Thank you + photo story + GIFTS 4U!

I've been doing this blogging thing for 3 and a half years, and the numbers of followers have grown steadily and impressively and I've been excited and grateful for each new follower I've gained.

In the past couple of weeks I broke the 2-digit barrier and saw the pleasing (if you're pleased by that kind of thing) number of 100 a-top my followers list.

So I'm celebrating by looking back a bit, and by saying thank you.

Looking back

Right at the beginning, two posts in, I tried to explain why I respected Ali Smith so much. I was getting ready to enter The Bridport Prize, so full of the excitement and intimidation of the small, really small, chance that my idol might read my story. Did I ever expect what would happen next?

I tried some stuff, structured stuff, like the series of guest posts I ran on 'How You Write', (the links are in the side bar if you're interested) where writers came over and talked about their writing process.

I shared, and still do, information on interesting writing prizes and places to sub to. (I'm overdue one of those. Dan Purdue did a good one recently.)

I shared difficult news.

And good writing news, like this and this.

And I got out my Rejection Section once or twice.

I've had some great guests: helped Vanessa Gebbie and Kerry Hudson as they launched their brilliant debut novels, and I interviewed Dan Purdue and publisher David Lear.

This post about Bridport, this one where I got all opion-y, and this fella are some of the posts with the highest number of hits. 

I've told you some embarrassing, trivial, ridiculous stuff.

So now I want to say Thanks, Cheers, Ta - for your support, comments, encouragement, ideas these past few years.

I feel like I've met some of you already, I HAVE met some of you already, and I'm sure I'll meet some of you in real life at some point too.

So, here's me trying to say thank you:

Hm - webcam makes writing come out wrong!

 Ahem.

And there's more!

I'm  going to send, to anywhere in the world, 3 little thank you gifts to 3 of my followers.

All you have to do is be a follower of this blog (all this talk of following is making me feel all omnipotent), and leave a comment here before Tuesday 19th Feb at 5pm.

New followers welcome! I'll randomly choose two names from my current list (that is up to and including Follower 100: Bruno Gaspari) and one name from any new folks who'd like to jump on the following train after today. Choo choo! (Sees list rapidly decline in numbers.)

So that's all - say hello - tell your friends - I promise I won't use the winners' addresses inappropriately and I promise I've put that permanent marker pen away now.