Courtney and I started this blog almost exactly a year ago (our 1 year blogiversary is November 5th.) She strong armed me into joining her in this endeavor in spite of my protestations that I didn't have time to start a book review blog right then as I was struggling to write 1,667 words a day for NaNoWriMo, caring for my two children, and spending time with my parents, sister, and nephew whom I hadn't seen for almost 3 years while living in Germany. The conditions for starting a blog were about as far from ideal as you could get. But Courtney started it anyway, and I jumped on board for the ride.
In the early days she did most of the "heavy lifting" getting our Facebook page out there and connecting with authors, which is something I'm still not really good at, even though they're coming to us now. I could almost live my life as a hermit with very little contact with the outside world. While Courtney was making those important connections, I was getting a start on posting reviews. Here's my very first review for the blog. I like to think I've come a long way since then, but I'm really not so sure.
I ended up losing NaNoWriMo last year because I quit to focus more on building the blog (read getting reviews posted). But it's not all the blogs fault. I also made two completely separate Thanksgiving dinners last year to spare my mother that burden since my minions and I were staying at their house, and that was pretty much 4 whole days of writing down the drain between baking and eating.
Our Facebook page really took off early on because Courtney managed to con authors into taking over our page for entire days the whole month of December. That accomplished two things really. It freed us up to spend quality time with our families for the holidays, and each author brought several of their followers for their takeover. It was a win-win for us, and I hope the authors felt the same way.
Since then we have added five, and then lost two reviewers from our team. They have all contributed to our mediocrity (I know I should say greatness, but I just don't feel like we're really that great. We do okay though!) We even faced a blog disbandment when I decided I was going to leave because the blogging felt too much like work and I was losing my enjoyment of reading, but like a typical woman, I changed my mind and we're still here. I now do a lot of the "heavy lifting" scheduling and posting cover reveals and blog tours and trying to keep up an active presence on Facebook while Kara, and Kristi do the real heavy lifting actually writing reviews. Our November schedule is looking really bleak though, as I've avoided signing up for anything so I can once again participate in NaNoWriMo. Knowing myself as well as I do, I'm almost positive NaNoMania would lead to extreme forgetfulness on my part. There's even a good chance I'll fail this challenge because I just forget to make my daily posts. But we shall see. - Katie
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