If you’ve been following us in the last couple of days/weeks then you are probably aware that I’ve been contemplating having a new member to help out. In the past 1,5 years, the focus mostly fell on books Justine and I promoted via Storytellers On Tour. But since we closed the doors, and I had new challenges ahead of me, I knew we needed changes in the Asylum. I’m not going to lie, shutting down completely was one of the options ahead of me, but if I’m being honest, I’m not ready to let go yet. And I also can’t keep up the insane amount of work I did in the past 3-4 years (holy shit, the blog will be 4 years old next month!!). As much as I hate admitting it, I needed extra help to provide a steady stream of content, which is not easy with each of us having our own life issues, and Jen and Arina being committed to SPFBO and SPSFC, respectively on top of it all. So, despite my general feelings toward changes, I set out to find a new staff member. Thankfully there was some interest, but they fell through for different reasons.
And that’s when I’ve heard the sad (well, not for me, bad as it might sound) news from Arina, who decided to shut down her own blog, Wyrm’s Worlds and asked if she could move in permanently. Here, you can read her announcement regarding her reasons and future plans in her Twitter thread:
Naturally, I agreed, as she is awesome and we need her because her pet demon had become too much of a handful. And let me tell you, insurance doesn’t pay if your pet demon goes on a rampage and destroys some of your valuables. I tried. For our inmates: sorry for the occasional smell of sulfur and burnt wood and the charred furniture. We really are working on the problem.
Anyway. With Arina’s permanent move we have two other changes: one you already have witnessed as some of Team 7’s SPSFC content will be hosted on the Asylum. I, personally have no ties to this competition as I had to SPFBO, but I welcome the change to open a bit more toward SF. As I myself prefer Fantasy and some other genres, the blog naturally leaned that way as well. So now we may even the odds a bit. She will also gradually move over her reviews and other posts.
The other change is that I grabbed the opportunity to stretch out the invitation of a permanent stay to Paul, former blogger at Bookends & Bagends before he joined forces with Arina. And I’m happy to report he accepted my invitation and thus became our newest staff member! I always enjoyed his posts and humor and I believe he will fit perfectly in our little family. But, let him take over the spotlight to introduce himself:
Hello, I’m Paul English-Wolfe and you may recognise me from such ceased blogs as Wyrm’s Worlds and Bookends and Bagends. It’s surprising that Timy asked me to join Queen’s Book Asylum as a contributor given I seem to bring ill fortune wherever I go, but I have more lives than demon cat and more books than a library so I wasn’t going to say no. Seriously though, it’s a delight to be joining the team, I’ve been a massive fan of both Timy and Queen’s Book Asylum since I started blogging back in 2020 so it’s a genuine dream come true. Can’t wait to get started posting reviews, and maybe some other cool stuff so keep your eyes peeled!!
– Paul.
Connect with Paul
As for other news, we now have a budding Discord community! This is basically my safe place where I hang out with friends chatting about life, books, hobbies, and more. It’s open to anyone at the moment, so if you’d like to get to know us better and hang out with a friendly bunch, then please consider joining! You can do so by hitting connect in the widget below.
I also set up a Ko-Fi page which is pretty barren at the moment, and I’ll try to get some stuff up on it, but until then, if you ever wanted to support the Asylum and our work, then please consider doing so by Ko-Fi. I plan using this money to maintain the website (hosting costs money) and even purchase a new theme when we get to that. Every little bit is helping! Thank you, if you deem us worthy!
And that’s it from us for now. We’ll share some of our goals and plans for 2022 in February, but until then, I hope you are as happy with these changes as I am!
Leave a Comment