Blogs. Their boom has mostly come and gone. When I was writing my first (and only marginally successful) blog in 2010-2013 it was already reaching its peak, its saturation point. In 2011 there were approximately 174 million individual blogs published on the internet. I have yet to find a useful statistic for number of blogs still currently active as of 2019, but the fervor seems to have died down. Most people have moved on to micro-blogging on Twitter and Instagram, and posting videos on TikTok. And, though I have only anecdotal evidence, it seems even fewer people are still READING blogs than writing them.

Even I have fallen out of the habit of reading blogs consistently. There are several I used to follow religiously that I have forgotten about over the last three or four years. Still, I like blogs. Sometimes you need the long-form space to really discuss an idea or an opinion or make an argument in ways that Twitter, even a long Twitter thread, doesn’t really allow for. On this note, brilliant author, hilarious Twitter-ite, and all-around awesome person Chuck Wendig (if you don’t follow him, you really should!) make a great argument in favor of returning to the lost art of blog-writing on HIS blog (pretty much the only one I still read even semi-regularly) here: “Old Man Blogs at Cloud.”

I won’t repeat all the points Chuck Wendig makes in his post, but it boils down to: a) it’s something YOU own, unlike the “evil empires” of Facebook and Twitter and the like, b) it allows for more and better writing, and c) it can be good for your “brand” as a professional (in Wendig’s case, as an author, but in other professions as well).

Thus, I am here. Again. Trying to start and (hopefully) maintain a blog. Again.

As the name of the blog “Night Forest Books” might imply, I hope this blog will often (though not always) be about books. Books I’m reading, books I loved as a child, books I recommend whole-heartedly, etc. I also have an Instagram account called @night.forest.books which is a bookstagram account (ie, I take pretty photos of books). Hypothetically, all of this is a stepping stone to my big-huge-ambitious-probably-won’t-happen goal, which is to open my own science fiction/fantasy bookstore called Night Forest Books and Coffee (because how do resist attaching a little coffee shop to a bookstore?). In the meantime, I have this.

This blog will probably also feature discussions of my other obsessions: movies, anime, all things Disney… maybe NASA, maybe music? And will likely, because I am trying to be more open and honest, often feature posts about my personal life. I will try not to let this blog turn into a place to whine at strangers, but… *shrug* If I feel like sharing, I will.