Brewing Community: An Introduction

 

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Photo by Chris Fitzgerald

If you know me, you know I am a planner. This goes as much for my life as it does for my fiction. It may be June but I’m already aware that September is just around the corner.September is a really busy month for me, both personally and professionally. Conflux isn’t far away, so any preparations I need to make tend to be in full swing. Also, just about everyone I know seems to have a birthday in September; free weekends are a distant dream.It all becomes a bit hard to juggle when I add the usualediting and blogging into the mix.

This year I decided to make it a bit easier on myself by inviting along some guest bloggers. Community is a topic I’m pretty interested inand it’s one I’ve asked guests to write about before. It also seems in keeping with what’s already happening for me in September.

However, when I looked at my blogging schedule I quickly noticed a problem.After filling in my regularslots for reviews, Loose-leaf Links and my Mt TBR report, there weren’t all that many slots left. There were so many wonderful guests I wanted to invite along, so how was I going to narrow it down?

The easy answer was to expand instead of limit. So I’m kicking off the series early. Starting next month, I’ll be featuring two or three guest posts every month on the theme of community. My guests will be coming from a variety of communities:some are book bloggers, some write SFF and some are involved in fandom. I may yet even manage to wrangle one of the many talented artists I know.

I hope you’ll join me when things kick off in July. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. What communities are you involved in and how have they helped you?