Debra Mauldin: B is for Bashful Betsy

Hello to all my fellow A-Z Challenge Bloggers!

This was my first A to Z Blogging Challenge and I was determined to finish. I kept my pace slow and steady, as I only did one A-Z post a day and took Sunday’s off to recuperate. That seemed to have worked well for me.

“Hats off” to the encouraging A to Z Team. They were available, if needed, to answer questions.

I didn’t get to visit as much as I would have liked, even participating in the A to Z Road Trip. I will participate in the A to Z Challenge in 2014 and I encourage you to participate, also.

Fellow Challenge Bloggers were very encouraging and supportive. I loved getting their feedback and comments.

I would like to share a short story with you that I got a lot of feedback on:

B is for Bashful Betsy

April 2, 2013 by D. B. Mauldin

Betsy had been dreading college. She was very bashful. She did not enjoy meeting new people. She had argued with her father to go to Breman’s College. Betsy had chosen Breman because it was the farthest college, away from home, her father would agree to. She was, also, trying to overcome her bashfulness and clumsiness. Being clumsy and bashful was not good. Her clumsiness always put her in bashful situations.

Finally, the big day came. Betsy’s father and mother drove her to the campus and helped her get settled in. There were lots of hugs, lots of reminders, more hugs, and then Betsy found herself alone in her new dorm room. She sat down on the bed and wondered what her roommate would be like.

Betsy fit right into college life on the big campus. She was able to blend in, learn, and observe. Her grades were good and she had time to write every day. It was near the end of the 1st semester of her 2nd year of college and her thoughts were full of final exams. With her mind full of thoughts and her natural clumsiness, Betsy ran into the corner wall leading to the staircase. She blushed with embarrassment as her books fell to the floor and scattered. Betsy felt a stab of fear pierce her stomach as she saw Roland walking toward her with the purpose of helping her recover her strewn books.

She had developed a huge crush on Roland the first day she had seen him. It was her first year of college, second semester, and one of her classes was World History. She had spotted him going into the door of the class just ahead of her.

He looked up at her from the scattered books on the floor, his large blue eyes locking with hers. She felt an ache in her heart. Her bashfulness caused her to blush even more.

“Here you go”, Roland said as he handed the books to her. Betsy managed to mumble, “Thank you”, as she quickly turned and fled up the stairs. Betsy bit down on her bottom lip, upset with herself for acting so bashful. She feared her bashfulness would never go away.

Betsy was rushing to her last class of the day when she noticed Roland up ahead. She slowed her pace so that she wouldn’t run into him. Roland went up the steps of the building ahead of hers and Betsy hurried on to her building.

After class, Betsy headed to her dormitory room, but heard someone calling her name before she got there. She stopped and turned to see who it was, then froze in fear as Roland jogged toward her. “Hey! How are you doing?” Roland asked. Betsy stared into Roland’s blue eyes and became dizzy as she was consumed with bashfulness. Roland reached out a hand to help steady here and asked, “Are you okay”?

The touch of his hand on her arm stabilized her. She was no longer dizzy, she just felt bashful. “I guess it was the cold” she said while shaking her head up and down.

“Well, let’s get you out of the cold first and then talk” Roland said as he placed his arm around her protectively and led her up the steps of her dormitory house.

Once inside, Betsy shrugged out of Roland’s arm and with her back toward him began to take off her coat and gloves. “What do you wish to talk about?” she asked bashfully over her shoulder.

“Well, for starters, let me introduce myself” said Roland. Betsy turned around and took Roland’s extended hand into her own. “My name is Roland Barrett and I’m a senior majoring in English.”

Betsy gave him a bashful smile. “I’m Betsy Robertson, a sophomore majoring in English” she said.

“Well, imagine that, two ships pass in the dark, both majoring in English. What do you plan on doing with your major, Miss Robertson?”

Betsy didn’t have to think twice. “I’m going to be a writer. Maybe teach some high school English and write on the side. What about you?”

“I want to be an English teacher and write on the side” Roland replied grinning.

That grin brought Betsy’s attention to his mouth. What a beautiful mouth, she thought. Before her thoughts could go on to how kissable that beautiful mouth looked, Betsy roused herself.

“Seriously?” she asked.

“Seriously” Roland responded. They stood for a moment, both feeling that they had just met their soul mate. Roland broke the reverie.

“I know we have just met, but I have watched you often from afar. I feel like we are old friends. Anyway, I wanted to ask if you had a date for the Valentine’s Dance yet.”

