Themes That Rocked the Challenge - Tracey Lynn Tobin and Fictional Characters

Today we welcome author Tracey Lynn Tobin from No Page Left Blank. She chose a really fun theme for the Challenge!

Your theme was Favorite Fictional Characters – what made you choose that?

When I decided to try out the A to Z Challenge I knew that I wanted to pick a theme to help me work my way through the month, but at first I didn't know what kind of theme to choose. I thought about a number of possibilities, but most of them had a number of letters that would be difficult - if not impossible - to work in, so I vetoed them all. I was actually playing a video game when it occurred to me that fictional characters come with all kinds of strange names, and that's when I decided on my theme. I read a lot, play a lot of games, and watch a lot of TV shows and movies, so I knew I could come up with 26 characters whose names all start with different letters. I decided to make them all favorites of mine to make the theme a little more personal.

Which letter and character was your favorite?

There were a lot of good ones, but my favorite was probably a letter that a lot of people find difficult: X. I thought this letter would be torture, but within seconds I realized that one of my favorite characters ever starts with the letter X: Xander Harris. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of my favorite TV shows of all time - I've re-watched all seven seasons multiple times - and I always thought that Xander was an awesome character. I love how he's a bumbling idiot at the beginning of the show and he just grows and grows and becomes this super-dependent person by the end of it.

Which letter was the most difficult?

Most people probably have a lot of trouble with Z, X, and Q, but I had those ones all worked out right from the beginning. The letter that gave me the most trouble was O. Try as I might I couldn't think of any characters (at least, ones that I personally enjoyed) that start with O. Eventually I settled for "Other Mother", although it felt a little like cheating since it's not really her name, just what Coraline refers to her as.

I saw the banner - tell us about the Supernatural A to Z.

When "theme reveal" day rolled around in 2014, several participants noticed that they had all chosen a "supernatural" theme for their A to Z Challenge; they were all planning to blog about things like ghosts, monsters, demons, and so on. Tasha over at Tasha's Thinkings decided to put together a little sub-group for the challenge for people who'd all decided to blog about these kinds of things. I didn't join right from the beginning since I'd actually joined the A to Z Challenge at the last minute and hadn't come across this little sub-group, but a few days into April one of the other participants put me on to the Supernatural A to Z. He thought that since some of my characters were from supernatural worlds, that perhaps I would like to take part. I signed up and met a few new friends as a result, so it made the A to Z Challenge that much better.

You like Deadpool even though he’s practically a villain – what other villains do you like?

Okay, right off the bat, Deadpool is not a villain...he's an anti-hero. lol Okay, yeah, he does some bad things every so often, but most of that is because his brain is kind of broken. In the end, usually everything he does works out for the better, so he can't really qualify as a villain. That said, I do love villains, and a lot of the time it's because they're so much more interesting than the heroes. I love the insanity, the drive for power, and a lot of the really awesome villains are the ones who are damaged inside because of some horrible thing that happened to them, or some miserable situation they've been through. Some of my favorites? Well I love Loki, from the Thor universe, and no one can deny that the Joker is one of the greatest comic book villains ever. I was also always a big fan of Boba Fett from Star Wars, and I love Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although he becomes somewhat less of a villain as the show goes on.

Who is Gau, the Wild Orphan?

Gau is one of the playable characters from Final Fantasy III (US version), which is still one of my favorite games of all time. Gau is a strange, feral boy that you find on an island called the Veldt. He joins your party after you give him some dried meat to eat, and his special ability is that he can learn the abilities of monsters in the game. If you return to the home of a strange miser after taking Gau into your party, you learn that the man is Gau's father, and that he abandoned the baby on the Veldt after his mother died giving birth. The man went a little crazy after all of that, so Gau leaves him be and continues on with your party, following wherever they go.

What fictional character did you hate to leave out?

