Hourglass Year In Review 2023

With the calendar creeping into late innings, it's time to review the first year of The Hourglass, even if that year only began in August. The Hourglass is not an especially ambitious undertaking. But I still have a bit to share.

This site went live in time for BoucherCon in August, debuting with pages devoted to my growing roster of stories and my smiling face, and as a home to The Hourglass, my weekly blog covering crime fiction. The Hourglass has published weekly on Mondays.

Here are the articles published in 2023 to date:

• Secret Origins

• Join Me At BoucherCon 2023

• Teddy's Favorite Thing

• Ross Macdonald's Art of Description

• Teddy By The Numbers

• Cop Club

• Refuse To Be Done

• Diagraming Ross Macdonald

• Shadows of Doubt

• Top Ten Classic Monster Movies -- Part 1

• Top Ten Classic Monster Movies -- Part 2

• Farewell 4e

• Boris Karloff Gold Key Mysteries

• A Pulp Writer At Heart

• Top Ten Film Noirs ... That Aren't About Crime -- Part 1

• Top Ten Film Noirs ... That Aren't About Crime -- Part 2

• Get Out The Vote!

• Friends With A Dead Man

The top five articles of the year, in terms of engagement:

1. Shadows of Doubt: A guest post about a detective video game, which caught a little wave thanks to being acknowledged by the game developers on Twitter. Kudos and bragging rights to my son, Jack, who wrote the article.

2. A Pulp Writer At Heart: Another article that benefitted from Twitter exposure, in this case framing up an interview for a comic I wrote decades ago, leading to insights about the kind of writer I think I've always been.

3. Teddy's Favorite Thing: Announcement of my first story debuting in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

4. Top Ten Classic Monster Movies -- Part 2: Top Ten lists are catnip for bloggers and readers. Splitting these lists into multiple parts is another bit of blogging wisdom acquired from my Longbox Graveyard days.

5. Ross Macdonald's Art of Description: A writing craft article around a technique I noticed when breaking down Ross Macdonald's The Goodbye Look.

None of these articles set the world on fire -- the most popular of them was in the dozens of views -- but you have to start someplace. That articles around games, comics, and movies drew the most attention is no surprise, given broad interest in those things, and this site's origins in my long-running Longbox Graveyard blog and social media feeds.

It has been a slow-but-steady start for the site, and I plan to keep at it into the new year, as I continue to develop my "author platform" for my writing career (about which more next week!). There’s intrinsic value to publishing once a week online, both in terms of work and satisfaction in watching the steady growth of the site. I expect things will look much different when I write my 2024 review … I hope to see you then, and thanks for being here now!