Top 5 Blog Posts from 5 Years of Blogging

Somehow I've been blogging for five years. I've posted 275 times, an average 55 posts a year, pretty much one post a week. As 2017 comes to a close, here are the "most-viewed" posts on this blog over the five years ...

Author, Sept 2017

I've written about books (mine mostly but not entirely), and about the writer's life (tips and pointers about writing get views). I've posted about my adventures in the Canadian Kid Lit world (always fun). I've put up my poetry and music, or pictures and letters from kids, snippets about my family, sailing, my dog, and more. I've tried to update my blog every week, rain or shine. 

It's been fun for the most part. It's certainly a record of this part of my life, if anyone is ever interested. As I write this, I'm creeping toward 80,000 views, which seems amazing. For a relatively quiet and reserved type, who knew I had so much to say!

The Top 5 posts from the past 5 years are a bit of a surprise, being memoir, music and monsters, so here they are ...

#5. The Tin Foil Fairy. A Christmas Eve memoir, I was six and my older brother's prank turned into the magical stuff of legend. I re-post it annually on Christmas Eve.

#4. My Brush with Mortality ... and Measles. Another memoir, here's the story of the spring when I was 11 years old, and went blind from measles (a message for the anti-vaxxer movement).

#3. When Authors and Editors Write Music Together. Super proud of this one. My first guitar album, Fifth Season, came out in 2015, with my editor. Lovely tunes, I hope you'll give a listen. The second album, Birches, is out now too. Listen free on the Free Music Archive, or pay what you will on Bandcamp. Enjoy!

#2. American Library Association Loves Myles and the Monster Outside. A great review for my 6th book from the ALA, in which they say nice things like "readers will be enthralled." Thank you!

And #1 is ... Myles and the Monster Outside KIRKUS REVIEW. Best review ever for my award-winning horror story for kids (book 2 in the Weird Stories Gone Wrong series). I love "Goosebumps from north of the border." We read R.L. Stine in this house until the books fell apart!

So the top posts (by views) are Memoir, Music and Monsters. Sounds good to me. We're all voyeurs at heart, so who doesn't love a good memoir piece? Or the curiosity of a lovely instrumental guitar album by an author and an editor? And a universal fascination with monsters? That goes without saying.

Will I keep blogging? Yes, for a while anyway. I hope to add reviews of Canadian kid lit authors, more writing tips, and more poetry in the year ahead.

If you're still reading, here are the next top posts from the past 5 years...

#6. It's Blog Tour Week for Everton Miles is Stranger than Me
#7. Book Reviews and How to Survive Them
#8. The Ghost of Lego Past: An Ode
#9. Carter and the Curious Maze Book Trailer is a Featured Video
#10. When Authors and Editors Write Music Together, Part 2

So glad to see a poem in there (#8), and if you're at all interested in magic realism, #6 is an exhaustive set of interviews about my YA fantasy series, The Night Flyer's Handbook. And as for book reviews, #7 is the best advice I can give anyone on that subject.

Thanks for joining me, and here's to another 5 years (wow, 2022, imagine)!