Over the last month I have been to busy with other projects (the kind that pay the bills) and Second61 has been moved to the side.

But today I read a great piece on the blog Print is dead that reminded me of the core of this project. The interaction between authors and readers and the respect of the fans. Some authors may be getting to attached to their heroes and characters.

I promise not to follow in the footsteps of JK Rowling who is suing her fans for writing an encyclopedia of Harry Potter. (Article in NY Times, link via Print is dead)

As you may have noticed some better illustrations have started to appear around the site. My own humble sketches can't compare to a dedicated artist. I was lucky to find an illustrator specialized on manga cartoons, which I thought fit this concept very well.

He has now done character illustrations for the official characters so far. There will be more of those added along the way. Villains are for example still missing.

Another area are illustrations for single stories which add value from my point of view. Just look at this story (only Swedish at the moment, sorry) about Humberto Sanchez that I got an illustration (above) done for. This one was of course drawn specifically for this story. But over the next couple of weeks it is my intention to add more generic illustrations starring the different characters, illustrations that could be used by stories written by different authors.

Over time the gallery will hopefully grow to have hundreds (or later thousands) of images to provide a variation for stories. For me, this is going back to the roots of storytelling. In the 19th century it was very common to use illustrations in novels, not just in books for children but for all ages. Here on Second 61, we are bringing it to the 21st century.

So what have I been up to the last couple of weeks? No new stories published recently although I do have a few that are close to finished.

But I have been working with the logo. People told me that the old one (below) was boring and difficult to read and said nothing about what Second 61 was. Ok.

So I took some time to think about... time. And came up with the idea of an old (ancient?) drawing that would symbolize the knowledge of the 61st second. Myself think it is brilliant. It is absolutely wrong from a logo design perspective since you can't see all the detail if it is too small. But since this whole project is kind of un-orthodox - why not make the logo different too?

I think this logo would look great on a T-shirt. So - do you like my new logo?

Today I read a story by Mike Elgan on Computerworld, titled "Will cell phones save books?". It talked about the debate spurred by Steve Jobs quote regarding the Kindle e-book Reader from Amazon:

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don't read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year."

The correct number turned out to be 27 percent. That does not mean that people do not read anymore. But they read more online than on paper. People also write more today than they used to because more communication is done by text in general (think sms, e-mail and Instant Message/chat).

Anyway, one country that still has a lot of readers turns out to be the one with the most mobile phones - Japan. (There might be some other country with more mobiles per capita).

Elgan's conclusion is that they have mastered the participation in books better:

I think the decline in reading is caused by the same thing that's causing the decline in television -- one too many media like books and TV are losing out to more engaging participatory media.

In other words, I think cell phone novels are hot in Japan and not in America because the Japanese have made novels participatory, and we haven't figured out how to do that yet.

People, especially young people, prefer media created by peers or artists, or writers they perceive to be peers.

Somehow I feel great when reading those lines. Because I think they are describing what Second 61 is all about. Bringing authors and readers together in a new way.

A few days ago I came up with a new idea for a story, inspired by another author here at second61.com.

The question was about finding a good way to explain all the possibilites about the pheonmenon of S61. I thought about creating a wiki, or adding more stuff to the FAQ.

But really, personally I often find that kind of educational writing to easily become boring. I thought it would be more fun to add it to a fictional story since it gets more emotional and personal when you experience it through someone elses eyes, right?

So, therefore I will today introduce a new character. His name is Humberto Sanchez and he spent most of his life researching Second 61 and writing all of it down.  After his death most of this work went missing, but some of his notebooks have started to surface and we will get to share them...

One important piece of information has been the paper known as "The Scheme of Sanchez" that is an experiment of the access to S61. Basically it tells you at what minute shifts during the day it takes least amount of energy to reach the state of timelessness!

I have published it here.

It took a while, but today there is finally a story published on this website that is not written by me. Feels great!

Now I am looking forward to seeing more authors join in the writing of S61-stories. The imagination of one is only so limited - think of what ten, hundred or a thousand writers all spinning on one subject...

Ok, time to get back to My Writing again.

As I was working on a new story about a Spanish researcher looking into the Second 61 pheonomenon I came across the fact that Second 61 in Spanish would be Segundo 61.

So I decided to register some more domain names just in case. segundo61.com, org and net is now tied to this project. Might come in handy some day when we add Spanish to this website. It is after all the second largest language in the world when it comes to native speakers.
And even counting second (!) languages it is on the top 5. In total some 300-500 million Spanish speaking (and probably reading), compared to 0,4-1,1 billion English.

Swedish with it's 9-20 million speakers (half native) is far behind in that perspective... Let's hope we can get more stories translated to English soon.

Stats on languages at Wikipedia.

A few more authors have joined the site over the last couple of days. Nothing published yet by them but it has rasied some questions of course about various aspects of being in Second 61.

I have been thought about it last night and I feel that there are some things that needs to be done. First some work on the FAQ-page (that I just renamed Help and added to the main menu since I think more visitors will find it that way) with more Questions & Answers.

But also, I think that I need to write a tutorial. I am thinking a fictional tutorial that has existed since ancient time, with stories of how the first encounters occur, how important events of our history has been possible through the knowledge of S61 perhaps.

So this will be my main priority over the coming days, to put into writing more of the thoughts that are only in my head at the moment. In my head, and in some messages corresponding with other S61 authors (whose work I am looking forward to reading)...

Do you have questions that should be answered? Add them to the Forum and I will answer them both there and try to include them in this new collection of stories.

Did you know that there really is a 61st second? Not very often, but it does exist. According to Wikpiedia it is called the Leap Second.

"A leap second is an intercalary, one-second adjustment that keeps broadcast standards for time of day close to mean solar time. (...) When a positive leap second is added at 23:59:60 UTC, it delays the start of the following UTC day (at 00:00:00 UTC) by one second, effectively slowing the UTC clock."

Last time it "occured" was on Dec 31, 2005. Wonder how many waited to celebrate the New Year that night?

So I have invited a few friends to see this new website. Perhaps sending an e-mail a few days before Christmas and expect a lot of feedback is too much.

But one thing that have crossed my mind is - how do you quickly explain the concept of Second 61 in a minute. Call it the elevator pitch if you like.

For someone who has not heard discussions of the concept behind it, what are the essentials? What makes it compelling enough to read a story? And what stories would be recommended to get into it right away?

So far there are only two stories published, two of mine. I translated one of them to English last night so there at least would be something worth reading for foreign visitors.

The next step would now be to get more Authors to join, to start filling the site with more stories worth reading. To bring ideas to life. But it all comes back to that first question - does this website explain what Second 61 is all about fast enough? If not - what do I need to add?