Hilary Melton-Butcher: Meet Some Unusual Dragons!

Today's guest, Hilary Melton-Butcher barely needs an introduction.  She's the prolific and terrific lady whom we admire for her uniquely told stories of history and mystery.  A visit to Positive letters...inspirational stories  is always a treat.  Today she's doubling up with two linked posts, one here, one at Life is Good.  Don't miss either one!

Weedy Seadragon …

Art, Science, ‘Down Under’ and bloggers … Tina of Life is Good asked if I’d do a guest post for the A-Z blog and as a guest blogger on her blog … theoretically these might have been on Vikings (these will follow) – but as is the way with my eclectic brain I’ve settled on the Weedy Seadragon and the Great Australian Coast Road.

I expect many of you will have seen or heard of the BBC tv programmes ‘Coast’, where Neil Oliver, archaeologist, historian, author and broadcaster, tells us about Britain and Europe …

… he has now moved to Australia (well perhaps he’s travelled there for the programmes!) – this is where these two ideas stemmed from.

 "Weedy Seadragon - taken from the sketchbook of William Buelow Gould - 1832"

Weedy Seadragon – who could ignore such a wonderful name for ‘Phyllopteryx Taeniolatus’? This amazing little seadragon and its sister, the ‘Leafy Seadragon’ are found around the shores of southern Australia.

"Leafy Seadragon"

These endangered, endemic to the south Australian coast, little ‘prehistoric monsters’ are just a delight to see and to have found.

Perhaps, now I’ve looked, even more interestingly … they were drawn and painted by William Buelow Gould, a convict – who had been caught stealing a coat and then was sentenced in 1826 to “seven years beyond the seas”, a phrase indicating transportation to the then penal colony of Australia.

He had a wife and two children … but once shipped out, few convicts returned. He also didn’t change his ways … and got sentenced to the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, one of the harshest, for forging a banknote.

The only way to the prison was by ship … but it got weather bound … and the convicts aboard mutinied with half of them taking the ship. Gould and the other convicts stuck with the officers … before setting off overland to get help.

For this Gould’s term was commuted; he was assigned as a house servant to the colonial surgeon Dr James Scott, who was also an amateur naturalist.

Scott put Gould’s artistic talents to use, having him paint watercolours of native flora – which today are regarded as being of a high technical standard.

Even now he couldn’t remain out of trouble and so was again sentenced to Macquarie Harbour, but based on his reputation he worked for another amateur natural historian, Dr William de Little on Sarah Island at the penal station.

This time he produced landscape sketches about life at the penal stations, as well as still life watercolours of botanical specimens, birds, fishes and other sea life.

Despite being granted his Certificate of Freedom in June 1835 he descended into a cycle of drunkenness, poverty and prison sentences for theft … he had remarried in 1836, but eventually died in 1853, aged 52 or thereabouts.

His sketchbooks and works are now highly acclaimed; his “Sketchbook of Fishes” being inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of World Register … this is the equivalent of a World Heritage listing for historic documentary material.

It is noted that Gould sketched a number of species for the first time; and his works are recognised as being of enormous value to scientists today … and he’s even had a novel written by Richard Flanagan, published in 2001, from his Sketchbook of Fishes.

I’d better return to my little prehistoric monsters … the Weedy Seadragon and Leafy Seadragon … are marine fish related to the seahorse.

The weedy appendages provide camouflage … but don’t have the prehensile tail like the seahorse … they drift or move very slowly … not far at all.

They blend in so well to their natural surroundings … that they aren’t detected as a food source … the real threat is from us humans as when there is so much pollution in the water it makes it very difficult for them to survive … but when their natural habitat is taken away then it is a real threat for them to blend in and remain hidden.

Like seahorses the males nurture the young … the female lays them into her mate’s pouch on his abdomen … about nine weeks later they are born and have immediately to care for themselves.

The southern coast of Australia was full of prehistoric, now extinct, monsters five million years ago … the seas were 2 – 3 degrees warmer and contained life that we don’t see today …

• A huge shark – as big as a bus
• A penguin as tall as a man
• A killer mammoth sperm whale

We know this from the wealth of fossils that can be found around this area of coast today …

Then these pretty little prehistoric monsters have a wonderful tale to tell – let alone the fact that we have had a record of them for about 180 years

… they probably evolved from those aquatic vertebrates now buried by this ever changing earth of ours.

I say here’s to the Weedy Seadragon and to the Leafy Seadragon … you have made me smile while I think about you both … and increased my desire to go down under!

Hilary Melton-Butcher

Positive Letters Inspirational Stories

©2014 All Rights Reserved

Photo credit: Weedy Seadragon

Photo credit: Leafy Seadragon

Thanks, Hilary.  It's always so fun to learn about the people behind the books, and that back story, which wow, I would not have predicted!  Readers, time to go see about the Australian Coast!  See you at my place.

~Tina

Never too early to plan for the #AtoZchallenge !

The A to Z Challenge has been done and dusted for almost two months now-- time we started planning the next one!

