A to Z Blogs of the Week, and Belated Thanks!

I've made my way through more of the A to Z Bloggers list and, as expected, I came upon many more wonderful blogs. I'm happy to highlight three of them this week.

1) Cheekyness

I love the title of this blog, and Su writes about lots of interesting topics with a fun and "cheeky" style. From what I have seen so far, her blog is a great read.

2) Cheap Therapy

Another great title! I discovered "Project 52" on Cheap Therapy, and I think it is a really clever idea for goal-setting. I may have to do my own Project 52 next year.

3) Writers' Ally

Great blog title number 3. When I first saw the web address for S.A. Larsen's blog, I read it as "writer sally," and was expecting a writer named Sally. Instead, I found Sheri, and though she is taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging over the summer in order to focus on her writing, she and others created a Facebook group to support bloggers called Writers Support 4 U. I've joined, and I think it seems like a fantastic group.


So those are my blog hop highlights for this week. Shannon at The Warrior Muse has re-opened the submission link for the A to Z Visitors Blog Hop, so if you'd like to join, there's still time! I have a page at the top of my blog where you can add your link, or you can sign up at Shannon's page or at Life is Good.

Also, I want to send a very belated THANK YOU to two bloggers who were kind enough to give me blog awards in the past few weeks.

First off, the very sweet nutschell at The Writing Nut honored me with the Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award. Thank you, Nutschell!

And, the creative and talented Deirdra at A Storybook World gave me the Creative Blog Award. Thank you, Deirdra!

It's always a treat to get these awards, and I'm very grateful to both ladies!

Hopping Through the A to Z List, and Congratulations to Jennifer Hillier!

I've finally started on the A to Z Visitors Blog Hop, only a month later than I had planned to start, but better late than never. I thought it was great that more than 40 bloggers signed up to participate! I hope everyone is enjoying their visits so far.

I made a ticker to keep track of my visits as I thought it might help with my motivation. I've only visited 30 blogs so far, so that 1282 at the end of the ticker is a long way off, but at least I've made a little progress. 

As I make my way through the list, I thought it would be fun to do a weekly post highlighting a few of the new blogs I discover. I'm already glad I joined this challenge, as I've found some great new blogs already. Here are three that I totally missed during the craziness of April, but I'm so glad I found them now.

1) Ella's Edge

Ella's blog caught my interest right away as I love the look of it, and I love her "Summer of Yellow" post. Really a beautiful and eye-catching site!

2) Clarissa Draper

Clarissa writes great book reviews, and I enjoyed going through her blog and reading her posts on writing and on books. She's a mystery fan like me so I expect to find lots of new books to enjoy through her site.

3) The Alliterative Allomorph

I thought this was such a great title for a blog, it caught my attention right away. I'm looking forward to reading Jessica's work.

Those are my three highlighted blogs for this week, and I've no doubt I'll find many more as I continue to work through the A-Z List over at Tossing It Out. Thanks again to Tina at Life is Good and Shannon at The Warrior Muse for this great idea!

Also, I just wanted to send a huge congratulations to Jennifer Hillier, whose book CREEP was released this week. I got my copy from Amazon today, and I'm looking forward to curling up on the couch with it. It's been fun to follow along on Jennifer's countdown to publication, and I wish her much success. Congratulations, Jennifer!

A-Z Follow-Up, and A Short Fiction Contest

It's great to see so many have signed up for the A-Z Visitors Blog Hop for this summer! Has anyone started making their visits yet? I confess, I have visited exactly ZERO new blogs from the A-Z Participants list. I am planning to rectify that soon though, as we are supposed to have a rainy weekend here and it looks like it will be a great time to curl up with my laptop and get back to work on my blogging and writing goals.

Also, I came across this Short Short Story Competition from Writer's Digest, and I thought I would pass it on in case others have not seen it yet. The deadline is not until November, so there's plenty of time to enter if you are interested.

I wrote a flash fiction piece for the Women On Writing contest back in the winter that made it through the first round of cuts, but no farther. I like the story though, so I think I am going to tweak it a bit, and enter it into this contest now. The WOW contest was limited to 750 words, which was difficult for me, so I'm hoping to expand the story since the limit for this contest is 1,500 words. Anyway, I never finished the story I had planned to enter in the Writer's Digest annual competition back in May, so I'm glad to have another opportunity with this new contest. I'm promising myself I will be more disciplined this time!

Finally, I'm having problems with Blogger again, and have once again lost all of the blogs I am following on my dashboard. I'm also having a terrible time getting pages to load. So I apologize if I am behind on keeping up with blogs, I hope to get caught up soon. This Blogger situation is frustrating to say the least!

Happy Weekend, All! :)

It's All Fun & Games Blogfest and The A to Z Followup

I just learned of the It's All Fun & Games Blogfest, hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh, while visiting Bards & Prophets over the weekend. I'm glad I learned of it in time, as it seems like a great blogfest. The Fun & Games are tomorrow, June 6th, so there's still time to sign up if you want to participate.

Here is the description of the Blogfest from Alex's sign-up page:

"It’s All Fun & Games Blogfest, June 6, 2011 - list your three most favorite games and why. Board games, card games, RPG, video games, physical games, drinking games - even mind games! If it’s a game you enjoy playing, it’s worth sharing."

To sign up, visit Alex's page here. I'm looking forward to reading everyone's choices for their games. Thanks to Alex for hosting this fun event!!

Also, I'm thrilled to be co-hosting a follow-up to the April A-Z Challenge. Shannon at The Warrior Muse and Tina at Life is Good came up with the idea to challenge ourselves to visit all of the wonderful blogs we missed during the crazy days of April. I thought this was a fantastic idea, as my favorite part of participating in the April Challenge was meeting so many great bloggers. There were so many participants that I know I missed tons, so I'm excited to go back and catch up now.

There's no official start or end date for this challenge, but the intention was to make it a summer event. I know Shannon wrote that her goal was to work on this from June to September, and that sounds like a good plan to me. So I am looking forward to meeting many new bloggers over the summer!

I'm delighted to have the chance to co-host, as this is the first time I've ever hosted any type of blog event. I'm still figuring out how to add the linky to my site so I don't have the sign-up list here yet, but if you want to sign up, visit Shannon at The Warrior Muse. You can access the list of A-Z participants through the Tossing It Out page here.

Thanks again to Alex, Shannon, and Tina for these fun opportunities!