2019: One Year in Review

Steph P. Bianchini December 31, 2019 10 Comments

December is traditionally for me not only the end of the year but also The Earthian Hivemind‘s blogversary (it started in December 2013, Day 16). Over the years, things have changed a great deal in terms of space given to the different topics and even subjects covered.

The sheer novelty of 2019 has been the launch of Frozen Wavelets, an outlet of flash fiction and short poetry, which has kept me busy since July (I am dealing with the second submission period right now). Of course, this had an impact on the amount of time I was able to devote to the rest of the blog, in terms of reviews and overall coverage of my favourite subjects (space, manga, and history). I do expect things to normalise once the ezine (Issue #1 online now and soon in a downloadable format) is running regularly and I am able to enlist some help (in addition to my trusted second readers).

The good thing is that the readership of this blog has kept growing in 2019 (after remaining stable in 2018) and, once more, the posts about historical fiction (such as the Borgia and the Netflix series Roman Empire) have proved the most popular. But also the weekly offering of Frozen Wavelets had gathered good audience, with  Annie Neugebauer and Patrick Hurley the most clicked.

My plans for 2020 are pretty simple: keep doing what I’m doing right now, with Frozen Wavelets remaining my priority. Next year will be critical, and I need to devote to it a substantial part of my time. But I also do expect to cover more historical subjects, not necessarily fiction, due to an ongoing project I’ll disclose in due course.

Finally, a curiosity: I’ve been asked about the regular blogversary photo (the white rabbit). It is Yu-Tu, the mythological Moon Rabit of the Chinese tradition, which was the name given to the lunar rover China sent to the Moon in December 2013, at the same moment I launched this blog. That was also my first post. Happy 2020, everyone!