This has been a milestone year for our little website. In 1999 my friend Wayne MacLaurin helped me register the blackgate.com domain, and we launched the site to support our ambitious fantasy magazine. This year we quietly celebrated a quarter-century of continuous operation and quality fantasy coverage, and in the process added several talented newcomers to our small staff of regular bloggers, including Neil Baker, Jeffrey Talanian, Charles Gramlich, William H. Stoddard, and Ian McDowell. We also welcomed back David Soyka, one of our founding bloggers, after a long sabbatical.

Over the past 25 years the site has evolved significantly, and when the print magazine died in 2011 it became our sole focus. Five years later George R.R. Martin presented us with an Alfie Award, and that same year we won a World Fantasy Award, a pair of singular honors I still find a little hard to believe.

Over the long years our focus has changed dramatically. In the early years it was all about growing the site and increasing traffic, and we achieved success I never dreamed of, peaking at over 2 million page views/month. But in the last fifteen years I’ve come to understand that the true rewards of a site like this aren’t in ever-increasing site metrics. They’re in the people I’ve met along the way, and the countless way my own love of the genre has deepened and expanded.

The things I treasure now are the comments from our readers, the small suggestions and feedback from our regulars. So I want to take a moment to thank all the BG readers who’ve given so generously of their time over the past year. Those that drop in with a book suggestion, a thoughtful comment, an encouraging word. Speaking on behalf of everyone who takes time to craft an article at Black Gate, it means a lot.

I’d especially like to thank our regulars: Eugene R, Thomas Parker, K. Jespersen, Matthew, Joe H, silentdante, Jeremy Erman, John E. Boyle, Librarius, Terry, Greg, Jim Pederson, Joe Bonadonna, Adrian Simmons, John MacMaster, Charlie, Mark Robinson, Brian Kunde, Pete Johnsen, Dale Nelson, Jeff Stehman, Chuck Timpko, James McGlothlin, Lou, and many, many others. You make the effort we put in every day worthwhile. Thank you.

On behalf of the vast and unruly collective that is Black Gate, I would like to wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Continue being excellent — it’s what you’re good at.