There were a lot of possible subjects for the letter T that I had to leave out. It ended up being a showdown between Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones and Thor, but Tyrion won out in the end because I'd already done several other comic book characters. I also gave up Terra Branford (another Final Fantasy III character), which I hated to do because as I mentioned, Final Fantasy III is one of my favorite games ever. Honestly, I probably could have done 26 days worth of the letter T, but of course that would have defeated the point of the challenge.

What theme are you considering for this year’s Challenge?

Honestly? I've been wondering about that for a while now. I briefly considered doing the same theme with different characters, but I don't know if I want to repeat myself like that. I'd like to do something that relates to my writing, but I'm not sure what I could do in that vein that would allow me to come up with an idea for each letter of the alphabet. If possible I would like to relate the challenge to my writing somehow, though, so I'm already working on trying to come up with ideas so that I'll be ready when April comes along.

Thanks for the interview, Alex! I can't wait for the challenge to roll around this year.

Glad you’re excited about it, Tracey!


Co-host Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh is the author of Amazon Best-sellers CassaStar, CassaFire, and CassaStorm, and his blog can be found HERE

#atozchallenge #roadtrip - Stormy introduces some manly men!

 Hi!

It's ME!

Stormy the Weather Gnome!

We're changing things up a bit so you don't get bored.

Don't worry, we're still on the road to nowhere, still can't drive 55, AND still running against the wind.


I have some new friends I've met on my journey to tell you about!


John Holton - The Sound of One Hand Typing

John considers his blog to be..."the Seinfeld of the blogging world most of the year..." so he went with Random Topics for his posts.

He likes to tie in great subject information with pictures and videos. What kind of random topics? Bananas, Jeopardy, Marvel Superheroes, Shopping, and Wasabi!



Matthew MacNish - The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment - (The QQQE)

Mr. Matt is a returning co-host to the Challenge. (WELCOME BACK) He had a break from posting in 2014, but in 2013 his theme was unique words and their etmologies.

We writers do love our words. Especially when he chooses words like Asinine, Feral, Quagmire, Tacit, and Vicarious.

How is your road trip going?



The 2015 A to Z Challenge sign up list is open! Why haven't you signed up yet?

Incredible Space Telescopes

Hubble Space Telescope

How Many Space Telescopes Can You Name? Most people will immediately thing of The Hubble Space Telescope and all the amazing images that have been on TV and the Internet. Believe it or not, there are dozens of telescopes orbiting Earth right now, and dozens more whose mission has been terminated. 

Telescopes are placed into orbit around the Earth or are sent farther out into space to get a clearer view of the Universe. There are many different types of space telescopes. Some are used to study a special object like the Sun. Others are used to study the different types of light given off by objects in space. 

X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes study the hottest and most explosive objects in space. Infrared telescopes study the places where stars are born and can look into the centers of galaxies. Optical telescopes study the visible light from space and ultraviolet telescopes study very hot stars. Many of these types of light (such as x-rays, gamma-rays, most ultraviolet, and infrared) can only be studied from space because they are blocked by our atmosphere. Reference 

NASA has four large powerful space-based telescopes called the Great Observatories. Their mission is to examine a particular region of space using differing technologies. 

Spitzer Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope: launched in 1990 aboard Discovery, it observes visible and near-ultraviolet light. 

The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory: launched in 1991 aboard Atlantis observes gamma rays. In 2000 it was deorbited due to a failed gyroscope. 

The Chandra X-ray Observatory: launched in 1999 aboard Columbia observes soft x-rays. 

The Spitzer Space Telescope: launched in 2003 aboard a Delta II rocket it observes the infrared spectrum. 

Kepler Space Telescope

The Hubble and Kepler (see my post about the Kepler Space Telescope HERE) are optical telescopes, which captures optical or visible light. There are no atmospheric effects in space, so the resolutions are significantly higher. This is why placing a space observatory on the moon makes so much sense. 

