My Fifth Year Blogiversary!

I cannot believe I’ve hit my first big milestone. FIVE years?! How in the world did this happen?!

2021 brought another amazing year with reading. I continued to work on honest reviews, beta read a few amazing things, and podcasted with the gents at Dead Headspace!

New to 2021, I posted a review on the Dead Headspace platform, joined another review community, and helped out with flagging potential content warnings for an anthology!

If you missed my other blogiversary posts, feel free to take a peek at them below:

• Year One
• Year Two
• Year Three
• Year Four

Let’s dive in!

My Fifth Year Blogiversary

Stats:

• My email subscribers count unfortunately reset this year, just as I was about to hit 1,000! Feedburner was discontinued, so I started over with a new platform. I now have 10 followers. 🙂
• My Facebook fan page follower count has grown from 359 to 378.
• My Instagram follower count grew from 1,125 to 1,314 followers.
• Honest review requests completed this year: 74. That’s 20 more than last year!

My most popular posts from this year include:

• [Novella Review] Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca
• [Book Review] The Strange Thing We Become and Other Dark Tales
• [Novella Review] The Haunting of Clandestine House by Celina Myers
• [Novella Review] Everything’s Annoying by J.C. Michael
• [Novella Review] Halloween Land by Kevin J. Kennedy

Dead Headspace podcast episodes I guest hosted on:

• 2nd Annual Halloween special with Janine Pipe
• Eric LaRocca
• 1st Anniversary with special guest Shane Hawk
• Tim Lebbon
• Tim McGregor
• Best of Season 1

*NEW* Blog posts that I contributed to on other platforms:

• Dead Headspace Blog | Twisted: Tainted Tales by Janine Pipe
• FanFiAddict Blog | Review: Merry Fuckin’ Christmas and Other Yuletide Shit by Kevin J. Kennedy

What I’ve Learned:

I’m still working on remembering that I cannot overbook myself and that it is okay to pass on a book that is offered to me for review.

This year, thanks to a little mistake that I’ll discuss below, I really overdid it with honest reviews. This unfortunately added a level of stress that I do not want with this blogging venture…

So what happened?

I thought I had turned my honest review request form off… But one day when I logged on to make an adjustment before reopening, I was shocked to see over 500 requests in there.

I went through every single request and responded to almost every one. The only people that did not get a response were the people that didn’t fill it out correctly (for example, offering a romance book when that was not an option from the list of genres I accept).

And of course, I did everything in my power to cruise through this list and get all of the books read. As of today, I am 15 honest reviews behind. I hate missing deadlines and this is killing me, but I keep telling myself that I am doing the best that I can.

Shout-Outs:

I know I am going to forget some key people here… so stay tuned, I’m sure I’ll be updating this section again soon. If I missed something you think should be here, feel free to email me or comment below!

Thank you to Tony Moyle, Nick Clausen, Eric J. Guignard, and Kevin J. Kennedy for your continued support and communication about your latest works! I loved working with you all so much again this year.

Thank you to Aiden Merchant for keeping me on your list of reviewers and for pulling me in for a beta reading and content warning project for Blackberry Blood. I was honored to take part!

Thank you to Patrick R McDonough, Brennan LaFaro, Nick Clausen, Joshua Marsella, Michael Clark, and Eric LaRocca for trusting me as a beta reader for some of your works. I can’t wait to see what you all do next!

Thank you to Patrick R. McDonough and Brennan LaFaro for keeping me around for the Dead Headspace podcast and for making me feel super comfortable when taking part!

Thank you to David Walters and the rest of the FanFiAddict crew for inviting me to take part in your review family and for being so incredibly supportive!

And thank you to everyone for being SO patient while I worked through my honest review backlog! You have all truly been amazing to work with this year!

And last, but certainly not least, thank you to all that follow, read, and/or comment on my blog! <3

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Thanks for reading!

While time has certainly flown, I am so grateful for everything book blogging has brought into my life. I’ve met so many wonderful people that I wouldn’t have otherwise had the opportunity to know. The friendships were especially important in 2021, as we all know what a rough year this was.

Thank you all so much for your support! I’m really looking forward to continuing this blog in 2022!