This is K.M. Island and you were listening to the four hundred and 90th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

So here we are the last podcast of 2019.

While working on this episode, I realized that 2019 marked the 10-year anniversary for the

podcast.

At first I was like, oh yeah, 10 years, that's cool.

Then I thought about it a little more and it kind of started to blow my mind.

10 years.

I honestly can't believe it's been 10 years since I started recording all by myself in my bedroom

and how ridiculously nervous I was. The podcasts were a lot shorter in the beginning. The first one was just five minutes.

I still remember what it was about to. It was called two things every author needs to know about using brand names in fiction.

Quite often one of you emails or tweets me to tell me you've listened to the entire

back library of podcasts which is always astounding to me.

Not just because you listen to what has to be almost 100 hours of audio, but because you made

it through all the early episodes where I was still figuring things out.

So anyway, here's to 10 years. Whether you've been listening from the start, caught up along the way,

or have just joined the community recently.

Thank you for listening and here's to 10 more years. And now I hope you

enjoyed this week's podcast which features one of my favorite of my end of year roundups, my top books of 2019.

I had such a good reading year this year. It was hard to narrow down my top books of 2019 into a manageable list.

For as long as I can remember, my favorite part of my day has been the part where I get to curl up for an hour or so with a pile of books.

For years, reading was the last thing I did every day before bed. This year I changed things up and

started doing my reading in the morning with a cup of coffee, of course. I've also shifted things

...