Happy 2nd blogiversary to us! Celebrate with some free stuff :)

So much news to share!

First of all, I’m please to announce the winners of the grand prize packs for Rising Phoenix:

Ailsa G.  of Connecticut, USA

Jack R. of Washington, USA

Jeremy J. of California, USA

Again, thank you everyone who has contributed, and major congrats to the raffle winners.

More significantly, though, is that two years ago to this day, Beyond Victoriana was born over on Dreamwidth. The website has changed a lot since then, and, feeling reflective, I’d like to go over the progress, changes, and challenges the blogs has gone though in the past year after the jump.

In addition, to celebrate our 2nd anniversary, I’ll be giving away a few prizes in the coming weeks. The first is a pair of SteamPug posters, courtesy of Dr. Grymm Laboratories and two metals from Thee-Gartisan Works. A poster and a medal each will be given away to two lucky readers. The rules to enter will be listed at the end of this post too.

A lot of personal life changes occurred that wouldn’t have happened without this blog. I quit one job and gained another at Tor.com. I entered graduate school at New York University’s Performance Studies program. I got to travel the country talking at steampunk & social justice issues at various conventions. All of these experiences led to meeting some fantastic people in the steampunk and SF/F communities and solidifying friendships both online and off. It’s been a struggle trying to balance updating this blog while also juggling all of these other commitments, and so I thank readers for their patience for missed updates, typos, or delayed email responses (especially to interested potential contributors — I always try to get back to you guys before RL gets in the way…. ^_^;;)

I also know that this blog can constantly use more improvements, though. Before starting grad school in June, I had dedicated 20-hours a week to various BV related things (all unpaid too). Because of time constraints, I’ve had to change the posting schedule (boo), but I also took the opportunity to do outreach to more guest bloggers (yay). Working for Tor.com has been another great resource in both expanding my involvement in the steampunk community in different ways. While there has been some cross-posting here from Tor, I’ve tried only to link back to the most relevant articles to BV’s mission, and hope that shows.

Beyond Victoriana’s mission has expanded a bit to feature other marginalized identities. There has been featured and cross-posted articles about disability in steampunk, GLBT, and politics too, for example, as I’m aiming for Beyond Victoriana‘s platform to become a more open.  New contributors are always needed, but I am particularly looking for specialist historians, book reviewers, and other steampunk bloggers.  Minorities and women, of course, have been a majority of our guest bloggers and I encourage them to apply.

Moreover, thank you to the many, many fine people who have supported this blog in the past year.  Beyond Victoriana has gained a lot of recognition, and it wouldn’t have happened without some great friends of the blog.

First and foremost, I want to thank all of my contributors for their hard work, dedication, and intelligence that has made the blog’s content worth reading.   If you haven’t checked out our Index page, you should. Special thanks to Jess Nevins for his QUAINT series, an invaluable literary resource.

To Jaymee Goh, who was the first person I talked to about Beyond Victoriana and had supported it since the first post.

To Jeff and Ann Vandermeer and SJ Chambers, who gave the blog greater recognition in the science fiction community and for featuring the blog in The Steampunk Bible.

To Kevin Steil & the staff at SteamCon for nominating Beyond Victoriana this year for an Airship Award (we didn’t win, but it was a great nod nonetheless. And congrats to Jordan Block of Sepiachord, who totally deserves it).

To Jake von Slatt, for helping out the blog in too many ways to list here.

To Liz Gorinsky and Irene Gallo, my colleagues at Tor.com, for supporting my community outreach with the curator position for this year’s Steampunk Week.

To Matt Delman of Doctor Fantastquies’s Show of Wonders and O.M. Grey, who never stop RTing.

To Morgan Payne, my main business partner for the Rising Phoenix Fund.

To the rest of my friends in the community (you know who you are), and to my non-steampunk friends who put up with my shenanigans.

And, finally, thank you to the readers, new and old. This wouldn’t have been worth doing without you. ^________^

And of course, pleas leave feedback about you want to see more of in the coming year. I’m interested in hearing all of your suggestions and you know how to get in touch.

***

And to end before I go all sappy on the aetherwebs, some info about the raffle for you lucky folks–

You can enter using three ways between now and noon EST on November 5th, 2011 :

1) Comment on this post

2) Tweet Happy Birthday to #beyondvictoriana to @writersyndrome on Twitter.

3) “Like” Beyond Victoriana on Facebook and post Happy Birthday! on our wall (along with any other links you’d like to share to celebrate).

International readers are welcome to enter. Once notified, the winners have 24-hours to confirm via email, or else new winners will be selected.

Have fun & enjoy!