Cameras images are monochrome, meaning one color. Different filters are used to capture infrared (deep red in color) or ultraviolet channels (deep blue in color). These images are then combined to make a single image. So those amazing images we see are not how the space telescopes capture them. Rather, they are combined to make a false color version. This method is used by astronomers to make the images more comprehensible. 

Example: Here are actual images of the asteroid Ida taken by NASA’a Galileo satellite. On the right is a false color image. This reveals more of what elements make up the asteroid. 

Here are a few more examples of false colored images:

Comet Halley

I hope you enjoyed this post. We live in an incredibly amazing universe and with the use of space telescopes are beginning to unravel the secrets of our cosmos. 

You can visit Stephen Tremp at his Website Breakthrough Blogs. Stop by Friday through Sunday for the Weekend Follies, a great way to get a few laughs as you wind down the work week.

Storytelling A to Z: Themes, tags, and tales!

Sign-ups have started for the 2015 A to Z challenge (yay!) and this year's list is already shaping up to greatness - and involves storytelling in more than one way!

First off, you probably already noticed that we have some hew tags:

You can now use the shiny Mythology (MY) tag if you plan on blogging about myths, folklore, legends, urban legends, ghost stories, and other traditional stories or myth-related topics. (I personally will be rocking this tag on my main blog with a theme - which will be revealed soon!)

The Writing (WR) tag, for the first time this year, also includes Storytelling! So if you produce, perform and share stories in a non-written format, feel free to take advantage of the broader concept of the tag!

As a co-host, I will once again be keeping an eye out for the year's storytelling participants on the side, and possibly create a blog hop that focuses on storytellers of the performing kind. Last year was the first time we gathered them, and it was an impressive list. Good news: Many of them are returning in 2015!

Of course you don't have to be a storyteller to have a story-related theme. In the next two months many bloggers will be hunting for themes (and revealing them... more about that later!). I am a big advocate of themes. I have participated in A to Z for three years, and have done folktale-related themes for the past two - Weird Princesses in 2013 and Tales with Colors in 2014. They were immense fun, and made me feel like they also gave people a chance to discover new things that they could play with. If you have always wanted to introduce us to your 26 favorite Greek deities, or the 26 magic treasures you always wished you could own, or the 26 most traumatic Grimm experiences of your childhood... Do share :)

Keep signing up, keep blogging!

Oh, and also: If you would like to volunteer as a minion helper to the A to Z team, or my team in particular, do let me know!

@TarkabarkaHolgy
The Multicolored Diary - Adventures in Storytelling
MopDog - The crazy thing about Hungarians

How Do You Find Your Ideas?

How do you find your ideas? Authors are often asked this question in interviews. Or perhaps; Do you have trouble finding ideas to write about? My problem is the opposite. I have too many ideas. What I’ve found is that having an idea and getting the idea down in words that actually say what I imagine they should, is a totally different pot o’ honey. Does that metaphor work? I also don’t have enough time to actually write a different story for every idea that I have.

That said I’ve found that using more than one idea in a story can add not only a new dimension to it, but adding two, three or sometimes four different ideas can make the original idea much more profound, intricate, and beguiling to the reader.  Kind of like a photographer taking a shot with one type of lens and then finding that if a wider (or narrower) angle is used the whole view of the photo, the whole concept and direction of the photograph is changed, broadened and the focus encompasses more than the photographer originally dreamed of. Or a painter who finds a new color that brings a startling new life to his painting, a life not previously glimpsed, an ambiance not previously hoped for but now heartily embraced and enhanced. Or what about a musician who finally plays a note in a sequence he's never used before and falls into a piece of music the world must hear?

Do you use more than one idea in a story, different lenses on the same scene, more than one new color on your canvas? Do you mix and match, push your mind outside of your “normal” range to see what creation you are capable of producing? Because to me, finding the “newness” in ones “old” methods is what makes creating so beautiful and satisfying, even if it doesn’t always work the way we think it should.   

