Hi folks! Quick post here in advance of my regular Friday post, because I have thoughts about the future of this blog (and my blog/website in general) that I would really appreciate some opinions/feedback on.

I have played around with a lot of variations on my name and my (imagined) business names over the years, including: Amanda Rudd, Amanda Marie Rudd, Night Forest Books, Amanda Haimoto, Amanda Haimoto Rudd, etc etc etc… This has extended to different emails, different IG accounts, a few different blogs, as well as the usual suspects like FB and Twitter, not to mention publication names.

As an academic, I published under my legal name, Amanda M. Rudd (on that note: I did not realize I have a Goodreads author profile, due to a publication in the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction! I just discovered this!). However, I recently decided that if/when I publish fiction I want to use the name Amanda Haimoto Rudd (Haimoto being my Japanese grandmother’s family name).

I debated for ages on whether I want to keep all my different hats separated: accounts for my academic work, book review blogging, freelance editing, fiction writing, etc. At first, I thought the answer was YES. But now I’m leaning toward compiling everything together and cutting down on the various names I use online to JUST Amanda Haimoto Rudd.

To that end: I would merge my OLD blog (“Amanda Rudd’s Blog”) with this current one (“Night Forest Books”) under a new domain = amandahaimotorudd.com (as of this writing that domain is still available… *cross fingers*). I would also get rid of my @night.forest.books IG account, and link my @amanda.marie.rudd IG with the new blog to reduce the variations.

I do not know for certain if exporting the data from this blog to the original “Amanda Rudd” blog would automatically bring my followers with it or not.

I guess the questions are: 1) does this plan make the remotest sense? 2) would my current followers (email or WP Reader) care about me switching things to a new domain, provided that does not change your subscription status? 3) If it DOES mean losing your subscription status, would you be willing to re-follow? 4) Am I just WAY over-thinking all of this?

Anyway, I would love your thoughts on this!