Mario Packs for Cuban Research Excursion

Mario has his passport and a ticket. He's decided to travel to Cuba to soak up some colonial atmosphere, so he can "encourage" me to branch out in my settings for stories. 

This Road Trip is going to involve a couple of planes, but once on the ground, Mario's cruising in his Mariomobile. 

The Mariomobile. Did you notice it's pink?

He's listed Finca Vigia as one of his first stops. It's about 12Ks outside of Havana and used to be Hemmingway's hideout. He wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls and Old Man and Sea here. 

Hemmingway at Finca Vigia, Reading!

Trinidad

He's going to take a camera, so I'll have pictures to refer to while writing the next For Whom the Bell Tolls. Have you been to or wanted to go to Cuba? Any place(s) you'd like to go to soak up settings? Would travel be a theme you'd consider for April 2016?

The A-Z Process

Since I'm a procrastinator, I still haven't settled on my theme for the 2016 Challenge. Not good (although I still have time). There are just so many good themes that I'm running off in a different direction every time a shiny new idea hits. The thing is though, no matter what I decide on, I basically take the same approach to the month's blogging.

Read – I do copious amounts of reading whenever I'm embarking on a new adventure. It's a way to steep myself in my subject matter and get a good feel for it.

Research – This aspect is the fun part. Of course, this can mean information overload which makes it difficult for me to settle my mind and sit down with the aim of putting it all together. Balance is key here, since I sometimes get so carried away with research, I find it hard to move past this phase.

Write – This is where the action comes in—knitting all the useful bits together into cohesive articles that will be of interest and help people who stop by to read each day.

Revise – When all the research and writing are done, I take a bit of time to re-read what I've prepared to make sure I'm on point with the data I'm sharing.

What else do you do when you're preparing your articles for the Challenge?

J.L. Campbell writes fiction and non-fiction and blogs at http://www.joylcampbell.com

Five Fairy Tale Blogs to Follow

Do you like fairy tales?
Do you like blogs?
Do you ever wonder how fairy- and folktales can be combined with the blogging sphere and made intriguing to regular readers?

In honor of our ever-expanding Mythology and Storytelling categories during A to Z, as well as all the people who blog about fairy- and folktale-related topics in April (and all through the year), here is a list of 5 fairy tale blogs to keep an eye on!


Breezes from Wonderland
Maria Tatar's forum on Storytelling, Folklore, and Children's Literature. For those of you who don't know who this amazing lady is: She is the chair of the Folklore and Mythology program at Harvard. If you are interested in fairy tales at all, you have probably seen her work. If not, here is your chance!

The SurLaLune Fairy Tales Blog
Once again, if you are online and you like fairy tales, this is a place you probably are (or should be) familiar with. The blog is a great and up-to-date source of book reviews, fairy tale-related news, and... stories, obviously.

Once Upon a Blog
The Fairy Tale News Blog is exactly what it sounds like: It brings you the latest hot news items about age-old stories, be it about books, movies, TV shows, or other pop culture events. Regularly updated and full of interesting stuff at the crossroads of fairy tales and modern media.

Storytelling + Research = LoiS
Professional storyteller and story researcher Lois Sprengnether Keel shares her experiences and her work. The best part of the blog is Keeping the Public in the Public Domain - she regularly posts folk- and fairy tales that are in the public domain, making them readily available to everyone.

Fairy Tale Fandom
Adam Hoffman's regularly updated and amazingly organized blog on fairy tale-related topics: Actual stories, book reviews, media news, etc. Well thought-out posts, and a whole treasure trove of new things to be a fan of.

Weekend Follies Star Trek Style Featuring Sulu

My name is Stephen Tremp and I’m a writer of speculative fiction. I blog at Breakthrough Blogs. 

My fourth novel, Salem’s Daughters, is now officially available for download, although I'm not officially kicking things off until Monday October 1st. To download a copy today for $2.99 Click Here. 

Crazy Signs Along the AtoZ Roadtrip

You can't drive very long without passing a sign, right? Well, here are some that I'd love to see if for no other reason than it helps to make the trip fun.

Since I just had the pleasure of driving in Ireland, this sign spoke to me. 

What to do is the question.

Now this is my kind of sign.

Which of these is your favorite? 

