Themes That Rocked the Challenge - Cat Starr and Travels Around the World!

Today we welcome Cat Starr from Astral Traveller and her travels around the world!

Your theme was travel photos from around the world – what made you choose that theme?

When I travel, I keep a daily blog of what I did and what I saw. However, only a few of my photos ever make it to the daily story and rarely do I focus on one topic. Occasionally, I will write in more detail about a place I visited and include more pictures. I saw this challenge as a way to write on specific topics and share more of the stories and pictures that interested me during my travels.

Which letter was your favorite?

My favourite was F = Food shopping in Barcelona. This is still one of my all-time favourite experiences and I highly recommend the Cook and Taste cooking school in Barcelona. Coming in at a close second is J = Jewelry shopping in Santorini. This was a very personal story because I am usually very frugal in my purchases.

This one was definitely a budget-breaker that led to another questionable decision -- walking down over 300 steps to get to the dock!

Which letter was the most difficult?

X! I never really found anything that would fit for X or Z. that will be my biggest challenge next year as well!

How many palaces have you visited?

I’m not really sure! I think The first palace I visited was the Royal Palace in Madrid. The Casa de las Rosas in Buenos Aires is a beautiful building built in the style of European grand palaces. It was on a cruise to the Baltic that I really started visiting palaces. In St. Petersburg, I visited the Hermitage Museum, which is really a collection of five separate palaces. Then there was Catherine’s Palace and Peterhof – the one Peter the Great designed based on Versailles. I also visited a palace in Stockholm and watched the Changing of the Guard, complete with the Horse Guards and a band on horseback! I visited two palaces in Copenhagen and finally the Palace of Versailles – in order to compare it to Petehof. As for London, I’ve walked by Buckingham Palace, but never been in it. Same with Holyrood in Edinburgh – it was closed when I was there due to a royal visit.

What was the most interesting thing you saw at the Helsinki Market?

At almost any market, it is always the food! In the Helsinki Market, it was Finnish fish from Lapland, salmon soup and paella -- that is definitely not the same as paella in Spain! In fact, I really think they need to call it something else (not that it wasn’t good – just not paella!).

What was the weirdest food item you saw in Barcelona?

This is an easy one, the whole goat heads and the “pig faces” (basically just the skin of the pig head).

Where on Earth is Kotor?

Kotor is a small port community in the country of Montenegro. You sail through some beautiful fjords to get to the Bay of Kotor and this beautifully walled town. It is stunning!

What theme are you considering for the Challenge next year?

I have been one more adventures since last year – one to the UK and Ireland and one to the Canadian Maritimes. Therefore, I’ve built up a lot more stories to share! G will probably be for Gaspe – one of my favourite experiences this past year.

I lived in the UK for a while – look forward to those photos, Cat!


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

7 Themes for the Blogging from A-Z Challenge

With the holiday season around the corner, the last thing on people's minds is blogging and what to write as far away as next year. Me? I'm full of good intentions that get lost along the way, so I like the thought of advance planning.

I already know what I'll be blogging about in the A-Z next year, or so I think for right now, until another shiny, new idea comes along. In case you haven't settled on a theme yet, the holidays are a great time to look around and see what possible fun and exciting topics you can cover.  Here's my shortlist of things I'd be interested in seeing done during the Challenge.

A-Z of planning for a new year (Helpful, if you're the sort who can't seem to get things rolling motivation-wise or resolution-wise when January 1 hits)

A-Z of getting though the holidays with your sanity intact (think, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc. or any other one for that matter. This guide will help you organize and delegate tasks before, during and after the holidays)

A-Z of planning and researching your projects (Some of us are useless when it comes to getting ourselves organized and ready to work when we're taking on anything new, including writing a book)

A-Z of handmade gift items (If you're good with crafts and such and like the thought of personalized gifts)

A-Z of fun projects for children (This might interest you if you're that relative who gets landed with the job of babysitting all the little tots during family gatherings)

A-Z of getting through the A-Z Challenge (This guide would help the disorganized among us to plan for the chaos that descends during the A-Z if we do little or no planning beforehand)

A-Z Holiday Devotional (If you're religious or spiritual and use devotionals to jumpstart your worship sessions)

Can you think of any other fun topics that would be great to tackle during the A-Z? Anybody planning to take on any of these? Have you started planning for the A-Z?

J.L. Campbell lives in Jamaica and writes romance, women's fiction and young adult fiction. She blogs at http://www.joylcampbell.com

Deep Space Here We come!

