Monday, December 30, 2013

Yet another great year at the Dew - an overabundance of riches!


2013 was the busiest year ever for The Dew!

With the busy came changes. 

I found myself more immersed in the book industry than ever before - but this meant pulling back from the short stories.    I could not successfully do both and continue at the pace The Dew and it's readers were asking of me.  I wanted to sit a spell and The Dew wanted to keep running.  I found myself getting sloppy, cutting corners, feeling aggravated at the whole process. As this is not a "job" but a "passion" I certainly didn't want that to continue.

So I took a long look at The Dew and what I was concentrating on the most and what I felt I could conceivably continue to produce to my.......and your........standards.   The answer was book reviews.

So that's what I did.  The Dew did not stop publishing short stories - I simply stopped soliciting them for a time.  I still received some wonderful stories and made sure they had face time at the Dew, but without actively going after them they definitely reduced in the amount we had.

At the same time the book review requests exploded into an amount that I could barely handle - this Fall in particular was intense!  So instead of turning good books away, I began putting a few out there as promos - no review, but excerpts, interviews, trailers, etc. to show that the book looked worthwhile to me - even without myself personally having the time to read it.  That was a big change for me that I had to sit down and think about a while before giving myself the okay to do it.  I finally decided who am I to hold back from sharing with the reader a good looking book simply because I'm too busy to read it myself? I still have a giant TBR list just for me!


The Dew had a wildly successful 2013.  In the web world we now live in, having this site in existence since 2005 makes it nearly a dinosaur - but one that I'm so pleased with.  I always remember that without readers, writers and contributors of every sort there would be no Dew at all.

The Dew has been through many evolutions since it's inception and in this ever changing world we live in I'm sure there will be quite a few more headed our way. The Dew may evolve even further in 2014...........or it may stay exactly the same. I haven't made that decision yet, I think I'll just hang on for the ride and see where it ends up!

So THANK YOU to all of you and cheers to an astounding 2014!