“No” Betsy replied as she felt a blush rising to her cheeks.

“Well then, I would like to ask you to be my date” said Roland.

“Yes. Yes I will.” Betsy said bashfully.

“Great! I will pick you up here at 7:00 pm. Until then, I will see you around.” Roland left before Betsy had a chance to reply back.

Betsy sat down in the lobby of her dorm house. “A dance,” Betsy groaned, “How will I ever make through a dance with my bashfulness and clumsiness?”

***

I am a professional writer, aspiring to publication. Wife; Mother to 3 beautiful daughters; Grandmother to 5 (soon to be 6, and just found out a 7 is on the way!). My grandchildren are my world! I’m a Certified Aromatherapist with an Associate’s Degree in Human Services.  Writing has always been a part of my life. My passions are writing, reading, helping others, gardening, nature, and spending time with my grandchildren.  My blog is Mama Bear Musings.

Editing The A-Z Challenge by Kate from Another Clean Slate:

Kate from Another Clean Slate has been blogging for only three months. A former lurker, her introduction to writing her own blog coincided with the start of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. She said it was a great way to jump in head first and really embrace the blogging community right away. She is sharing with us her "E" entry from the challenge- Editing the A to Z Challenge. 

During this Blogging from A to Z April Challenge, I began to think about what other challenges we could do and blog about from A to Z in upcoming months to share our experiences. Some of my favorite challenge edits are:

• Eating my way from A to Z- Some people could do this with full course meals, cereals, fruits, exotic foods or cutting their food into shapes. I can imagine their families would be thrilled for "Frog Leg Friday." Although, I've had frog legs on several occasions and they really do resemble the taste of chicken.
• Falling in love from A to Z- Did you ever see the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? This would be along the same lines but the goal would be just to have a date with a day whose name starts with a letter consecutively from A to Z. It might backfire when you meet your future first ex-husband at the bar and decline a date just because his name is Mike and you already are all the way to P- searching for Peters, Pauls and Pasquals.
• Hobbies from A to Z- This would be good for anyone who wanted to have a chance to try being an acrobat or zoologist. They would be able to join this challenge and spend a day going through each of their potential passions by letter. Beekeeping anyone? Ghost hunting?
• Send a gift to Kate @ Another Clean Slate from A-Z- This is my personal favorite. Everyone could use their creativity to send me gifts- anything from Alcohol to Jewelry to Zumba soundtracks.

What are some edited challenges you can think of? Maybe one of ours could go viral like the Blogging from A to Z Challenge! Imagine the possibilities!

Thanks to Kate for contributing today! You can find Kate almost every day on her blog, Another Clean Slate, as well as her Twitter and Facebook pages. Follow away and share your own ideas for editing the challenge!

#Writers Helping Writers: Get Your #Book Featured

During my A to Z Challenge on Daily (w)rite I featured authors, through posts like this one. Had April not turned out to be the personal nightmare it became for me, it would have become an even bigger success.

I regularly read bunches of books by author friends and from time to time, I feature them on my blog. This exposes my audience to new books to read, and brings the authors some sales. I'm now planning to make this a regular Wednesday post on Amlokiblogs.

If you're an author looking to get more publicity for your latest book, or buzz up an old one, send me the following at atozstories at gmail dot com:

1. Title of Book, Genre, Author Name
2. A one to two sentence elevator pitch (Not more than 50 words)
3. Author's fave excerpt from the book (Not more than 250 words)
4. Links from where the books can be purchased.
5. Blogpost-sized Book Cover

I'd like an email expressing your interest first, before you send out the above.

The elevator pitch and the teaser excerpt need to be well-polished, ready to be showcased. This is for books only-- novels and short story collections. I'd like to feature non-fiction as well, but no poetry or erotica (sounds horrible, grouped like that, I know, but I run fiction-based, PG13 blogs).
I have June covered, and some of July, but slots are still open. If you need your book featured urgently, I might also feature them on Daily (w)rite.

I look forward to reading your excerpts, and if intrigued enough, featuring them and buying your books!

Rhonda Albom: Focus, Fun, and Adventure!

Focus is the buzz word of the day around our house. I am focused on our upcoming Alaska travel plans in an effort to avoid some of the mishaps of our last adventure. Hubby is focused on what ever it is that rocket scientists do in their spare time, our teens are focused on our soon to arrive house guests and, of course their education. I should introduce myself, I am Rhonda from Laugh Quotes. com. I am a travel photographer, humor writer, homeschool mom, American expat based in New Zealand and I race yachts in my free time.

