And yes, this includes WordPress.com users! In fact, the whole point is that they can be used on WordPress.comsites (like mine) and look unique, instead of the plain ones you find out there now. But first, here’s the story of how they came about:

When I started revising the draft of my novel Strayborn, I wanted a cool widget that would show on the sidebar of my website my writing progress. I looked/googled around, but everything that was pretty, cool, and had special features used Javascript or some other thing that WordPress.com doesn’t allow. In the end, what I did find was a simple one color bar that showed percentages, so I used that. But after a while, it stopped working. I don’t know what the reason was, but it would no longer work on any of my sites. My frustration flared up.

I got to thinking how I…