Images from:

www.piersidegallery.com

myphotographydesigns.blogspot.com

www.mindmapinspiration.com

Multiple By Twelve

Can you believe there's only one more day left in January, 2015? This first month flew by and I expect time to continue its fast wheeling. Have you accomplished what you  hoped to during these first thirty days of the year.

I wrote over 40,000 words during this month, wrote 23 blog posts and didn't keep count of the blogs I visited or how many Tweets I wrote and read 11 books. And that is 1/12th of my year. How great would 2015 be if I multiply those numbers by twelve? A pretty good year.

I don't do the New Year's Resolutions thing but I do make some general plans. January far surpassed my planning. Can I do all that 11 more times?

Look back at your past month. Did you do well? Can you multiply that by twelve? Or can you do even better.

I'd like to think I can all except for one month. APRIL! During that one month, my focus will be on blogging, making new contacts and having fun as well as making sure that participants have a good experience. Have you signed up yet?

Did you accomplish everything you planned on during January? Can you take what you did then and do that much twelve more times. Or do you need to step up your game? Are you better with short term goals or long term plans? Is A to Z part of this year's plan? What works best for you? Daily, weekly, monthly or yearly goals?

Confessions of an A-to-Z Road Trip Participant

How many (estimated) new blogs -- on the previous A-to-Z Signup List -- have YOU read between April 2014 and today? 

Let's be honest, visiting all of them is a massive undertaking. Needless to say, the "move along at your own pace" nature of our Post A-to-Z Challenge Road Trip is a relief for those of us who may have pulled our cars over for a tune-up, more than a few times. Whoever has managed to get through the entire list in April, let alone throughout the rest of the year (where road tripping helps participants get caught up to speed) needs to bottle their superpowers up into a productivity drink, and sell it! 

Having participated in the Road Trip for at least three years, you'd think I'd have this blog-visiting think down to a science. The truth is, like most things in life, I can only visit as many blogs as I am able...when I am able. Sometimes I visit more than a handful of blogs. On other days, I don't visit any at all. While I'm at it, allow me to confess some other things about what transpires during my Road Tripping activities:

• If I visited, read your content and left a response but you still don't see the comment, chances are it's not me....it's Blogger!

• When I have to prove I'm not a robot every single time I leave a comment on your blog, this task makes me less likely to visit again. That doesn't mean I won't ever return. It does, however, make me hesitant to bother with the extra steps involved with reading your blog posts...especially when there are a number of other blogs that provide a better, user-friendly experience.

Speaking of being user-friendly...

• If your blog takes forever to load, I'm not sticking around, regardless of how interesting the subject matter of the post you wrote (and/or the name of your blog) appears to be.

By the time April rolls around, I am certain that I will have not visited all 2,000+ blogs that signed up for last year's challenge. Still, between May 2014 and March 2015, I know I will have visited (many) more blogs that I didn't get to in April -- because of my participation in the Road Trip. That's good enough for me...and the bloggers who were, and will be, on the receiving end of those visits and comments, of course!

What confessions, if any, do YOU have to share about your participation in the Post A-to-Z Challenge Road Trip so far?

How many (estimated) new blogs -- on the A-to-Z Signup List -- have YOU visited between April 2014 and today?

A-to-Z Challenge Co-Host Nicole Ayers is listening to Beyonce's "Flawless (Remix)," among other tunes, while arranging this blog post. She currently supports members of the U.S. Armed Forces, discusses emergency preparedness and movies that make you cry at The Madlab Post. Connect with her @MadlabPost on Twitter.  

The 2015 A to Z Challenge List is Open!

Please read and follow the sign-up instructions outlined below so you sign onto the list correctly!

The brainchild of Arlee Bird, at Tossing it Out, the A to Z Challenge is posting every day in April except Sundays (we get those off for good behavior.) And since there are 26 days, that matches the 26 letters of the alphabet. On April 1, blog about something that begins with the letter “A.” April 2 is “B,” April 3 is “C,” and so on. You can use a theme for the month or go random – just as long as it matches the letter of the alphabet for the day.

