Down and out in Mexico

This time of the year — at least according to what statistics I have for the last year and a half — the Mex Files numbers start to look like recent stock market charts.  There was a huge number of hits (relative to a “botique” site like this one) in September, thanks to Sven-Goran Eriksson — or rather, mention of Mex Files in an article about Sven-Goran in The Guardian (U.K.) Sports Blog. And, Animal Planet had a show about the Axolotl that month, which brought in a thousand hits a day for a couple of days in a row.

I expect the number of hits to peak about November and early December. My guess is that people are either thinking about winter vacations or writing term papers and — I hope — doing research, and not just cutting and pasting.  After Christmas, the numbers plunge.

I thought at first, maybe changing over to “mexfiles.net” caused the huge drop — and, it probably has temporarily.  For some odd reason, my post on Ramon Novarro used to get at least 60 hits a day, and now gets one or two a week.  Of course, I don’t think those hits came from silent film buffs, or film historians, or Chicano studies students… the title, “Nude Gay Mexican“,  had a lot to do with it.  Weirdly right now — a later “companion piece” — or, maybe, an attempt to provide something for everyone — on a not-nekked, but scantily clad “Miss Mexico 2008” is now the tops the hits chart.

Anyway, I expected it to be “slow” this time of year, which made it less traumatic to switch servers, and expect it’d be a while before people’s links caught up.

And… this being a slow time of the year for the Mex Files, I can afford to take a few days off.  Not that I’m slacking off.  Quite the opposite.  Gods, Gachupines and Gringos is available now in the United States, but there have been yet more challenges getting books into Mexico.  The off-again, on-again  rules about cross border trucking make it prohibitively expensive to commercially import something under half a ton,  and the “alternative transport” methods we looked at ran into a glitch… i.e., the guy who was driving them here in a motorhome (with all the import papers and customs declarations done) can’t make the trip.  SO….

I’m also working for the publisher, so I guess this is part of my job.  I’m off to Nogales this coming week to pick up the books and bring them down.  I’ll also be carting books around the country and doing a writers’ road trip in a couple of weeks (independent book distribution in Mexico requires a more “hands on” approach than in the U.S.),  so posting may be a bit lighter than usual.

For the next week, I won’t have my laptop with me, so other than a few posts I write over the weekend, nothing until at least next Friday.