I'm done with blogging, at least for now. It's not another instance of writer's block but just the plain fact that I have nothing left to say.
When I started At the Villa Rose almost ten years ago, there was no other blog that I know of that dealt exclusively with vintage crime fiction and promoted it; everyone loved contemporary stuff and found no reason to explore what came before. Had anyone at the time said that Golden Age mysteries would soon be the rage and the British Library would reprint J. Jefferson Farjeon and F.W. Crofts, I and most of my few readers would have laughed it off.
A decade passed and everything changed. Other blogs appeared and suddenly vintage crime fiction was everywhere on the web; publishers finally took notice and broadened their horizons; people like Martin Edwards and Curtis Evans played a decisive part in bringing this about, with the former's towering "The Golden Age of Murder" winning almost every award going its way, something unimaginable ten years before.
As for At the Villa Rose... Its readership remained tiny, the infrequency and the brevity of the posting not helping it find a broader audience. Why would people read it anyway? Other blogs did the same thing much better, with more scope and erudition. I slowly lost my mojo though I didn't realize it immediately, my posts became ever more infrequent and now the blog is on hiatus indefinitely. Maybe the mojo will come back someday. Maybe it won't. As the French saying goes, "Qui vivra verra".
