YA Community Thanksgiving.

Adele at Persnickety Snark wrote a great post today talking
about the many things that she's thankful for within the YA blogging
community and I really wanted to contribute something.

As you can see, I only started my blog this week, but have been a lurker on dozens of book blogs for a while.  I am a single mum of a toddler, living in the north of Scotland - far away from the big city lights I have previously been used to!  As such, I can feel quite isolated but the more I trolled through book blogs, read comments and learnt about memes, the more I felt that this was something that would connect me to an online community who truly shared my interests (try bringing up YA fiction at a mother and toddler group and you get some pretty funny looks!).

So, after much deliberation I decided to set up my own blog.  At this point can I do a massive shout-out to the awesome Carla at The Crooked Shelf who gracefully replied to my email asking for tips and was really generous with her time and advice - I probably wouldn't have started this blog without her words of encouragement and everyone should check out her reviews, as they simply rock!

Anyhoo, there I am, ready to "go live" when suddenly I see some posts on blogging etiquette and plagiarism. I have to admit that this kind of scared me - what if I stepped on someone's toes by accident, what if someone hated a reviews, what if EVERYONE hated my blog????? (I'm prone to melodrama - as you can see, I don't really make a concerted effort to fight it and instead lie awake worrying about things into the wee, small hours).  Eventually, as you can see, I decided to go for it anyway and am so glad I did.  I immediately got two lovely comments from fellow bloggers Sarah and The Book Vixen who don't know me from Adam, but who made me feel really welcome and supported.  Also, Maggie Stiefvater Tweeted at me (well, back at me, but come on - Maggie Stiefvater!!!  Excuse my fangirl moment, there...).

I am truly excited at the prospect of becoming part of this community and am glad that Adele had the idea of saying thanks, thus giving me the opportunity!