Hey Folks, As always, thanks for stopping by. This is a very exciting week. Two things are happening you should be aware of.

 

First, NASA is testing Orion, the spacecraft that will someday take mankind into Deep Space. First up is a planned trip to an asteroid around 2025, then it's off to Mars a decade or so after that.

 

You can watch live coverage beginning at 1:30 a.m. PST/4:30 a.m. EST on NASA TV.

 

The New Horizons Spacecraft: Get ready to learn some really cool stuff about Pluto!

 

Launched nine years ago, is about to encounter the Pluto. This will be the first man made craft to visit the planet. New Horizons has spent much of its life in a hibernation of sorts to conserve energy, and will power up December 6th in preparation for a 2015 summer rendezvous with the dwarf planet.

 

Despite the risks, the mission is poised to return a glut of discoveries, continuing the legacy of the first planetary spacecraft: the Mariner missions that visited Mercury, Venus, and Mars in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Voyager missions that explored the outer planets in the 1980s. Those missions were pioneers, as nearly every image and measurement revealed fantastic worlds never seen before.

Hubble image shows Pluto and three  moons, Charon, Nix, and Hydra.

 

Pluto is one of the largest objects in the Kuiper belt, a collection of cold bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune and the last frontier of the solar system. The first Kuiper belt object wasn’t discovered until 1992. There are now more than 1,000 known Kuiper belt objects, and scientists estimate there are hundreds of thousands of them.

 

These objects have been around since the formation of the planets, so they serve as relics that help researchers understand the history and origin of the solar system. And Pluto contains clues about these ancient, icy bodies. For example, any craters on its surface will help scientists estimate how frequently Kuiper belt objects slammed into one another in the past.

 

Reference: http://www.wired.com/2014/12/new-horizons-pluto-mission-wake-up/

Stephen Tremp is the author of the Breakthrough: The Adventures of Chase Manhattan. You can visit him at http://authorstephentremp.blogspot.com

The Insecure Writer's Support Group Guide to Publishing and Beyond

If you are a writer looking for resources, the Insecure Writer’s Support Group has something for you:

Available now – The Insecure Writer’s Support Group Guide to Publishing and Beyond!

Tapping into the expertise of over a hundred talented authors from around the globe, The IWSG Guide to Publishing and Beyond contains something for every writer. Whether you are starting out and need tips on the craft of writing, looking for encouragement as an already established author, taking the plunge into self-publishing, or seeking innovative ways to market and promote your work, this guide is a useful tool. Compiled into three key areas of writing, publishing, and marketing, this valuable resource offers inspirational articles, helpful anecdotes, and excellent advice on dos and don'ts that we all wish we knew when we first started out on this writing journey.

ISBN 9781939844088
235 pages, FREE
Find it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Goodreads.



We invite you to check out the book and our sites:
Insecure Writer’s Support Group website
IWSG Facebook
IWSG Critique Circle.

#atozchallenge #roadtrip -- Stormy needs to stop for supplies!

 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.

***

Just a quick side-trip note while Stormy picks up some much needed personal gnome travel items.


One of the co-hosts of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge, Alex J. Cavanaugh, has some special news to share today.

As you may know, he founded the Insecure Writer's Support Group, which started out with just a few bloggers and now tips the scales at 268 members, has it's own website, Facebook page, Facebook critique circle and now...

...has its own published book!

From Alex:

Which is available NOW!!!

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group Guide to Publishing and Beyond

Tapping into the expertise of over a hundred talented authors from around the globe, The IWSG Guide to Publishing and Beyond contains something for every writer. Whether you are starting out and need tips on the craft of writing, looking for encouragement as an already established author, taking the plunge into self-publishing, or seeking innovative ways to market and promote your work, this guide is a useful tool. Compiled into three key areas of writing, publishing, and marketing, this valuable resource offers inspirational articles, helpful anecdotes, and excellent advice on dos and don'ts that we all wish we knew when we first started out on this writing journey.

ISBN 9781939844088
235 pages, FREE
IWSG sites – website, Facebook, and Facebook Critique Circle
Find the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Goodreads.

Thanks to everyone who contributed and to my IWSG Admins who worked so hard to put it together. This was a huge project, but we wanted to celebrate three years of the IWSG right and highlight its blog and Facebook members in the process. We hope you’ll find some great information within the pages and spread the word about this awesome book.

You guys rock!

You need to go check this out!

***

Hey, FYI, it's December.

Sign-ups for the 2015 Challenge start in January.

It's time to start thinking about your April theme!