new birdHappy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful 2013 with an even better 2014 in store!  As always at this time of year, I like to take a look back at the past year and think ahead to the year to come.

This was our biggest year ever at Joyfully Jay.  Not just in the number of reviews, but also in readership and author participation.  This year we posted 675 reviews!  Holy cow!  That is an awful lot of reading!  I managed to review 211 books (just edging out Crissy at 205), which is just about my record. As always, I couldn’t have even come close without my fabulous reviewers, Crissy, Amy, Sammy, and Melanie, who give so much of their time to come review for us.

We also had a lot more author participation this year.  We have had 155 guest posts by various authors throughout the year.  Much of that has been in the second half of 2013 as Joyfully Jay has become a very popular place to hang out.  Everyone loves you awesome readers!  It looks like 2014 will be much of the same as our January and February guest spot calendar is almost full.

Keeping up with all these posts meant that I didn’t get to do as many theme weeks as I wanted, but we did have a big blowout in February with Jock Week. Not only were there a ton of great reviews and posts, we had a massive giveaway of 64 prizes!

Ok, so no rest for the weary!  Here is what we have planned for 2014.

First off, more reviewers!  We have our first new reviewer in over a year officially on board this year.  Zac is going to be joining us and I’ll be running his first review on Monday. It also looks like there will be at least one more reviewer starting soon to help us keep up with the reading load.  So please welcome Zac and keep your eyes out for other new folks.

Second, we will be having another theme week starting at the end of February! Woo hoo! I know what the theme will be but I am not telling yet!  I’ll be doing a kick off post early next week with all the details on the event and ways everyone can get involved.  We are all super excited about it though because it has lots of great reading potential. So more on that soon.  My goal is to get one more scheduled at least for 2014, maybe two. But the theme weeks are lots of work so we will see what happens.

Other than that, we will continue with more of the same. Lots of reviews. Lots of guest visits. Lots of contests. And hopefully lots of fun.

And before I wrap up, just wanted to say a huge thanks to everyone who has contributed to making Joyfully Jay a success.  Again, I could barely do any of this without my fabulous reviewers.  I also want to thank all the authors and publishers who share their books with us and let us get our grubby little hands on them, often before they are even released. And of course, the biggest thanks goes to all you fabulous readers.  I have so much fun reading your comments and sharing our communal love of great romance. You guys are awesome and I truly appreciate every one of you.

Hope you all have a Happy New Year and a wonderful 2014! <3

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