Three is the Magic Number

Today this blog is three years old - if you don't count the six month hiatus last year.  Yay!

I was thinking about this the other day, especially in relation to how long I have been reading and reviewing m/m books.  Three years doesn't seem a very long time, but it is in a genre as newish as m/m romance. I've sat by and watched publishers like DSP go from releasing one book and one short a week to the howevermany a week they produce now.  I've seen a number of small publishers (or not so small if you count Carina Press) start up with strong m/m romance releases.  I've seen new blogs/review sites start (one of them my own Brief Encounters Reviews) and other old favourites close down - I still mourn Rainbow Reviews.

More than that though I feel like a bit of an old woman when it comes to the genre. There were some m/m only review and commentary blogs before mine, such as the sadly missed Emmy or Teddy Pig, Kassa and Jessewave which are still going strong (although believe it or not Jessewave's site is only 9 months older than mine!) and of course the lovely Lisabea at Nose in a Book who was the main influence for me setting up a blog in the first place.  Nowadays there are lots of sites which review m/m books and it's great to see such a huge interest in the genre. It makes me happy to be able to share thoughts, compare likes and dislikes and to get to know such a great, enthusiastic bunch of people.

Which leads me to the main reason I keep blogging and reviewing: The great friendships I've made during those three years. I never would have thought when I started blogging that I would travel half way across the globe to stay with people I've never even seen in real life.  It was great to put names to faces and to find that, even though we'd never even spoken to each other, we could still all get along and have good fun together.  The same goes for all the lovely people I met in Milton Keynes in July.  And there are others too, who I may never meet, but who I consider a friend.

So I'm raising a glass of decent red wine to my blog today, not because of the endless hours I've spent typing up posts and reading books to review, but because of the friends I've made and will continue to keep even if I ever have to close the doors again.

Cheers!