Get your feeds under control with Feedly

If you've been doing the A to Z Challenge for any length of time (like, say, at least a year), you've probably discovered a lot of new blogs that you'd like to subscribe to and follow forever. To do that, you need a feed reader (you might also hear it called a "news aggregator"), one that can cope with both Wordpress and Blogger and keep you up-to-date with all your blogging buddies.

Both Wordpress and Blogger have feed readers, and there are a lot of other ones out there. My particular favorite is Feedly. It's been around since 2006, but it became really popular when Google announced they were shutting down Google Reader in 2013.

I used Google Reader, and deciding to shut it down turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me. I thought Reader's display was a little too busy. With Feedly, you can specify how much white space there is in the display, the font, color of the sidebar, your favorite sharing and/or saving service(s), and whether you want to see your articles as a list, as individual cards, or as full articles. You can navigate through your list with the mouse or with the keyboard. Best of all, it's free. (There is a Pro license, that includes saving to OneNote or Evernote, sharing to LinkedIn, Hootsuite, and Buffer, enhanced search capabilities, and "shared collections," as well as faster support and article delivery, that sells for $65 a year; so far, I haven't found a need for it, particularly with tools like IFTTT.)

A shot of my Feedly home screen. I use a "comfortable" density, supplying plenty of white space, and a "magazine" format, presenting my list with a preview of the articles.

Feedly has a plugin for both Firefox and Chrome (maybe other browsers) that makes it easy to subscribe to blogs. When you go to a blog's main page, a Feedly icon will appear either in the address bar or in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. When you click the icon, Feedly launches, showing you the feed from that blog. You can then choose whether to add the blog, and to which user-defined category to add it to.

Screen shot showing the Feedly icon

If you're currently using a feed reader and want to try Feedly, Feedly will accept your OPML file so you don't have to add all the blogs by hand.

I don't want to get too deep into the product (sorry, I was a software trainer for fifteen years), so I'll stop there. Anyway, if you're in the market for a new feed reader, give Feedly a try. I think you'll like it!

John Holton
The Sound of One Hand Typing
The Sound of One Hand Typing FM

A Semi-Wordless Wednesday: Traffic Signs to Follow on the A-Z Road Trip

Exit 1252 takes you to Skating Buffalo park, where you'll find nerdy high school students, dissect movies that grow on you years later and highlight a metaphor for prayer.

Exit 1283 is the way to Keith's Ramblings university with a campus full of fish and chips, Alzheimer's and beautiful nurses.

Exit 1284 leads into Crazy Doll Lady town where the locals are chatting about dolls, finding clothes that are the right fit and a resin casting experiment with polymer clay charms.

Exit 1287 heads toward My Life with Photographs retreat to bypass the sick days and important deadlines in lieu of gorgeous Fall colors in Alaska.

The A-to-Z Challenge Road Trip is hosted by Nicole Ayers and C. Lee McKenzie who’s dashboard buddy Mario sends his best to all of you fellow travelers!

A-Z Creativity

In keeping with Heather's post about the 2016 Blogging From A-Z Challenge, I'm beginning to turn over ideas in my mind as to what I want to write about for next year's event. I haven't settled on what I want to do yet, but you can be sure I'll be putting more thought into it as I want to do something unique (as do we all, right?).

Over the years, a few enterprising and industrious writers have compiled their April posts and published same, mostly in fiction format. Now, it that's not being creative, I don't know what is.

I've had ambitions of doing the same for years, but haven't done anything about those posts. Most of the material relates to writing and would help others in some way, but as they say, 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'. I still haven't removed the material from my blog, but I do have them in individual files.

Do you have anything special you're turning over in your mind? If so, have you started plotting yet? I don't know about you, but I've got my thinking cap on.

Have fun planning when you get there!

28 weeks until the 2016 Challenge. Have you thought about your A to Z posts yet?

It seems like a long time from now, doesn't it?

More than half a year. 28 weeks. 195 days.

But, how many of us said we wished we'd been MORE prepared for the A to Z Challenge?

Admit it. Almost all of us.

So, why not start thinking about it now?

With 28 weeks ahead of us, we have plenty of time to plan.

Now, what to plan?

There are so many things.

These categories might get your blog ideas flowing.