Our life is an exciting adventure and I try to live by my favorite quote (attributed to Mark Twain):

“Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Here we are on a dragon boat in Beijing, China

If you are wondering why I write a travel humor blog of randomness entitled Laugh-Quotes, don't worry, so am I. In 2012, as we laughed our way around the world the focus changed, yet it retained its stupid name.

To bring the focus back to AtoZ, I thought I would share my reflections poem from the 2013 AtoZ challenge. I went for a theme - Travel Tips I Learned the Hard Way. Another year finished. Before I sign off of the AtoZ Challenge 2013 Can I tell you my views? Don't run away. Everything is cool, Funny, fabulous and filled with new friends all Going the distance. Humor and travel were my focus, Idiots that we were on the road. Joining in to AtoZ, Keeping a focus on one topic, Laughing as I go, Made the blog hop that much more challenging. Never a dull moment. Opportunities to meet new friends. Pausing for a breath or Quiet time Rarely happened in April. So we all pushed to the end. Tired, Unnerved, Victororius. When we finished Xtatic at learning how to use X without the E. You did it too? Now it's time for . . . Zzzzzz


Now that the Challenge is but a memory, what are you focused on?

PS: I also write a blog called Kibitz Spot, but is so far off this topic I wasn't sure I should even mention it.

Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm and love of adventure with us! Best of luck in all your travels!

Elizabeth Demers: Breaking Down the Wall...Naked

Another A to Z challenge comes to an end--- another collection of posts and poetry have been written, another deep breath of relief is released. For my fellow bloggers that survived as well, it's another 'challenge-completed' notch carved into the writing desk.

I've come to enjoy my yearly foray into the world of all things alphabetical. This was my third year, though it was only the second year I had a workable theme (which made the challenge substantially easier than the first year I attempted this challenge.) And, though my first year was difficult because my focus was so scattered, I found this year was more difficult because I lost the enthusiasm that came with the first year excitement----excitement which helped me plug along until the end of the challenge.

Year 3 was a success in the sense that I completed the challenge, though, this was the year that almost wasn't----

Somewhere about a third of the way through the challenge, I seriously considered giving up.... there weren't enough hours to get everything done, the way I wanted to get them done. My poems were getting harder and harder to compose (I mean, there's only so many supernatural poems you can write before they all start sounding alike). I haven't been able to visit near as many fellow A-Z challengers' blogs as I had wanted. Though, I'm hoping to amend this in the days/weeks to come.

Time and time again, I would find myself saying, what's the point? or, I don't care enough about this subject to write anything about it, it just happened to start with the requisite "letter of the day."

Life and work and family and more life, kept getting in the way. I could feel myself teetering between the edges of apathy and despair. I HATE not finishing a writing challenge----- even if I had all 26 posts left to do on April 30th, I'd still give it a go....

But, then I'd push through a couple of posts...find a couple of cool pics and suddenly the poems weren't just 'cereal-box-ingredient-lists'.... And, then I'd remember....

There's a reason we do what we do, we writers. And, it's when things feel past the point of restoration and repair, that our basest and truest form emerges. We aren't caught up in the grandeur of ourselves, wrapped tightly in our own self-assurance, exuding the confidence of the never-failed.... Instead, we're exposed and raw and vulnerable-- we are naked to the world, and more importantly, we are naked to ourselves.

Being naked (especially when you didn't intend to leave the house without your pants) is more than a little scary. We can't hide in the comfort of the background when there's a neon sign hanging over our heads that tells the world and their brother to look at us because we're starkers.

And, when we turn the mirror to ourselves, we are, at once, all too aware of every flaw and imperfection... every blemish screams, every scar burns. But, instead of looking into the mirror long enough to grow accustomed to---and perhaps to even love--- what we see, we build view-blocking walls around ourselves that have no window and no door.

It's here we stay until the claustrophobia (read: innumerable ideas clogging the space around us) becomes too much and we begin the frantic scramble to tear down the stone and mortar.

It's when we push ourselves past the wall, fighting every crumbling brick to make it to the other side, that we are reminded, we can do this. And, it's the relief/respite we feel from the first piece we've written outside the wall, that we are reminded, we want to do this. It's the joy/exhilaration we feel once the words are flowing again, that we are reminded, we MUST do this!

I apologize that this got up late in the day. My bad. A case of a person juggling too many things...so sorry Liz. Thank you for taking the time to be here!