How I got into reviewing and blogging - Week 3

It's that time again! This week @bookaddictshaun has kindly joined The Book Corner to share his thoughs on blogging and how he got started. 

Hi Shaun 

I started blogging on March 27th 2014 and was very nervous and apprehensive. I envisioned being totally ignored, not gaining any followers etc however after just a few hours I had talked to so many people and received such a warm welcome from everybody that I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I won't go into massive detail but blogging came about at exactly the right time in my life, things have been a bit crap recently and the past few weeks have been better for me knowing that there's a little community of people always there to talk to who won't judge, laugh or criticise. It's been a great month so far.

I joined Goodreads a few years ago and have always reviewed on there and Amazon. I've also followed blogs for a long time, some of my favourites before starting my own were I Heart... Chick Lit, Reading in the Sunshine, Shaz's Book Boudoir, Chick Lit Reviews, She Loves to Read and Best Crime Books. Seeing the effort these bloggers put into their work and the love they have for what they do was certainly one of the inspirations for wanting to start my own blog. Although my biggest inspiration came from the authors, Sean Black and Tracey Garvis-Graves. Sean added me on Goodreads one day thanking me for a review I had written for his book The Devil's Bounty, at first I didn't believe it was him but it was and it felt fantastic that an author had read and liked my reviews. Tracey is another author who has thanked me for her reviews and we have had a few discussions about how much I loved her books. Since then other authors have read my reviews of their books and it's just a great feeling when they take the time to do so and especially go out of their way to make contact to say thank you.

Since joining Twitter and setting up the blog I have had so many great discussions with other bloggers and received such a warm welcome. I've also been followed and favourited by some of my all time favourite authors, it's not even funny how happy a notification from a favourite author makes me. I've also been incredibly lucky to be given the opportunity to review books early, every other day the postman is knocking on the door (he must hate me) but mostly the best thing for me since setting up the blog is joining what I think is just an amazing community of people. I think it's just fantastic how bloggers, authors and publishers discuss books with each other all day long. In the real world so many people laugh and judge you for reading books, by most people I know it's almost considered as something pathetic to do (unless a book is well known and then EVERYONE has to read it) but the only person I know in real life that enjoys reading as much as me is my best friend who is a girl. I don't know any men in real life that enjoy reading.

So I would like to thank anyone who has followed me, visited my blog, read one of my reviews, welcomed me into the community and discussed books, authors and random things with me. You are all amazing.

Thanks Shaun, you can find him on Twitter @bookaddictshaun and on his blog bookaddictshaun

Next week