My goodness, my blogiversary just totally blew past me this year! But hey, better to celebrate late than never, ya? So let’s pretend it’s December 28th, 2023 for a moment.
2023 was by far one of the most challenging years of my life as I tried to balance everything (health, work, personal life, blogging, etc.) while being pregnant. I had a solid 4-month span where moving my eyes across words on a page or e-reader made my nausea swell, but I still tried to power through!
Thank you all so much for your kindness throughout the year! Especially to all of the authors and publishers that sent me books and said, “For whenever you have time IF you want to read this!” I promise I will get to anything outstanding as soon as I can!
And for those of you who checked in to see how I was doing throughout the year, I cannot even explain how grateful I am to you! <3
Let’s dive in!
Stats:
- This year, I had 21,136 page views on my blog from 85.7% new visitors and 14.3% returning visitors!
- My email subscriber count grew from 1,004 to 1,031.
- My Facebook fan page follower count has grown from 414 to 483.
- My Instagram follower count grew from 1,503 to 1,646 followers.
- Review requests completed this year: 57.
My top three most popular posts from this year include:
- A Running List of 2023 Horror Book Releases
- Wasps in the Ice Cream by Tim McGregor | Book Review
- The Drift by C.J. Tudor | Book Review
New pages created this year:
Dead Headspace podcast episodes I guest hosted on:
I unfortunately had to step away from co-hosting with the crew to focus on my personal life. Even so, I was able to take part in the following episodes in early 2023:
Blog posts that I contributed to on other platforms:
There’s nothing new for this section this year as I, unfortunately, had to step down from blogging for FanFiAddict’s site to help stop spreading myself too thin while I prepared for the arrival of our little guy. All of my previous reviews are still live over there as I granted the team permission to keep them! 
Interviews I hosted:
No new interviews this year 
I’m hoping to get back into this in 2024!
Book Events:
- Book Launch Party for Hell On High by Michael Clark
- An Evening with Michael Clark
- Instagram Live with Katherine Silva
- Meeting Paul Tremblay at Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, NH
- Bookish Event: Buzz Book Expo 2023
What I’ve Learned:
Investing in good support is key –
Last year, my goal was to find a website coder that I could hire for some help. This year, a lovely gentleman helped me finally create the purchase module that you will see at the bottom of my new reviews. I was so pleased with this process, I already have a list of things to send his way when I can hire him again! If anyone is looking for coding help, feel free to reach out and I can send your info his way!
I needed to take a step back –
In early 2023, I hit a wall. The pregnancy hormones didn’t help, but all of a sudden, I was just done. I was just so fed up with all the dramas and ridiculous things that kept happening as well as the same conversations and problematic people that kept stirring things up again and again. I was sick of people assuming I owed them anything like a follow back if they followed me or an explanation of why I blocked them. Very silly things like that.
So, I finally took a much-needed step back.
I stopped participating in podcasting and reviewing on other platforms to focus on my own thing again. I went through all of my social accounts to see which ones I could delete my account from, went through all of my following/follower lists on each platform to remove a ton of connections that I don’t actually engage with, and then I removed social media from my phone completely. This was so refreshing, but also very frustrating. I’m still annoyed that it came to this… But here we are! Diving into 2024 spending the least amount of time on social media since I first got my MySpace page back in the day and feeling SO much better. I’m still present on various social channels, but I mainly check in to post review links, do a very quick scroll, and then log back off. I’ve still got some FOMO, but my peace of mind is more important to me.
I highly recommend limiting time on social to anyone reading this!
It’s time for a new logo –
As much as I love it, my current logo just doesn’t shout HORROR READER. I’m still getting so many requests for non-horror things… My goal for my 8th year blogging will be to get a new logo! I have a few people who I want to reach out to to see if they would take a commission project. But as always, happy for recommendations here!
Shout-Outs:
Apologies in advance to anyone that I’m forgetting! 2023 was a bit of a blurr!
Shout out to the following authors for sending over review copies! I had an absolute blast reading your work and I’m so honored that many on this list are return authors!
- John Durgin
- E.C. Hanson
- Aquino Loayza
- Tim McGregor
- Steve Stred
- Brennan LaFaro
- Matt Wildasin
- Michael Clark
- Die Booth
- Lor Gislason
- Catherine Cavendish
- Cody J. Thompson
- John Lynch (I still owe you two reviews, John!)
- Rebecca Rowland
- T.L. Bodine
- Robert P. Ottone
- Ronald Kelly
- J.C. Michael
- Rowan Hill
- Kelly Covic
- Holly Rae Garcia
- Katherine Silva
- Candace Nola
- Kevin J Kennedy
- Caesar Ruell (I cannot wait to dive into The Revenge of the Clowns soon!)
- Kenneth W. Cain
- Samantha Kolesnick
- Lucinda Berry
Shout out to the following publishers that sent review copies over for various authors! Same case here as I noted above, I am so honored that many of these publishers are people I have worked with many times before!
- Heather and Steve of Brigids Gate Press
- Kevin Lucia of Cemetery Dance Publications
- Andrew Robert of Dark Lit Press
- Aric Sundquist of Dark Peninsula Press
- Kayleigh Dobbs and Stephen Kozeniewski of French Press
- Kenneth W. Cain of Kangas Kahn Publishing
- Kevin J. Kennedy of KJK Publishing
- Lauren Pires of Simon & Schuster Audio
- Alex Woodroe and Matt Blairstone of Tenebrous Press
Thanks for reading!
And thank you for being here for yet another year! Cheers to a great 2024!
Related Reading:
If you missed my other blogiversary posts, feel free to take a peek at them below:
Leave a Reply