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)

If this list doesn't do it for you, then maybe you could start your own list.

What do you like to do?
What do you like to talk about? Read about?
What are your favorite things about where you live?
What subjects are you interested in?
What do you want others to know about you?
Why do gnomes wear hats?

You get the idea!

It's never too early to start thinking about your A to Z posts.



Heather M. Gardner
The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Return of the Weekend Follies Star Trek Style

.

My name is Stephen Tremp and I’m a writer of speculative fiction. My fourth novel, Salem’s Daughters, is set for release October 1st. To pre-order a copy for $2.99 Click Here. 

Don't Be A Stranger

What a wild ride it is to be part of this group. There is so much energy but that energy is needed. I have my own blog and am part of the IWSG admin but I still wasn't prepared last year when I volunteered to be part of this group. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes.

The administrators of the Challenge have soooo much enthusiasm and creativity. They constantly brainstorm on ways to make the challenge better every year. From the outside, it may seem like the majority of the work in done during the craziness of the challenge in April, but there's actually a lot of things going on all year long.

It has been such a privilege to be part of this but I am stepping down as an administrator this year. I'll still be helping out as someone's minion next April and I would never miss participating in the challenge but I will be leaving all that behind the scenes work to the other wonderful people of the Challenge. Thanks to Arlee Bird for starting this endeavor and for letting me be part of it. Thanks to Alex J. Cavanaugh for asking me to step up last year. With a lot of regret, I'm stepping back this year but not out.

As an experienced A to Z'er, I'm already thinking about my theme for next year. I expect to be able to visit even more blogs than I did last year since I won't be administering anything but myself. I'll still be promoting and encouraging everyone to participate and keeping going to the end.

Finishing the Challenge is a terrific, fulfilling accomplishment. So, I'll be seeing you all in April. In the meantime, I hope you'll visit me at my personal blog, Susan Says.

Themes That Rocked the Challenge - Elizabeth and My Little Pony Artwork

Today I welcome author and artist extraordinaire, Elizabeth Mueller! I’ve known her for many years and have seen her talented artwork. She really did something unique with it for this past Challenge.

Your theme was My Little Pony fan art – what made you choose that theme?

To be honest with you, I had already written 50% of the A to Z's posts (on writing) and scheduled them before April started. Being the hermit that I am, I had barely heard about a successful adult coloring book by a self-published artist, and I thought to myself, I can do that! I can draw just about anything, and people can color my art. Also, drawing takes less brain power and after having Babykins, my brain has been pretty mushy since.

Feeling a bit weird about where this was leading, because I typically keep my art low key, I asked my daughters what they thought about a My Little Pony fan art theme for the Challenge. I wanted to retest my skill in drawing horses (horses were my first drawing love). It turned out that they loved it, and volunteered to color them for me. You should've seen the amount of hours they dedicated!

How long did it take you to draw all those ponies?

Straight up? About three hours all squished together just to *draw* them. Not counting the coloring. Or researching A to Z worthy flower names. Or inventing the storyline. Or getting them printable worthy. (And the scheduling of the posts is a whole 'nother story.) Whew!

Which letter was the most difficult?

X was the most difficult! I searched each letter of the alphabet for flowers and then I'd comb down each one to see which sounded the best sounding name for the character. Xs didn't have much of a selection and we (yes, my daughters helped me, it was a labor of love!) had to do many searches on different sites.

Which flower was the easiest for visitors to guess?

There were many flower names that had a good number of correct guesses, but I'm thinking Zinnia won the race. I suppose that is a very popular flower.

Which flower was the most difficult for visitors to guess?

Adonis, Firethorn, and Knotweed are a tie--no one was able to guess those guys. Not very common flowers, are they?

You had a cool prize for those who made the most guesses, right or wrong – tell everyone about it.

As you said, my goal was to get as many friends to participate. Right or Wrong. It was a little party every day for us! I converted every one of the illustrations into coloring pages along with edited versions of the stories I had included in the blog posts. I did the illustration process backward: I pencil sketched them and then colored them for the Challenge before I had turned them into coloring pages. Turned out alright anyway, though.

What theme are you considering for next year?

That is something I'm still mulling over!

I bet it will be something good! Thanks again, Elizabeth.


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