Aquinnah's Christopher & Stella and Celebrate the Small Things

Hello and Happy Friday to all!

 

I missed last week's Celebrate the Small Things hop, hosted by Vikki at Scribblings of an Aspiring Author, so I'm celebrating the past two weeks now.

First up, I'm celebrating that I was one of the Blog Blitz recipients last week and that was such a fun surprise! Thanks to everyone who came by here and visited me. And I want to say a special thanks to D.L. Hammons for organizing these fun little blog blitz parties.

Also, I won a copy of the Triangulation Morning After anthology from Stephen Ramey during last month's 'Tis More Blessed giveaway. I got the book in the mail this week and it was a treat to open my mailbox and see the package in there. Nothing like getting free books!

I'm also celebrating that I finally got some writing done on my WIP. It's a prequel to Polar Night and also ties in to the sequel I am planning, so I'm excited to finally be making some progress on both of them. I haven't written steadily in what feels like forever so I'm glad to finally feel like I may have beaten back my writer's block. I think this picture is what inspired me to sit my butt down and stop whining about being blocked. :D

Source: Jim C. Hines

Finally, Heather Holden drew comics of Polar Night's Danny and Aleksei for me last year and I loved them so much that I asked her if she would do another portrait for me, this time of Christopher and Stella from The Ghosts of Aquinnah. I got the finished product from her this week and I love it. Christopher and Stella are the main characters in the 1884 portion of the story. Aren't they cute? :)

If you don't already know Heather, check out her webcomic The Echo Effect. She is amazingly talented and a super-nice person to boot.

I've fallen way behind on my blog reading and commenting lately and I apologize for that, this month has just been a bit of a mess for me and my focus is all over the place. I'm looking forward to getting caught up with everyone this weekend.

Hope you've all had lots of small and big things to celebrate this week and have a great weekend ahead.

National Wormhole Day and The Blog Blitz

It's time for the National Wormhole Day hop, hosted by Stephen Tremp, LG Smith, and Laura Eno.

Here is the info on the hop:

What would you do or where would you go if you could traverse a wormhole through space or time just once? One safe round trip passage. Would you go back in time and talk some sense into a younger you? Go five years into the future and bring back the Wall Street Journal? See just how the heck the Great Pyramids of Giza were really built? View what the other side of the universe looks like? Kill Hitler?

And here is my answer:

I'd go back in time to 1930s Cincinnati so that I could meet my maternal grandfather. He died in 1946 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease, and I've always been sorry I never got to meet him. Based on what I've heard about him from my mom, he was a kind and decent man who enjoyed life and loved his family. I think he would have been a very fun grandfather to have. So I'd like to go back to the '30s before he became ill and spend some time with him. It would also be fun to see my maternal grandmother when she was young. I was only 9 years old when she died, and I've always regretted not having more time with her than I did.

My mom's family was 100% German, and they loved their beer. I think it would be fun to go back and spend a day with them when they were all in the prime of their lives. It might be a little weird though to be around my mom when she was a little girl. Maybe I could arrange this Wormhole trip for a time when she was out visiting her friends. :D

Thanks to Stephen, Luanne, and Laura for hosting this great hop! If you'd like to join in, it's not too late to sign up! Just visit here for the list and join in the fun.

Also, DL Hammons of Cruising Altitude 2.0 has come up with a great idea to try to garner support for all of us here in the blogosphere through a rotating Blog Blitz. I'm just going to copy and paste DL's description of his idea so you can get the gist of it:

But what would it be like if the support, encouraging nature, and community spirit of the blogosphere were ever focused on a single blogger?  A few of us have experienced that sort of attention via book launches or other publishing announcements, and still others have achieved that level of awareness through the popular blogfests we host.  In most cases there is a lot of work that goes into generating that amount of interest.  What I'm talking about is being suddenly thrust into the spotlight, without even lifting a finger. What would it feel like to be the recipient of that kind of exposure? Could something like that even be possible? Can the power of the blogosphere be harnessed and directed?

Everyone knows I like to try new and different things, so today I present to you the BLOG BLITZ.  Here’s how I see it working.  Sign up on the linky list below, making sure to record your email address, and you’ll instantly become a member of the Blog Blitz Team.  Then from time to time, I will select a deserving blog (that must be part of the Blitz Team) and a specific date.  I will then email the team members that information and on that date we all will go out of our way to visit that blog and leave an encouraging comment on their most recent post.  I'm talking about hopefully a 100+ comments appearing out of the blue in one day!

When I first read about DL's idea it reminded me of the Writers4Writers project, which from what I have seen is a big success and a lot of fun. So I think DL is on the right track for helping to spread the blog love around even more. If you want to learn more about the project and sign up to be part of it, visit DL's post here.

Are you on board for the Blitz? Where are you heading after you hop through your wormhole?