Cause for Celebration

Now I have three things worth commemorating today. It was on this date in 1841 that Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”--deemed to be the very first detective story, as well as the first locked-room mystery--was published in Graham’s Magazine. This also happens to be my 16th wedding anniversary. And furthermore, what you’re currently reading is the 1,000th post to The Rap Sheet. Can that really be true, you ask--1,000? In just under a year? Heck, it was only five months ago that we celebrated this blog’s 500th post. I guess we’ve been awfully prolific around here.

And pretty damn fortunate, to boot. When The Rap Sheet was first fired up in May 2006, we had only four contributors (or “Usual Suspects,” as they’re known in the right-hand column). Now, we boast 11, including the (temporarily, I hope) sidelined Dick Adler, as well as our latest inductee, R.N. (Roger) Morris, the British author of The Gentle Axe, who, after a recent stint of guest-blogging, has agreed to continue posting his thoughts here on an irregular basis. We’ve also enjoyed some hearty endorsements during the last year. Opining recently in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, the honorable Ed Gorman said that The Rap Sheet offers readers “high style, sharp insights, and an air of amiable conversation,” adding that it’s “part pure journalism, part critique, and part just plain fun …” I feel like tattooing that recommendation prominently on my ass, except that not nearly enough people would see it there. (Remember the whole wedding anniversary thing.)

For a while, I thought that The Rap Sheet might clock its 1,000th post and its 100,000th reader hit simultaneously. But the little red counter at the bottom of the right-hand column shows the number of hits at just under 96,000. With 700 to 1,000 hits per day, however, we may well reach that 100,000 mark by the time of this blog’s one-year anniversary, in mid-May.

I want to thank everyone who’s helped make The Rap Sheet a success, and that includes the other blogs (especially CrimeSpot and the newer Crimespace) that have directed traffic to this site. The genre’s authors are also deserving of thanks, for having embraced this humble enterprise and for keeping us informed of goings-on in the crime-fiction community. The most vigorous cheers, though, are due my fellow Rap Sheet contributors, who (even in the absence of financial recompense) have helped turned what seemed like a reasonable idea (re-creating January Magazine’s former monthly crime-fiction newsletter as a blog) into a vigorous reality.

Anyone willing to take bets on how long it will take before we have amassed 2,000 posts?