Rowena: Before we started blogging, Holly and I were really into the author bulletin boards that we were apart of. A huge chunk of our days were spent discussing different books (the same books over and over again, but still) and heroes and just being ourselves. Ha, I still remember our sign on names for those boards.
Holly: Eventually Rowena and I outgrew those author message boards and decided to start our own. We really enjoyed moderating them for a time, but at some point Rowena discovered blogging. I still remember the email she sent me about it. “I think we should start a book blog,” She said. “We can write book reviews and share them with the world.”
Up to that point my online exposure was pretty limited. Our message board was pretty insular and the idea of sharing anything with “the world” was pretty intimidating, but I figured “what the hell, no one’s going to read it anyway.”
Rowena: But people did start reading our blog and it was surreal.
The book blogging community was a lot smaller back when we first started but it’s really grown into something special. Sure, we’ve had our fair share of blog dramas but there is so much good going on here as well. I’ve made some wonderful friends and have made some pretty special memories with my blogging friends and I wouldn’t trade these people and memories for the world.
Holly: Rowena would send me links to other blogs and I’d lurk on them, reading their posts and thinking about commenting. Then someone commented on our blog, and that opened it up for me to reply. Which gave me confidence to comment on some of the other blogs.
I remember one of the first blogs I commented on was Kristie J’s Ramblings on Romance. They were having a discussion about Derek Craven, the hero of Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas. Man, were they in love with him. I was so baffled by that, since I hadn’t found him very memorable. If memory serves, I thought he was something of a whiny baby and his heroine was weak and made questionable choices. I left a comment saying something like “Can you explain why you love him so much? I didn’t really care for him and I’m curious. I promise I’m not here to start a fight, I just want to see things from your point of view.” Man, I agonized over that comment. Were they going to gang up on me and call me a troll? Was I going to be banned from the site?
In the end it turns out I agonized for nothing, because she freaking deleted my comment!
Rowena: I remember that because it was around that time that I started thinking you were crazy. Turns out, I was completely right. LOL.
Holly: Whatever. I’m completely normal. All you Derek lovers are the crazy ones.
Anyway, I was pretty irritated over that, but eventually I put it out of my mind. To be honest, I don’t know if it was deleted, or if it never posted or if it went into a spam filter. Blogging was so new to all of us then, anything is possible.
As time went on we met some wonderful bloggers, and started building another community. This time it was filled with lovely, intelligent women who wrote blog reviews and commentary instead of posting on message boards.
Rowena: Says the woman that loved Sebastian St. freaking Vincent. =P
When we first started blogging, we didn’t think anyone would read our blog, let alone care what we thought about the books we were reading. So, we blogged for each other. We used to spend hours upon hours emailing back and forth at work and since it wasn’t just Holly and myself, there were plenty of emails being sent through the day. Book Blogging sounded like the perfect way to post our thoughts about the books we were reading and discuss them with each other, without flooding everyone’s inbox.
But the more reviews we posted, the more important the blog became to us.
Book Binge has been a pretty big part of my life. I love this blog. There are times when Holly and I are so busy and we get bogged down with other stuff and think about closing the blog down but a part of us will always be wrapped up in this blog. It’s been a true labor of love for us and neither one of us wants to see that go away so we’ve added other pieces to our blogging home and those pieces have become important to us as well.
We’ve met some pretty amazing people both regular readers like us and some pretty fantastic industry people as well. Book Binge has opened a lot of doors to us and we’ve met some pretty big rock stars because of this blog and those are good things. Our book blogging community is going through some rough patches right now but we’ve gotten through rough patches before. Our community is filled with some strong, intelligent and amazing women and we’re so stinkin’ proud to be apart of it too.
So what about you guys. How did you get your start in book blogging? What made you want to jump in and start sharing your passion of books through your blog?