Outlandish Observations is 14 years old!

Outlandish Observations turns 14 years old today!! I'm delighted, as always, to see that people are still enjoying it.

Fourteen years....wow! Hard to believe it's been that long. I've always considered 14 a lucky number for me, ever since I won a contest at a school fair with that number when I was about ten years old.

I started Outlandish Observations on August 28, 2008, with two goals in mind. The first was simply to learn about blogging. The second was to create a central repository for news and information for OUTLANDER fans, a place where people could go to find answers to commonly asked questions, links to other OUTLANDER-related sites, and the latest information on Diana Gabaldon's new and upcoming releases. (Of course this was long before anyone knew there would be a TV series.)

To say that this blog has succeeded far beyond my wildest imaginings is a severe understatement! In the beginning, I never expected anyone to visit my site except a few dozen of my friends from the Compuserve Books and Writers Community (now TheLitForum.com) and the Ladies of Lallybroch fan-site. I didn't talk about it on Compuserve for the first couple of years, because I was very reluctant to draw attention to it where Diana Gabaldon could see -- which seems silly in retrospect, but it's true. Suffice it to say that I did get over that shyness, eventually. <g> I always get a thrill whenever Diana shares one of my blog posts, and I was particularly pleased to see how much she enjoyed my recent post about the OUTLANDER universe as a garden.

Special thanks to all of my followers on the Outlandish Observations Facebook page! I now have more than 13,300 followers, an increase of 8.35% over last year! I'm delighted that so many new people have found my site over the past year. Welcome! I hope you take some time to look around and see what else is available here.

Outlandish Observations was one of the first successful OUTLANDER-related blogs. These days there are innumerable fan-sites, Facebook groups, and so on. The more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned! <g> I'm proud to be a part of such a thriving, creative, and enthusiastic worldwide community of fans, united in our passion for these books and characters and this amazing story Diana Gabaldon has created, that is now being brought to life on TV.

Speaking of which...I'm delighted to see so many new people discovering OUTLANDER as a result of the TV series! Thanks to all of you who've enjoyed my episode recaps for Seasons 1-6. It takes a lot of time and effort to put those recaps together, and I'm so glad you're finding them useful! I plan to continue the episode recaps with Season 7 when the time comes.

Many, many thanks to all of you who've visited Outlandish Observations over the past fourteen years. It's been an amazing journey, and I'm so glad you've come along for the ride.

THANK YOU ALL!!