment or send me an e-mail.  I’ll be around!

April will be Yoruba month here at the Elephant and Macaw Banner website.

For those keeping track, most of the posts so far in the “World” section have been about elements from the first act of “The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara”, the part in which Gerard and Oludara have their fateful encounter in Salvador.  Now I’ll be moving on to the second part of the story, Oludara’s tale set in the ancient, Yoruba-speaking kingdom of Ketu, in Western Africa.

I haven’t studied Africa in anywhere near the depth I’ve studied Colonial Brazil, but I have studied it enough to offer some interesting tidbits.  So during April, all new World posts will all deal with Yoruban Africa.  I have four posts planned, starting with one this week about the ancient kingdom of Ketu.

In May, I’ll start posting about elements from the third and final part of the story.

As always, I hope you enjoy the posts!