The End (of the Blog) is Nigh!

 Another quality post brought to you by Steve!

October 9, 2014.

That's the date our founder, Leandra Wallace, published our very first post here on Across the Board.

October 23, 2014.

That's the date I posted here for the first time myself.  Believe it or not, I was one of the founding members of Across the Board.  And of those founding members - Carrie Beckort, Nilah Magruder, Amy Jarecki, Jonathan Schramm, Kimberly Giarratano, Beth Ellyn Summer, Leandra, and myself - I am the only one still standing.

But not for much longer.

December 18, 2023.

That will be the date of our last post here on Across the Board.

We've been going for almost, but not quite, ten years.  Most blogs become defunct within the first six months.  So, in a sense, we've been shockingly resilient.  But still, after three presidents, seventeen thousand Avengers movies, and nearly a decade in the digital business, we've come to the hard decision to close up shop.

Why?

Well, every year around this time I canvass the bloggers and see if they're still interested in keeping Across the Board a going concern.  There have been a couple of occasions where I've been prepared to throw in the towel myself, as I put a lot of time into organization and administrative work that our readers never get to (or, frankly, would want to) see.  But the contributors always wanted to sally forth, and their dedication carried me through.

This year, though, seemed like a naturally stopping point.  Ten years is a long time.  More than half of the current contributors were planning to bow out at the same time, and while we have worked miracles before of bringing on two, or even three new contributors at once, five is too many.  A lot of what has always made Across the Board unique was the special alchemy between the eight of us, covering different subjects in different styles with different perspectives.  Trying to rebuild that almost from scratch was a daunting prospect.

So, as a team, we decided to bow out gracefully.

For the next month, our remaining contributors will be making their farewell posts.  So make sure to tune in for reminiscences, final thoughts, no small amount of tears and emotions, and maybe just some damned good thoughts on genre fiction.  Then, on the 18th, we'll pull the plug, pop the corks on our eight bottles of champagne, and move on to the next chapters in our lives.

Won't you follow us...one last time?