So busy I missed my blogging birthday....

Oops - things have been so frantic the past few weeks at work and with preparations for the  2011 Ngaio Marsh Award, etc, that I actually overlooked the fact that Crime Watch passed it's two year anniversary earlier this week, on Tuesday.

Two years of blogging - it's weird, it seems to have both gone very, very quickly, but at the same time 9 August 2009 seems a very, very long time ago - since so much has happened between then and now. Birthdays are usually an interesting and opportune time to reflect, and last year I did just that, looking back at some of the statistics, posts, and interesting tidbits about Crime Watch in its first year (see here).

I won't go into the same depth this time around, but will just note a couple of things from what seemed like a 'consolidating' year for Crime Watch in its 'sophmore season', as my sports-loving US buddies would say:

• 382 posts were published on a variety of crime fiction news, reviews, issues, and happenings (compared to 463 posts in Crime Watch's first year) - still averaging more than one per day, even with more than a month on holiday during that time.
• Just over 55,000 visits to Crime Watch during its second year (up from just under 30,000 in the first year) - a steady increase without being stratospheric.
• Crime Watch was consistently ranked in the Top 100 Book Blogs (out of more than 15,000 book blogs), by the Technorati website - which looks at influence and other factors, not just visitor numbers etc. Crime Watch is currently ranked 35th out of 15,036 book blogs, and has never been outside the Top 200 since it started being ranked in the past year (ie always in the Top 2 per cent worldwide).
• The 9mm series has grown to more than 50 quickfire interviews with a variety of fantastic crime writers from around the globe.
• The Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, which in some ways grew out of the Crime Watch blog, has gone from strength to strength in the past 12 months, and been featured and/or mentioned in or on a variety of New Zealand's biggest mainstream media outlets - newspapers, magazines, even radio (not yet TV, as far as I'm aware), as well as international online media.
• The bibliographical list of Kiwi crime writers and books - historic and contemporary - collated on Crime Watch over several months via research etc has grown to more than 100 authors and 250 books - much more than most people would realise have existed in New Zealand literary history.

So all in all, not too bad. Sure, there are things I would like to see improve, and new things I'd like to add to provide a better viewer/reader experience - to give more to you guys - but hopefully I can continue to take steps forward here. I'm always open to suggestions, in fact I welcome them, along with your comments.

What would you like to see on Crime Watch in the coming year, it's third? What are the good things you'd like to see more of (interviews, reviews, news, events)? What are you not so fussed on? I'd love to read your feedback. I appreciate all of you who have visited in the past two years, and hope that you'll continue to find something that interests you here on my little website.