That’s been a bit of a year then hasn’t it.

Though there have been some ups and downs, personally and at work, thankfully the ‘worst’ that has happened to me has been an extended period of furlough.

Though even this ‘worst’ has had a lot of upside.

I’ve been able to get on with a lot of projects during this nine months and they are now at the stage where there is very little than regular upkeep and development, all the building work has been done now.

My main project is still Indie Bookshops, and this year has allowed me to split the list of bookshops down into regional lists and to double check to make sure that the shop was still open and that the contact details were still correct.

It’s also allowed me to catch up on the large backlog of information I had to put onto the various lists.

The next step is to start up the Browse a Bookshop and Publisher Profile features once more, the plan is to have one of each up every week with or without the subjects input, that is the answers to the list of questions associated with the feature. I would much prefer to have the bookshops and publishers involved though and will be contacting each one I want to put on the blog before it goes on.

Then there is the sister site to that, Independent Publishers, which I had mothballed and wasn’t sure whether or not I was going to continue with, I am going to get it up and running again with all the information that I’ve collected on Indie Bookshops duplicated there.

I will also be launching Wicked Words, a platform for me to explore my own writing and put out some writing information that I discover at the same time. I will also be relaunching Ephemeral once more, a platform for my photography and art, including bits on art history and practice.

Then there’s this blog, which will mainly be about book reviews, all the other more personal bits, recipes and such will be going onto the Patreon for Big Bearded Bookseller.

So even though it’s been a worrying year, and a bit frightening at times it’s been a constructive year with the foundations well and truly built for 2021.