Here are a few tips from Calli Duncan, a travel blogger, and 2014 A to Z Challenge participant:

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The 2014 A to Z Challenge was an incredible success for Have Blog Will Travel. We now have 26 awesome British Columbia travel-themed posts in our article arsenal and have managed to connect with a great group of bloggers, forged some new relationships, and increased our readership. 

Having never attempted a blogging challenge of any type before, we wanted to use this opportunity to share a few tricks that we will be relying on for future challenges.

Format of A to Z Challenge Posts

Jumping into the challenge we knew our regular approach to blogging wouldn’t work. Therefore we decided to keep our challenge posts under 500 words, broken into three or four short paragraphs. This ensured we would be able to write a new post each day, and that readers wouldn’t be overwhelmed.

We also decided to include just one photo at the top of each post. This cut down on time sourcing photos and made each post visually similar. Clicking through our A to Z Challenge posts it’s clear they are part of a set - they look congruent yet can also stand on their own.

A Touch of Professionalism

To really elevate your posts and make a harmonious set of challenge posts, a little extra effort goes a long way. For us this meant editing our cover photos to create a unified look and include some essential information. Like the cover of a book, these images help direct people to our posts through social media channels and give our homepage a consistent look.

For the editing we turned to PicMonkey - a free, web-based editing tool and carried the same font through all challenge photos. The final look feels professional without taking itself too seriously.

Selecting a Theme

Wanting to stand out from other travel bloggers participating in the challenge, we opted to forgo the generic “travel” theme for something more closely related to the direction we are taking our blog. Therefore the theme Beautiful BC from A to Z was born, with all 26 challenge posts relating to British Columbia, Canada.

A specific theme lets visitors know what to expect and increases the chance of return visits during the challenge. When choosing a theme keep in mind that it needs to be broad enough to provide topics for all 26 letters of the alphabet, yet narrow enough that your final product is unique. 

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Calli Duncan has spent the better half of 9 months traveling through Europe and is one of two faces behind the always honest and sometimes humorous Have Blog Will Travel. For more, connect with Calli on Facebook or Twitter.

Themes That Rocked! Cool Speculative Fiction Book Covers from Bob Miline

Please welcome book reviewer Bob Miline!

Your theme was speculative fiction book covers – what made you chose that theme?

Well, I knew my theme was going to be book related (that was a given), but I wanted to do find a way to do something different. In hindsight, my little literary alliteration of the year before really used up 2 themes at once, matching authors and titles, so I was stumped. For a while I actually considered skipping this year’s challenge, until a review copy of Words of Radiance landed on my doorstep. I review so many digital titles, a hardcover was something of a novelty, so I really spent some time admiring the wrap-around dust jacket – and that’s when the idea for the theme clicked.


What type of artwork draws you in? What do you look for in cover art?

Something bold and vivid is what usually draws me in – I like a book cover that calls to me from across the room, demanding that I give it a closer look. It’s not so much a style or even the lines, but the colours, the interplay of light and shadow, and the illusion of movement. I prefer a cover that captures a scene, as opposed to one with characters posing for the artist’s eye.

Which artist was your favorite?

I’d have to go with Michael Whelan as my favourite. He has such an identifiable sense of style, with covers that are vibrant and real, and which just have that ‘epic’ sort of feel to them.

Which cover was your favorite?

That’s hard to say. John Harris’s cover for Ancillary Justice definitely caught my eye, as did Daniel Dociu’s covers for The Expanse series. I think the cover I found most striking, though, was Richard Anderson’s cover for The Emperor’s Blades. The colours there are more subdued, and more background, but the layering of the three almost jagged silhouettes with the background imagery really worked for me.

Which letter was the most difficult?

Everything was sailing along nicely until I hit the letter ‘X’. I searched for days trying to find an artist or two, but kept coming up empty. In the end I had to bend my theme a bit and just look for an artist with an ‘X’ in their name – which, as it turned out, was fine since it allowed me to give Richard Hescox some page time.

Who was the oldest artist you featured?

That would have to be Eddie Jones (born 1935) and Frank Frazetta (born 1928), both of whom are sadly no longer with us.

How important is cover art? Does it influence your decision to read and review a book?

As a reader, cover art still has significant appeal to me when physically browsing a bookstore, and has led me into giving more than one a new author a read. I’d never choose (or not choose) a book based solely upon the cover, but that cover can tempt me into reading the back cover.

As a reviewer, however, cover art has almost no impact. Most of my review requests are either based on a pre-publication ARC that doesn’t have a cover, or a text-based sales pitch that comes in via webform or email, so it’s really all down to whether the cover blurb catches my attention.

If you do the Challenge next year, what theme(s) are you considering?

I’ll probably be scratching my head over that again until the end of March, but I’m toying with something revolving around names (characters or places) that have been memorable for me.

That would be a cool theme – thanks Bob and see you next year!


