And the Winners of the 2015 Mad Reviewer Reading & Reviewing Challenge are…

Well, I won’t keep you guys in suspense.  The winner of the draw for the 2015 Mad Reviewer Challenge is Sadie of See Sadie Read, who completed the Mad Reviewer level.  Congratulations, Sadie!  I’ll be in contact soon to give you your $50 Amazon gift card as well as a paperback copy of The Carnelian Legacy by Cheryl Koevoet, an ebook of The Carnelian Tyranny by Cheryl Koevoet and an ebook copy of Aranya by Marc Secchia.

And of course thanks to these authors, I can announce three runners up:

  1. Elena of Elena Square Eyes  (Crazy Reviewer)

2.  The Daily Opine  (Sane Reviewer)

3.  Chelsea of To Each Their Own Reviews  (Mad Reviewer)

I’ll be in contact with each of you guys this Monday with details about your prizes!  Here are the prizes:

Runner up #1: Ebooks of Wish for Me and Dream of Me by Diantha Jones, an audiobook and ebook of The Carnelian Legacy by Cheryl Koevoet and an ebook of The Carnelian Tyranny by Cheryl Koevoet.

Runner up #2: An audiobook and ebook of The Carnelian Legacy by Cheryl Koevoet, an ebook of The Carnelian Tyranny by Cheryl Koevoet and an ebook of Dragonfriend by Marc Secchia.

Runner up #3: An audiobook and ebook of The Carnelian Legacy by Cheryl Koevoet and an ebook of The Carnelian Tyranny by Cheryl Koevoet.

Special thanks go to Diantha Jones, Marc Secchia and Cheryl Koevoet for their generous donations!

Blog Move in Progress

In just a few hours today the awesome people at WordPress are going to move my blog over to my own domain!  I’m very, very excited about this but it means I can’t post or change my blog at all for about 24 hours until they email me saying the transfer is complete.  It’s a little inconvenience for a great benefit so if you don’t see me around much today it’s because I’m staying away to let more tech-savvy people do a pretty tricky job.

Don’t worry.  Once the new website is up I’ll have a big announcement and everything.  I can’t wait to see it!

The Mad Reviewer Reading and Reviewing Challenge 2016 Sign Up

2016MRRCWell, last year’s reading challenge is over (although you can still confirm your reviews until January 15th if you head over here) so now it’s time for the 2016 Mad Reviewer Reading & Reviewing Challenge.  A huge thank you goes to the amazing Diantha Jones for designing the lovely challenge button you see above for the fourth year in a row.  If you’re participating in the challenge, you can grab the button above. Here is the HTML for it:

<a href=”//themadreviewer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2016mrrc.png” rel=”attachment wp-att-9400″><img class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-9400″ src=”//themadreviewer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2016mrrc.png” alt=”2016MRRC” width=”250″ height=”255″ /></a>

Once again, the challenge is the same as last year:

The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge is to read and review (either on Goodreads, Amazon or your own blog) 104 books in one year starting January 1, 2016 and ending December 31, 2016.

I’m fully aware that not everyone has time to read 104 books which is why I’ve created different levels of the challenge that you can aspire to:

1.  Mad Reviewer: 104 books in one year. (2 books a week all year.)

2.  Crazy Reviewer: 52 books in one year. (1 book a week all year.)

3.  Slightly Sane Reviewer: 26 books in one year. (1 book every fortnight all year.)

4.  Sane Reviewer: 12 books in one year.  (1 book every month all year.)

RULES

1.  Self-published, independently published and traditionally published books are all completely acceptable.  Whether you read print copies or ebook copies makes no difference at all.

2.  No audiobooks.  I’d prefer people to read the books themselves, not have someone reading to them.  Audiobooks can absolutely be a valuable tool for busy readers but they’re not really in the spirit of this challenge.

3.  I don’t have a sign up form but if you intend to do this challenge you must post a comment below so that you’re officially signed up.

4.  You can review your books on any site.  Your own blog, Goodreads, someone else’s blog, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.  The point is just to review the books you read!

5.  The last day you can sign up is July 31st of 2016.  I’m not taking any more entries after that, sorry.

6.  The draw for the 2016 prizes will take place in the first few days of January 2017.  This will give everyone time to tell me they’ve finished their chosen level and I’ll have time to actually verify the reviews.  I’m not chasing people around like I did in 2014; especially not now that my challenge includes 50+ people.  So at the end of the year, in December, head on back to my blog and tell me through the Contact Page or my submissions post I’ll have up on December 30th.

If you have a blog it would be great if you could use the button at the top of the post designed by the lovely Diantha Jones for me.  (She also designed the 2015 version and my banner.)

PRIZE SELECTION

Anyone who completes the level they stated as their goal will be entered into a draw.  How many entries you get will be determined by what level you’ve achieved:

Mad Reviewer (104 books): 4 entries

Crazy Reviewer (52 books): 3 entries

Slightly Sane Reviewer (26 books): 2 entries

Sane Reviewer (12 books): 1 entry

I know life gets in the way of reading and reviewing frequently, so what I offer to people who don’t complete their goal is a second chance of a sort.  Say you aimed for Crazy Reviewer and only reviewed 30 books.  Since you reviewed a minimum of 26 books you can still enter the draw as a Slightly Sane Reviewer.  That way you’ve at least achieved a level of the challenge as well as had your name entered in the grand prize draw where I’ll be choosing a winner and three runners up.  (This second chance applies to any level.)

HOW TO SIGN UP

Just post your name, the link to where you’ll be reviewing your books and the level at which you want to participate in the comments below!  I’ll be posting a separate list of all the challenge participants (and their goals) as the comments flow in. If you could also publicize the challenge using Twitter, Facebook, your own blogs, etc. that would be great.  The more the merrier!

Lazy Sundays: Looking Ahead

I’m not one to get sentimental very often but looking at back at where I was in the beginning of 2015, I can’t believe how much has changed.  I’ve moved to a city hours away from the only place I’ve ever lived.  I’ve made friends my own age that share some of my interests for the first time in over a decade.  And I’ve realized that no matter how bad things get, there is always a silver lining even if that silver lining is that the bad thing will (usually) eventually go away.  It’s been an nteresting year and I can’t believe the optimism with which I’m looking at 2016.

I’ve made some blogging New Year’s resolutions but I have also made some personal ones.  One of the things I want to do is go to the gym at least twice a week.  It’s not that I necessarily want to lose weight but right now my back pain is being managed better than it has been since it began five years ago.  If I build up my muscles again while I’m feeling good I can stabilize some of the vertebrae in my back and thus provide a lasting solution to my pain (hopefully).  And even if that doesn’t happen, at least I’ll be exercising, which comes with its own separate health benefits.

Another thing I want to do is date.  Back home my options were comically limited but now I feel like I have so many more opportunities on the romantic front.  It’s been years since I’ve dated so things should be interesting but fun as well.  We’ll see how things go, I guess!

I think these are both fairly achievable goals and I hope they’ll make 2016 a much better year than 2015, 2014 and the last ten or so years.

The 2015 Annual WordPress Report

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 62,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.