Group Hugs.

This is a Thank You card I hope everyone can appreciate.

This blog has evolved into something special over the last 10 days. It finally has its own identity. Even though I’ve done the bulk of the design and editorial work to make it happen, Sourcerer would not be what it is today without support from a ton of people. I am amazed and gratified by the fact that the supporters we owe thanks to now number in the hundreds.

Part Time Monster and Sourcerer now have seven contributors other than Diana and myself, and I am grateful to them for the work they have contributed so far. The ability to provide several different perspectives is important, and I doubt I would have gotten back into blogging if we hadn’t had people expressing a willingness to collaborate on content.

I also owe a big thanks to a lot of friends and family who have read our work and encouraged us to keep going with comments elsewhere. These, along with our contributors, are the people I was thanking with  this post  on the day I debuted my blogs, and they have really come through for us.

The WordPress community has been good to us this week. We’ve made a lot of friends and had substantial conversations on comments threads both here and at Part Time Monster. That is a sign to me that we’re making progress, and it encourages me to keep blogging every day. Thanks to everyone on WordPress who has given us feedback. Even if all you’ve done is scan a post and like it from your reader, your support counts and we are grateful for it.

A special thanks to all you Zero to Hero bloggers, and to WordPress for setting up this challenge. Many of the changes you’ve seen at Sourcerer this weekend are the result of following the instructions from the Daily Posts and paying more attention to what other bloggers are doing. You can find everything I’ve written for Zero to Hero in the Blogging Challenge category at the Writing Catalog. Beginning tomorrow, I am moving my Z2H posts here and returning The Writing Catalog to its regular programming.

I would also like to thank three blogs in particular for support they gave us early on. Thanks, Comparative Geeks, for the comments you left me on the day my blogs went live, and for the occasional exchanges we’ve had since then. Your response was very encouraging at a time when I had all kinds of doubts about whether this project was going to turn out to be worthwhile. It has been worthwhile already, and I love to read the work you guys do.

Thank you, Scholars and Rogues, for the fabulous Art Sunday threads, and for the other work you do. You made us feel welcome from the very first time we commented at your blog. Without the kindness and positive feedback we’ve received from our interactions with you over the past couple of months, I doubt we would have published either of these pieces; and I certainly would not have made “opinion” and “commentary” the core elements of this blog that they will be going forward.

Thank you, friends at The Leather Library, for helping me find my way back into Tolkien, and for connecting me with bloggers who enjoy scholarly work on the Tolkien canon.

I have created a dedicated Tolkien category for the blogroll, and I hope to continue to make connections in the Tolkien-loving community. I’ll have another installment of my Tolkien series at Part Time Monster later in the week, and a post just for Tolkien fans here, as well. I hope to eventually have categories for Comics, Games, and several other areas of interest on the blogroll, but it is going to take us a little time to make friends in those communities and find blogs that focus on them frequently enough to warrant separate categories.

I am still open to contributors, and I also consider guest-blogging invitations. If you would like to do a one-time guest blog here or have an idea for a more extensive contribution, let me know. This blog offers quite a few ways of contacting me, and I love to make make connections on other social media, especially Twitter and Google.

image: Fantasy and Sci-Fi Rock My World