The A to Z Challenge is a great way to get into the blogging habit and make new friends. For more details and its history, go HERE

We recommend short posts, turn off Word Verification, and visit five blogs (or more) a day beginning with the one after yours on the list.

Blogs must be on an open platform – no Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. – and comments enabled.

To streamline legitimate blogs from advertisement blogs, the Co-Hosts will be visiting each blog on this list throughout the Challenge. Blogs on the list showing no activity once the Challenge starts or miss five days in a row will be removed.

Please note your blog name and number in all correspondences. Remember that as blogs are removed, your number will change.

There are categories for those looking for like-minded blogs. Select ONE category code and enter it after your blog’s title/name. The code applies to your blog, not your theme for the Challenge and is purely optional. See the first few blogs on the list for examples. However, if your blog has adult content, you MUST mark it (AC) or it will be removed from the list. Codes are as follows:

ANIMALS: (AN)
ART: (AR)
BOOKS/REVIEWS: (BO)
CRAFTS: (CR)
CULINARY: (CU)
EDUCATION: (ED)
FASHION: (FA)
FILM/MOVIES: (FM)
GAMING: (GA)
GARDENING: (GR)
HISTORY: (HI)
HUMOR: (HU)
LIFESTYLE: (LI )
MEMOIR: (ME)
MUSIC: (MU)
MYTHOLOGY: (MY)
PERSONAL: (PR)
PHOTOGRAPHY: (PH)
POLITICS: (PO)
SCIENCE: (SC)
SOCIAL MEDIA: (SO)
SPORTS: (SP)
TRAVEL: (TR)
WRITING/STORYTELLING: (WR)
ADULT CONTENT: (AC)

Be sure to grab the badge and display it in your sidebar so we know you are participating and link to the A to Z Challenge Blog.

For more information we recommend you follow the A to Z Challenge Blog and the hosts:

Arlee Bird @ Tossing it Out
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Jeremy @ Hollywood Nuts
Nicole Ayers @ The Madlab Post
Author Stephen Tremp
Heather M. Gardner
AJ @ Naturally Sweet
Pam @ An Unconventional Librarian
Matthew MacNish @ The QQQE
Zalka Csenge Virág @ The Multicolored Diary
S. L. Hennessy @ Pensuasion
C. Lee McKenzie @ The Write Game
Joy Campbell @ The Character Depot
Susan Gourley @ Susan Says
John Holton @The Sound of One Hand Typing
Lisa Buie-Collard, Author

We also have a Facebook Page
Email address is contactatozteam@gmail.com
Twitter hashtag is #AtoZChallenge and Twitter id is @AprilA2Z

Sign up below and join us for a month of alphabet fun!

Share and Advise

It's nearly here. Sign up time. I know a lot of veteran A to Z participants will be putting their names on that list next Monday. I hope you'll announce it and link from your own blog to this blog on that happy day. But there will be people new to this great event and they could benefit from some advice.

The first year I participated in A to Z, I had only been actively blogging for a few months and trying to grow my audience. I had lots of doubts going into that first year. I was busy in my personal life. I was teaching full time and my daughter was still in high school playing softball which meant attending games two or three times per week. Our firewall at work didn't allow access to blogs so I couldn't do A to Z work even during my lunch break.

I also didn't realize how important it was for my sanity to schedule my posts ahead of time. Or how much easier it would be to create my posts if I had chosen a theme. By the time April ended that first year, I felt frazzled and like I'd failed the challenge even though I managed to post every day. For a short while there, I hated blogging. Only my stubborn determination to never quit something I started kept me going until the end. I ended up getting no writing done on my work in progress and visiting only a very few bloggers every day.

