Attention: Give Us Your Best Excerpt! Paranormal Romance Blog Hop

Hello!

Happy June! Have you recovered from the A to Z Challenge, yet? It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun too, right?

This year was my fourth year participating in the hop, and every year I get a bit more organized. I wrote most of my posts in advance, which helped significantly. Maybe for 2016's A to Z Challenge I'll have all of my posts written in advance. We shall see.

In any case, there's rules, of course, but there is no ONE way to take part in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. So don't get too frustrated with yourself if your performance wasn't as fantabulous as some of the other bloggers.

One of the things I'm never able to do is visit ALL of the blogs during the actual challenge. So I appreciate the Post A-to-Z Road Trip. It gives me the opportunity to visit every blog that I was unable to visit during the hop. My goal is to hit at least five blogs a day. So by April of next year, I'll be all caught up for the 2016 event!

In the meantime, I have a blog fest to announce for all you fellow paranormal romance authors out there. I'm sure there's an excerpt that you've written that you just absolutely love. Don't be shy! Show it off to paranormal romance readers and the world.

Give Us Your Best Excerpt! Paranormal Romance Blog Hop is happening on July 14, 2015. For the day of the hop post your favorite excerpt from either a paranormal book that you've published, OR, a work-in-progress.

Readers love to read excerpts. So give them your best! Use this hop as a way to promote your book or to drum up interest in your work-in-progress. (I'll be posting an excerpt from my upcoming paranormal romance novel The Layneworth Monsters. It's available for preorder at Amazon for 99 cents until July 10, 2015.)

Visit the Give Us Your Best Excerpt page to sign-up! I look forward to reading your excerpts!

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Jolie du Pre is a full-time author, article writer, blogger, and monster lover.

The Latest and Greatest on Pluto

NASA's $700 million New Horizons spacecraft will arrive in the Pluto system in mid-July after a nine-year 3 billion mile flight that started before Pluto was demoted to dwarf-planet status. 

But thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we already some fascinating stuff about Pluto and its five known moons. The Pluto system consists of four tiny satellites —Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx — orbiting a "binary planet" comprised of Pluto and its largest moon Charon. They’re locked in odd rhythmic gyrations in a dance unlike anything in our solar system. 

What makes it so odd is that there's a double set of dances going on. First, Pluto and Charon are locked together in their own waltz "as if they are a dumbbell" with a rod connecting them. It's the solar system's only binary planet system, even though Pluto and Charon aren’t technically planets. 

But Pluto and Charon aren't alone, and that's where it gets more complicated. The four little moons circle the Pluto-Charon combo, wobbling a bit when they go closer to either Pluto or Charon, being pushed and pulled by the two bigger objects. 

Those four moons orbit Pluto-Charon in a precise rhythmic way, but with a twist: They also interact when they near each other. So it seems like they all dance to one overarching beat but not quite in the same way, just doing their own thing. 

Nix and Hydra exhibit chaotic rather than synchronous rotation, meaning they don't always keep the same side facing Pluto-Charon — and that it's very tough to predict their rotational movement. (Nearly every other moon in the solar system, including Earth's, is a synchronous rotator.) 

If you lived on Nix, you would not know if the sun is coming up tomorrow; it is that extreme. You'd have days where the sun rises in the east and sets in the north. 

Thanks for stopping by. I post here every first and third Thursday of the month. Don’t miss my June 17th blog as I’ll be posting on the James Webb Space Telescope. 

Stephen Tremp is a Speculative Writer and blogs at Breakthrough Blogs. His latest work, Salem’s Daughters, is due for release October 1, 2015. 

References: Associated Press and Space.com

My A to Z Road Trip Plan

If you read my May 27th post, you know I have a plan to visit 2-3 Road Trippers each day, and I'm doing it alphabetically. 

Wink. Wink. 



I doubt that I'll ever do anything again that doesn't involved organizing things from AtoZ.

So, I've visited A through G so far. Now I see that I have to adjust my plan, so if a keyword starts with the letter of the day, I'll visit that. I've already got my Z staked out. June will see a major slow down in my visits because I'm taking a vacation break, but I'll be back in July. Keep your engines running!

One thing Mario, my dashboard buddy/Muse, and I promised during this year's journey is a Road Side Rest Stop once in a while. This is where you can sit back, relax, breathe and rejuvenate. So here's our first Road Stop.







Unfortunately, there's often a very un-relaxing ad that pops up first, click it away and go for the relaxation. Even a few minutes puts you back on the road ready to roll.

Does planning help you save time and reach your goals? Are you good at planning and adjusting plans when you need to? What's been the best plan you've ever devised? Do you take a break to rejuvenate during the day?

Blog Blues and Brings Back Characters Who Blog

The first few months after the A to Z Challenge are always the hardest for me. I'm never sure what I'm supposed to do with myself. I sometimes find myself planning out posts that begin alphabetically, only to remember that A to Z is over. Sigh. What's a blogger to do? 

As a way to deal with my blog blues, I decided to come up with a few blogging challenges for myself, you know, to keep things interesting. On Mondays I'll focus on movies. Tuesdays are for reviews. On Wednesdays we wear pink . . . no wait, that's Mean Girls. 

Now as for my posts here on the Blogging from A to Z website, I'm thinking of bringing back my Characters Who Blog series (if you're new to this site, check out a few here and here). I had a lot of fun coming up with all the different literary and film characters and what they might write about if they had blogs of their own. 

Which prompts me to ask, what are some of your favorite characters from movies, TV and books? Are there any that stick out as particularly influential? Are they well known or tragically unheard of? And perhaps the bigger question, any Characters Who Blog requests? 

Happy Monday everyone, and as always, happy blogging! 

S. L. Hennessy can be found blogging at Pensuasion.  

Hitting the Road with Mario

We're all up against the clock these days. Being connected online does not save us time; it absorbs it like a sponge. Yet we're here, so how can we best meet our Challenges online as well as in other parts of our lives?

I've devised a plan for my start on the AtoZ Challenge Road Trip. 

First I've got a great blogger to share the load. She's efficient and she's dependable, and I greatly appreciate her inviting me to join her on this year's trip. Wave to Madlab Post on your way by.

Next I've convinced Mario the Muse to be my dashboard buddy. He's there to guide and inspire and keep me awake on the those long stretches.

As I start off, my plan is visit at least 2-3 bloggers each day who are on the road with me. 

I'm starting with any blogs beginning with the letter A and moving ahead through the alphabet. If there's no X, so be it, but I'll look for a blog with that letter.

So bye for now. I'm off to visit A blogs. Hope to see you as I make my way through those 26 letters. 

Do you have a plan? Is is just easier for you to wing it?