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HAPPY BIRTHDAY CK2S KWIPS AND KRITIQUES! Over the past year since we opened, so much has happened with our once small website. We’ve grown by leaps and bounds. But we try to keep the feel of a small site with dedicated readers who just, plain and simple, love books and talking about them. One thing that hasn’t changed however, not that we are surprised, is some confusion over our name. People are always pretty close, if not right on the money with how they refer to us, but there is still confusion. But I thought since we are celebrating being a year old and our website team is reflecting on when and how they joined us, I thought it was a good time to take a small trip back in time and tell you all the story of how CK2S Kwips and Kritiques was born. Who knows, it may even help people better remember our name in its entirety. J Originally this website started because I wasn't enjoying reviewing as much as I used to. It had become more of a job than a hobby with extensive requirements I just couldn’t keep up with anymore. But I liked some of the perks that came with being a reviewer (i.e. free books from different publishers and conducting interviews) so I didn't want to get out of the program entirely. I had thought about going solo, and counting on my contacts I'd already made in the publishing world to keep me supplied in books to review. Unfortunately, my experience in building a website was far from high. But I already knew if I did go solo it would be called "Kelley's Kwips and Kritiques" thanks to a friend of mine giving me the idea. Notice the "k" trend, hence our "klovers (not shamrocks or clovers, but with a “k”)." I knew I wanted to capitalize on my Irish heritage (I'm 1/8 Irish, I'm also part Scottish and part Welsh which fit under Celtic too) and the fact my birthday is so close to St. Patrick's Day (the day before). So that's where the Celtic theme came from. Talking to a few friends, they had some of the same thoughts I did about what we did and didn't like about reviewing. So we started talking about branching off and doing our own website. There were four of us altogether. These friends I had been talking to were none other than our own Cindy and Sandi, and another friend Kari. So I couldn't very well name the website after me anymore, but I still liked "Kwips and Kritiques" since it sounded catchy and didn't favor any one genre of books or another. And I wanted to name the site after all of the founding members. That's where the initials came from. And of course I did alphabetical order in the title, hence CK2S. It actually is a "K squared" but that doesn't translate well online. <g> Right after we settled on a name and I bought the domain, Kari had to back out due to other issues and commitments, but I kept the name the same anyhow since she had been a part of the original plan. There was some concern about whether or not the initials would be confusing (I got that idea from an engineering firm we used to do a lot of work with at my old job) but we decided the "Kwips and Kritiques" part was pretty memorable, especially with the odd spelling. So even if that was all people remembered, it would be enough. Cindy was the web expert of the crew so I had asked her if she would mind creating a design for our website. All I told her was Celtic themed, easy to maintain, and classy looking. And that I wanted to debut ON St. Patrick's Day to really pull out all the stops on our Irish theme. So the design of our website was born from that and Cindy did all the work creating our image. (And didn’t she do an absolutely amazing job?) She had two different thoughts for us, the one with the cross and the ruins you'll find in our logo, and one with a pair of step dancing shoes. I had talked to some people I knew outside of those of us involved in the website which they liked better. They all liked the current logo best. I even had a few who had no clue what the shoes were for. So I decided if one or two people had no clue about the shoes, there were bound to be others who wouldn't either. But the Celtic cross and medieval ruins are images well identifiable as Irish/Celtic by most people so that became the logo. But the shoes still found their way into our website by way of the reviewer buttons and a couple of our banners on the links page. What's funny is when we first started dreaming up this website, we had intended to keep it small with minimal "extras" as I had intended to do all of the website updating myself and I knew I didn't have time for a lot of extras. Cindy had been the primary webmistress for a few years elsewhere so I know from talking to her how stressful it got every month updating that site. Well, we kept the minimal "extras" part and stayed fairly streamlined, but that's about it. LOL Mainly because I never expected we'd become so popular! Word got around with help from some friends of mine in the reading part of the romance world, and the publishing part, so we exploded pretty darn fast. Then we brought in others with their own connections and we just continued to grow! We have a wonderful crew on the website though and so many people participate in different ways that I still manage to have a life outside of the website. I swore when I left where I used to be that I would never let a fun hobby take over my life with so much of the “not fun” work I had to do to enjoy the good stuff. But I'm pretty darn proud of the fact that something I had anticipated being quite small and not very recognized ended up not being that way at all. So there you have it the long involved story of where we came from. Everyone here at CK2S Kwips and Kritiques thanks you from the bottom of our hearts for supporting us this past year and making us into what we are now. We couldn’t have done it without everyone on our team and in the romance world! So… HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!! Thank you for helping us celebrate!
Love, |
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