My second and third years went much better as I followed the advice of other bloggers. Things like settling on a theme, scheduling posts ahead of time, and keeping posts short. Though still a challenge, A to Z was fun instead of agonizing. Last year I took on the responsibility of being a minion for Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh and this year I joined the A to Z team to help everyone else have fun. I couldn't have arrived at this point if not for the advise shared by others.

So when you shout out to the world that you've taken on the Challenge, share some advice for the newbies to this April tradition. Tell them what helps you make it through the Challenge. Even something very simple, like 12 cups of coffee per day, may be the thing that helps someone else enjoy April as much as you do.

Are you ready with some advise? Keeping that theme a deep secret until the reveal post? How many years does this make for you in the A to Z?

Turning Over A New Leaf in 2015

I'm often tempted to "Turn Over A New Leaf" when a new year arrives, aren't you?

• Be a kinder person.
• Eat more vegetables.
• Save the world.
• Have the best theme for AtoZ ever.
• Floss. 

Here's how I imagine categories of folk might try to turn over a leaf or two.

Book Blogger: Begin blogging in Spanish and become as successful a blogger as Paulo Coelhos.

Novelist: Write the next Hunger Games trilogy.

Chimney Sweep: Have a good facial scrub before the singing begins.




Gardener:

Now this guy would take me literally. What better time to mulch stuff than in January. Those leaves make the earth ripe and ready for the seeds come April.

What's your new leaf? Or do you prefer to ignore the idea of fresh starts in a new year? As for me, I'm off to find a pitch fork and do some turning of the earth. I'm already itchy to plant my April crop.

Preparing a Theme and Daily Topics for the Blogging A to Z Challenge

2015 Badge Soon To Be Revealed

Here it is already January 2015 and before you know it, April 1st will be here and once again the annual April Blogging A to Z Challenge will begin. 

It is recommended to have a theme for the event. Makes writing the daily posts much easier. And if you do not have a theme, now is a good time to think of one. Try to have one by the end of the month.  

Then, open a Word document and type the 26 letters of the alphabet like so: 

A- 

B - 

C - 

D - 

... 

... 

... 

Z - 

Then begin selecting topics that fall within the theme. Example: my theme is Paranormal and the Supernatural. 

A- Angels, Astral Projection, Apparition 

B - Bilocation 

C - Clairvoyance, Challening 

D - Dreams, Deja-vu, Doppelganger 

... 

... 

... 

Z - Zenoglossy 

Select one final topic for each day (you’ll want to cap your posts at 100 words), write an explanation of each topic, then prepost throughout February and March. By the time April 1st rolls around, your posts will be ready to go and so will you. 

We will be having a Theme Reveal Blog Hop in March where you can announce to the world what your theme will be, then visit your friends around Blogdom and see what their themes will be. 

Happy theme hunting, and the sooner you start outlining your posts, the better prepared you will be for the 2015 Blogging A to Z Challenge. 

You can visit Stephen Tremp at his Website Breakthrough Blogs

#atozchallenge #roadtrip - Stormy's got some new BFF's!

 Hi!

It's ME!

Stormy the Weather Gnome!

Running with Scissors!

We're changing things up a bit so you don't get bored.

Don't worry, we're still on the road to nowhere, still can't drive 55, AND still running against the wind.


I have some new friends I've met on my journey to tell you about!

Lisa Buie-Collard

Lisa is an author and traveler! A student of life!

Her 2014 A to Z theme was: "For the Love of France"! So many really wonderful photographs and lots of great history about the country! You won't be disappointed.

   

J.L. Campbell - The Character Depot
Joy is also an author with a long list of titles to her name.

Her theme was A to Z Scenarios. Each day she posted a drawing and asked her readers to explain how they would handle the situation! Very fun and inventive way to keep your visitors engaged!

Sliding to my destination!

How is your road trip going?

The 2015 A to Z Challenge sign up list opens in two weeks! Are you ready for the sixth Challenge?