I thought I would do an in depth bio about me and my passion for books along with why I decided to do a book blog.
I will start out by saying that I have been reading books since I was little. My parents would buy me books all the time and I started out with Nancy Drew which I ended up with tons of those books. Then they bought me the Black Stallion book series so I read those. The only reason they bought me those books was because at the time my dad had horses and we would go riding quite a bit so I guess he thought it was fitting for me to read a book series about them.
The spookiness though of the Nancy Drew series is what turned me toward reading horror but it was more light ghost stories - nothing graphic. But my first real taste of horror came when one of my brothers let me borrow a book called "Cujo" by Stephen King. If I remember correctly I think I cried some with reading that book as what happens to Cujo turning rabid. But it instilled in me my love for horror from that book. After reading Cujo I was on the hunt for books by King and I found out that my library had quite a few of his books which I devoured. I read so many of his early stuff that I would have to wait till a new one would come out to read more by him. King wasn't the only one though - I would ask the librarians what other books are out there compared to King and that is when I found John Saul plus some other different horror authors. This was all back in the late 80's and early 90's. So from that point of reading Cujo I was stuck in the horror realm.
I would still read other books from other genres - mystery, etc. but I always came back to horror. The next place for grabbing horror books was thrift stores as they would have one whole wall of nothing but horror books and they were usually cheap like $.25 or $.50 a book. Not a lot of people read horror books it seems back then so I would just load up.
So I have read tons of books in my lifetime - more horror than anything. Later years I started reading some other genres like fantasy, science fiction, mystery, etc. I have even read romance and western stories back in the late 80's and 90's. I just wanted to try different genres to see what they all were like but my true love was and always has been horror.
About the middle 2000's one of my friends that I have known for many years got me hooked into the website Goodreads. Once I got on there and started finding different books - that opened up a new world for me as I could look up other books and see what they were about. Also I could see what friends were reading and what they thought were good books. I have found tons through that website. Which then I started joining horror groups and getting involved with other readers that were into the same likes as me.
That is when I discovered more books that I could sink my teeth into and then I became friends with authors through those groups. That was cool to me as back in the day authors were elusive in the book world - you only saw them on the back of book cover jackets. lol But chatting with them and reading their books opened up a whole different world.
As time went on over on the Goodreads website I learned how to do book reviews. I would read reviews from friends to see how they would do their reviews so I tried to see if I could do them too as at first I would just rate the books and not do actual reviews as I didn't know really how to do them. But I learned eventually how to write reviews that would give the readers a peek into the books I read without giving away spoilers and then give some thoughts on how the book made me feel.
When 2020 rolled around I was itching to maybe try my hand at creating a book blog as I was wanting to share my passion for the books I read. I hemmed-hawed around with it for about a year before trying to figure out if I really wanted to dive into doing a book blog. I didn't really know how much time and energy it would take to create one and keep up with it. Two of my author friends kind of talked me into it - lol. Kept encouraging me and supporting me on starting one. I am thankful to them both as they helped me get moving on it and stop circling the mulberry bush trying to decide what to do.
So I chatted with two of my friends from Goodreads that was actually doing book blogs at that time. One of them was a moderator for a horror group over there (if you know who you are then you know who you are as I am not name dropping here - lol) and I found out some info about book blogging. Actually joined a website that was for blogs (my friend was on there too) but the website just didn't work for me really. Then I found Blogger and started chatting with my other Goodreads friend who used Blogger for their book blogs. This person helped me tremendously as they had been on Blogger a few years and knew the "ins and outs" of the website. I had to start from scratch on this website as it was kind of easy to work with but then there were some things that were a pain. I spent lots of energy corresponding with my friend to figure out how to do things and I am eternally grateful for all their help, support and all the messages back and forth for months! :) (If you know who you are then you know who are - lol - I know I drove you crazy my friend! - lol)
So 2020 this book blog was born and it took me near a year to get everything set up right and to understand how everything worked - formatting blogs, etc.
Also in 2020 I had another friend on Goodreads that was doing background artwork for her book reviews. She taught me how to get the book covers on the backgrounds. For awhile I helped her with her website on finding her backgrounds for the book covers so she could put them on her blog website and in her reviews on Goodreads. So that is how I came to do my own for the books I read. All my background artwork is the free public domain artwork and I just add the book covers on there to spice up the book blog. I saw that my friend had her own gallery on her blog website for all the books she had read and the artwork she used so that is when I decided to do the same thing.
All in all I am happy to say that I love doing the book blogs - I love reading books and then sharing my passion of what I read with the world. I love getting on here and creating the blog along with creating reviews that help other readers want to go out and grab the book.
So that is a little bit about me and what I am about. My thanks to everyone I have come in contact with through reading books. I want to thank everyone that has supported my blog and thank you to everyone that has stayed with me all these years. Thank you all for sharing this blog and the reviews I do. It is much appreciated. Without books, without authors, without friends this book blog would not exist. Thank You All!!!