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

How to Blog Better by the Day

Having fallen behind on blogging activities myself, coupled with several social media hiatuses, I know what technology burnout looks like and I understand that overwhelming anxiety of feeling like you'll never get up to speed...at least not as soon as you hoped. The solution to this recurring issue is designating each day of the week for one specific blogging activity or other online task. It is an effective way to get a handle on your internet presence so that it doesn't drive you bonkers. 

A fun way to get in the habit of sticking to an online routine that goes day by day is naming days of the week in a manner that coincides with the task -- Wordless Wednesdays style -- and then listing this schedule on your calendar, in a notebook or some other place where you'll have them handy:

• Return-Commenting Monday
• Blog Promotion Tuesday
• Visiting/Reading Wednesday
• Email Inbox cleaning Thursday
• Blogging Friday
• Social Media Saturday
• Blog Planning Sunday

Using the above sample schedule, I've been able to complete more tasks with this method than when I try to squeeze several important online activities into one single day. My experiences with doing this has led me to realized that the days on our blogging calendars are not set in stone. Sometimes I miss a day (or two) and end up playing catch-up by either doubling up on the task of the day or moving the next scheduled tasks to a later day. Sometimes I even skip a day (or more) depending on how well my week is going. In any case, naming one day each for a different blogging activity makes it easier for me to not worry about having to be everywhere, all of the time.

Do YOU control the internet or does it control YOU?

A-to-Z Challenge Co-Hostess Nicole Ayers writes about movies and the people that make them, at The Madlab Post. She also tweets @MadlabPost.

Storyteller's Perspective: On tradition, selective memory, and #NotAllFolktales

Most of you are probably familiar with the #YesAllWomen hashtag that took Twitter by storm and created a flood of articles, analyses and arguments all over the Internet. It was a spontaneous, online social movement raising awareness of everyday sexism, misogyny, violence against women, gender bias, and some cultural roots associated with all of the above.
In the middle of all of that, following the real-time roll of tweets, blog posts and articles, there I was, as a professional storyteller, wondering what I had to contribute. Of course I have my own personal stories as a woman (#yesallwomen have those), but there was something else, something that has to do with the stories we tell...
... or, rather, WHICH stories we tell.

I once had a serious fight with a faceless man who claimed that I was "against tradition" when I expressed my opinion that folktales that end with "and the man beat his wife, and she learned her lesson, and they lived happily ever after" should not be told anymore. He said I was trying to destroy the culture of our ancestors. I told him that if domestic abuse was the "culture of our ancestors," I am willing to let go of it.
But it's not.

I started tweeting under #NotAllFolktales, posting excerpts and tidbits from traditional stories (myth, legend and folktale) that prove that not every traditional tale is biased against women, or holds the dangerous cultural values that lead to misogyny. I did it for two reasons:

1. A lot of the backlash against #YesAllWomen brought up excuses like "but it's natural" "but it's traditional" and "but it's always been like that." They threw out shards of fairy tales about princesses on both sides. Most people completely disregarded one simple fact: Fairy tales and folktales are not biased because "it's natural." They are biased because they are a product of culture. Four hundred years ago Sleeping Beauty was raped in her sleep, instead of kissed awake. Try telling it that way nowadays, see what happens.

2. People who cry #NotAllFolktales (just like people who cry #NotAllMen, or #NotAllWhitePeople, or any of those backlash hashtags) have the responsibility to change the group they want to set themselves apart from. Storytellers who know that there are stories out there that are not sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. have the responsibility to tell them, understand them, and make them available.

See, my point is: Stories that promote diversity, equality, freedom of expression and choice are all ALREADY OUT THERE. We don't even have to make them up. We don't even have to write "feminist fairy tales" (although if we want to, we can, and they are amazing). Stories have been out there for millennia. We just need to find them (often cleverly hidden or left out of collections and publications), revive them, and tell them, tell them, tell them.

Case in point: I did my second A to Z challenge run about Weird Princesses - folktales and legends that involve female heroes who are not only brave and clever, but also quirky and unique and lovable (or, in Internet speak: anything but Mary Sue). There are hundreds of them, and guess what, boys love them as much as girls. I also frequently tell the story of Dame Ragnell that teaches kids about respect for women, and works splendidly with all ages from kindergarten to high school.
I recently (after the backlash against the Bearded Diva winning the Eurovision) posted a collection of folktales and myths about trans heroes and heroines, as an answer to people railing "young people nowadays don't know what gender they want to be..." It was surprisingly easy to find a whole bunch of folktales from every corner or the world. Heck, I even found a Hungarian folktale about a princess going "men's clothes have always fit me better" (in the end she transforms into a man and marries another princess).

The world of folktales is endless, and stretches way beyond "young male hero saves beautiful princess." There is a story about everything. There are folktales about pregnant women saving the world. There are folktales about old people falling in love. There are folktales about kind stepmothers, loving fathers, homely princesses, divorce, same-sex love and marriage, culture clash and acceptance, and a million other things that are still important in our world.

Find them. Read them. Think about them. Tell them.

As usual, you can find Csenge at:
@TarkabarkaHolgy
The Multicolored Diary - Adventures in Storytelling
MopDog - The crazy thing about Hungarians...