OMG you guys! Today is my One Year Blogiversary!  I can’t believe it has been a whole year since I started Joyfully Jay.  So much has happened over the past year and the blog has exploded well beyond even my wildest expectations.  When I started off, I was just looking for a place to chat about the books I read.  I always want to share my thoughts with folks so I figured, if I start my own blog, I have a place to do it.  I thought that every few days when I read something interesting I’d post a review.  Little did I know that what started off as just me doing 2-3 reviews a week would turn into me plus three awesome reviewers posting 2-3 reviews a DAY!

Just for fun, I took a quick look back at the past year and some of what we’ve accomplished.  Since September 6, 2011:

  • I have reviewed 200 books myself!  And total at the blog we have reviewed about 350 books between the four of us.
  • We have hosted about 50 guest posts, 28 author interviews, and 50 giveaways
  • Joyfully Jay has held three theme weeks: Virgin Hero Week, Spectacular Series Week, and Rock Star Week
  • I moved the blog from Blogger to WordPress and completely redesigned the site
  • As of yesterday I have had 635 posts

And best of all, over the past year I have met so many amazing readers, authors, and publishers!  I can’t say enough about how wonderful things have been and how excited I am to see how far the blog has come.

For the past few months I have been mulling over what exactly to do to celebrate. I had lots of grand ideas, but planning for the upcoming Young Love Week has been so much fun and is taking up so much energy that I just decided to keep things pretty low key this year. But this is a celebration so we will definitely still have treats!  So on to the contest…


Giveaway

So, as part of my blogiversay celebration, I am going to run a contest.  It is pretty simple.  Read the questions below, email me your answers, and everyone with the correct answers will be entered to win one of three prizes.

  • One lucky winner will receive a copy of Dark Soul 1 by Aleksandr Voinov, Power Play: Resistance by Cat Grant and Rachel Haimowitz, and Josh of the Damned by Andrea Speed courtesy of Riptide Publishing (and if you already have these titles, you can get a $10 Riptide gift credit instead)
  • Two winners can pick their choice of ebook from any of the books we reviewed this year

So, about these questions. All of them ask things about the blog. The answers can all be found by looking in the red top menu bar, the right-hand sidebar (including Search), or the bottom footer. These questions aren’t designed to be challenging, just to make you poke around the blog.  So if anything is too tricky, give a yell and I’ll help you all out.  Shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes or so.  Big tip: If you click on the Category or Tag links in the pink box at the end of any post, you will get a list of ALL posts with that same category or tag.  So clicking the “L.A. Witt” tag will let you see all the posts with that same tag that mention L.A. Witt.  Make sense?

Please don’t post your answers on this thread. Send them to me at joyfullyjay@gmail.com. You are welcome to use this thread to chat about the contest or the blogiversary or whatever, just please don’t put your answers here.  Are we all together now?  Ok, here goes:

  1. What are the titles of the first books I reviewed here at Joyfully Jay on September 7, 2011?  (Hint, there were two books in one review)
  2. How many of the most recent posts are listed a blue box at the footer of the site?
  3. What event is “Coming Soon” to Joyfully Jay?
  4. In addition to me, what are the names of my three Associate Reviewers?
  5. If you want to follow me on Twitter, what is my user name?
  6. Name two books on my list of Favorite Virgin Hero books
  7. Name one artist who has designed one of our Monthly Favorite Covers
  8. Give the title of one book we have reviewed in the Western category/genre
  9. How many books have we reviewed by author Ava March?  (be sure to count only reviews, not all posts that mention her)
  10. How many books have we reviewed in the Superpowered Love series by Katey Hawthorne? (again, be sure to count just reviews)

Hope you all have fun with this.  And again, feel free to yell if anything is too hard.  But as I said, all the answers are there if you poke around the blog.

The contest will close on Thursday, September 13 at 11:59 pm EST so be sure to send me an email with your answers by then.

Thanks so much for making this an amazing year! I love you guys!

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