Hey, everyone! I'm BAAAAACCKKKK!

So, before we get started with today's post, a couple of announcements:

Due to school, life, etc., for the duration of this school year, my blog posts shall be going up on either Friday or Saturday. I have yet to decide which. But thank you so much for your patience!!!

Next up is: I promised a "special announcement post" when I got back from my hiatus. But... it turns out that this post is not yet ready. And the thing that was to be announced was... not yet one hundred percent true. So hopefully, by next week it will be!

Today's post follows:

I recently saw Lisa at Inkwell do a post on how much she appreciated Katie Grace's blog and how she influenced her. (If you haven't followed them both, BTW, you should. Go do that right now.) That inspired me to do a little post giving a shoutout to all the people who inspired and influenced me when I was a wee blogger just starting out.

Warning: I may mention you. If you have even the smallest embarrassment about being mentioned here, then by all means, run.

When I was--oh, I don't know, about 11-- and waiting for the Wingfeather Saga book 4, The Warden and the Wolf King, to drop, I started frequenting Andrew Peterson's book website/blog, wingfeathersaga.com. It was updated weekly, and by the time I was thirteen I'd read all the archives and was slightly addicted to it. Fan art, updates on the progress of book 4, exclusive facts... it was so perfect.

One day, the librarian (head blogger) over there posted a link to the First Annual Silmarillion Awards, saying that they had begun a couple of days before and lots of Wingfeather characters were getting nominated. I followed the link to DJ Edwardson's blog, and from there found all of the other nomination posts.

The first of those blogs I followed was Adventure Awaits, the online home of Tracey Dyck. She blogged about Tolkien, her writing, her life, the books she was reading... I hadn't known that you could blog about more than one thing at a time! In my creative writing class, we were told that it would be a good plan to focus on one thing on your blog to gain a certain niche of readers. Which is definitely true, but at the same time.... Tracey balanced all of those things and forced me to get Bloglovin' in order to keep up with her blog.

From there I did some browsing. I'd always wanted to start a blog, but the timing had never been quite right... I figured now that I was discovering that I wasn't the only young Christian writer out there, it might be a good time, but I wasn't sure how to go about it.

That was when I found Cait's blog.

Cait wasn't really in the niche I was looking for. She does book blogging, Bookstagram, reviews, and other such things, which I wasn't interested in at the time. (Since then, of course, I've come to love ARCs. But... you know. Anything for free books ^_^)  But the thing about Cait's blog, Paper Fury, was that she had such a strong personal voice. Her personality really shines through in everything she writes, and her posts are so unique and interesting!

Also: If you read through her archives, you can really see how she developed that voice (and her list of followers, currently at 4,000+) over time. She's been blogging for five or six years, which demonstrated to me that your platform doesn't just sprout out of thin air. It really has to be developed and built and takes time and endurance.

I'd made up my mind at this point that I was ready to start blogging, helped in part by encouragement from the ever-sweet and amazing Christine and Mary. They were both eager to see what I'd start with this thing. They were my first GFC followers. They gave me tips and advice and were just all-around amazing.

There have been so many others who have been super encouraging over my journey to become a blogger and then to really grow where I am. Shoutouts right now to Savannah, whose friendship was a great encouragement and whose character posts have helped me so much in writing my own stories; to Gray, who was one of my first followers and has commented on nearly every post I've put up; to Ivie, who came along more recently but has been a huge encouragement and happy to read everything I write, which is honestly kind of mind-blowing.

One final shoutout before I wrap this up: thank you so much to Stephanie, Jill, and Shannon at goteenwriters.blogspot.com. You guys are the best, and you've made me believe that maybe I really can get published as a teen. Thanks for investing all that time in helping teens get published.

And finally, to all my followers, regardless of whether or not I mentioned you in this post:

Thank you all so much for investing in me. It means so much to me. God bless you all.