April 2015 has come to an end and so has the A to Z Challenge. It seems a bit surreal somehow, that a whole month has gone by where we blogged every single day, got lovely comments, found new blogs, made fabulous friends and will continue to grow in this spirit of friendship and happiness all through the months and maybe the years ahead.

As I look back, my reflections on this year’s challenge are not vastly different from last year’s, except perhaps that I had lowered my expectations, both of myself and of others. I know that blogging daily can be exhausting and frankly, blog hopping can be cumbersome when you have over 1000 blogs to check out.

So I wrote this year in the hope that some posts, not all, may be read. Instead I was overwhelmed by the flood of support, both on the blog as well as on social media for the love that I received! I confess I haven’t done enough justice in return and I hope to make it up over the next few months.

Twitter was a good friend during the A to Z Challenge. This year, three things I did differently on this medium, which have helped somewhat:

1. I added the #AtoZchallenge tag as well as the handle @AprilA2Z in my titles, so they would get more visibility.
2. I created a Twitter list of some#AtoZchallenge participants, so I could view their tweets in a single feed. This is also a good way to keep track of these bloggers post A-Z.
3. I joined the #AZchat sessions on Twitter curated by Heather Gardner. TWICE! Within 7 hours of each other. That has to stand for some record. Hey, I even got a medal for it. Thanks my tweeps!

Here are some fascinating stats thanks to the A to Z Challenge which I may analyse at a later stage:

Nearly 4000 views in April alone! Wow! I am dumbstruck. That’s the highest ever for any month since I began the blog last May!

The posts that got the most views:

A for Anger

B for Beautiful

C for Code linking with L for Letter 

D for Dance

and a Non-A to Z post: No More Candles

A Big Thank you to the ones who visited every day and made this possible! I am listing the bloggers who made the effort to read, like and leave comments all through April. Others read and shared on social media channels, which brought more traffic. Such a generous gesture!

I may have missed out a few, so please forgive me if that happens!

Some bloggers did not do the A-Z but were avid supporters of those who did. All of them are wonderful bloggers in their own right! Their names are hyperlinked to their blogs. Do check them out and bookmark them. For comfort, I have broken them down into groups of ten.

PSST: I plan to feature them in smaller groups over the next few months in my posts, so watch out for that! 

Vinay Ravindranath, Sanch Living Life, Shilpa Garg, Jyotsna Bhatia, Eloquent Mind, Mel Rowe, Patricia Lynne, Laurel Regan, Lata Sunil, Rajlakshmi.

Parul, Pratikshya, Shilpa Gupte, Little Princess Titli, Vidya, Shalini, Prasanna Rao, Keirthana, Vinitha, Sulekha.

Suzy Que,  Marie, Janaki, Sarah, Devika, Swathi, Nibha, Vinodini, Roger Ship, Inderpreet.

Sid Balachandran, Aparna George, Rachna Parmar, Beloo Mehra, Ankita, A.J. Sendall, Ula, Sundari Venkatraman, Soumya Prasad, Shantala Nayak.

Elly, Monica, Jenny, Shashank, Cat Graham, EclecticAlli, Pooja Sharma, Tulika, Nancy, Nisha Sanjeev.

Sheethal, Sonia Lal, DeeCoded, Debbie, Prathima, Mithila Menezes, Heather Gardner, Rosie Amber, Luccia Gray,Rekha Dhyani.

StoryTeller Mary, Yvonne Ventresca, A J Lauer, Henrietta M Ross, Vishal Bheeroo, Courtney Turner, Aathira Jim.

WHEW! Can you say ‘AWESOME BLOGGERS’?

*Please note that the order is completely random and I am going to be updating this list as and when I remember more people.

**Oh and if you did the A-Z along my lines (Writing/ Fiction/ Flash Fiction) and if I have missed your blog, leave a link in the comments and I will pop over and say hello.

With this I bid you all Au revoir. I have always loved this word from French, which means ‘Until we see each other again.’ It means that this is not good-bye. There is no final curtain call. There is always a next act, another chapter to be written and another page to be read.

So, while my blogging will slow down in May, it will not die. I may pop in occasionally to say hello or startle you with yet another Alternate Angle !

And in the words of the immortal Douglas Adams, ‘So long and thanks for all the fish!’

~~~