One Thousand Posts (a co-post by Mark Valentine and Douglas A. Anderson)

It was on 19 June, 2009 that Doug approached me with the idea of a blog to augment Wormwood, a journal of the fantastic I had started editing for Tartarus Press. I at once agreed: and it was also Doug that came up with the name. Just three days later the new blog began with a post by Doug, and my own first post, appropriately enough, was on the forgotten writer J.C. Snaith, whom Doug had drawn to my attention the previous year.

Ever a slow adopter, I had no notion of how to set up a blog, and it wouldn’t have happened without Doug’s inspiration and impetus. Ever since then, Doug has carried out all the admin and backroom work that goes with the blog, handling comments (and lots of spam) and resolving technical issues. Let it be stressed that this shared blog only happens because of all his work.

It seems astonishing that we have now reached our one thousandth post. We have covered lost authors, lost books, lost artists, classic authors, books in their centenary year, important new publications, events and exhibitions, obscurities and oddities, archival and bibliographical records, and a fair number of quite unclassifiable things.

I’d also like to venture another claim. The average length of a post is, I think, about a thousand words: certainly, that’s what I aim for when I’m writing about a forgotten author or book, a book-collecting expedition, or some discovery I want to share. Of course, some posts are much briefer, but others have been quite a bit longer. So 1,000 posts at an average of 1,000 words means that we must have around one million words here: one million words of free-to-read commentary and news on fantastic literature. If anyone wants to count them just to make sure, you are most welcome.

As well as the regular posts by Doug and me, we’ve also been fortunate to receive excellent contributions by guests, and I’d like to thank all those who have enriched the blog in this way. The same goes for our readers, whose comments have often offered new information, ideas or perspectives. Thank you for your interest and support: your comments are always read and welcomed. Finally, Doug maintains the Blog Roll which lists fellow blogs in similar fields of interest to us, and these continue to offer encouragement and camaraderie in our mutual interest in the fantastical.

Mark Valentine

 

Mark has said above almost all of what I might say in observing our one thousandth post in our fifteenth year of this blog. I might add that I chose the name Wormwoodiana because I felt it echoed and expanded upon the field as covered in the (now sadly defunct) journal Wormwood, which Mark edited. I felt a blog could cover lots of topics that were too small to make the fuller coverage of an essay as usually found in Wormwood. Plus there would also be opportunities to give attention to various books, zines, music, authors, artists, blogs, etc. Initially, the comments were open and unmoderated, but as the spam increased I felt the need to moderate—which means primarily to approve real comments and junk the spam, when I get to it, which is usually fairly quickly (save for during my sleeping hours).

I would also add a large thanks here to Mark, and express my gratitude as well to our various guest bloggers and contributors. Overall, I think we have carved out our own tiny corner in the web, and I am grateful too for the readers and commentators who join us here.

Douglas A. Anderson