A Day Late: Teaser Tuesday

I’m used to being a day late for cool stuff in the Blogosphere. 🙂 I was doing my bloggy rounds this morning and happened across This little life of mine, where I came across the Teaser Tuesday meme. And I don’t believe in missing out on cool stuff, so here I go.

Here be the rules:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

So, I’m going to tease from a graphic novel: “Angel: After the Fall: First Night”, the second collection in the ‘After the Fall’ series. The random page I flipped to is actually in verse, and I couldn’t resist picking two sentences that make a rhyme:

“So Lorne hit a high note, his highest that day. And people grabbed tools and jumped into the fray!”

In which I miss the boat on a Blogfest, and it gets me thinking…

So, I was doing the rounds and trying to catch up on my inbox today, and found somebody who was participating in the week-long I’m Hearing Voices blogfest. It sounds like a really cool event, that I’d love to have joined in on – but given that the instructions said to post about it by January 30th, and I missed the Monday event, I decided not to scramble to come up with something for today. I may try to join in on the Friday event and write an emotion flash fiction.

But – I feel like in some ways, I’m doing better in keeping up with the writer’s blogosphere than I have before, but there has to be a better way to spot these events with plenty of lead time than happening to drop in on somebody’s blog who’s posted a badge for this particular blogfest, or posted an entry promoting it.

Am I crazy, or is this not a problem that calls for a bit of centralization and specialization? Somebody who can step up and volunteer to be the definitive source of information on all writing blogfests, who will promote them all – and who everybody will know to keep in the loop when they start a blogfest? Okay, trying to make anything definitive when it comes to something as disorganized as the writing blogosphere may be a high bar to set, but still…

Is there somebody who’s already making a go of this, and I’m too clueless to know about them yet?

If not – could a blogger as hopelessly out of touch as me have the chutzpah to believe that he could become the guy?

What do you think?

Blogosphere spotlight: Cerebral Lunchbox

Hi guys. I’m winding down from Fan Expo and gearing up for Dragon*Con at the same time, so I’ll toss out a somewhat overdue blog spotlight for you to take a look at.

Cerebral Lunchbox is a place that I found looking through the blogroll over at Elizabeth Twist’s. It hasn’t been updated that much since the A to Z challenge back in April, but even those older posts make for great reading, and there’s a great piece up today listing the four best reasons to watch the new Doctor Who episode. Plus rambles and snack-sized pieces of information. Come on, admit it – your brain needs a snack!

Spotlight: Orlando Ramos

I think it’s time for another spotlight, so I’ll introduce you to somebody who’s left me many nice comments over the past few months, Orlando Ramos.

Orlando’s got some interesting things to say about television, movies, technology in culture, and what to take out of your writing. (Literally, as in what to remove, not what you can learn from it.) Plus, he’s obviously a nice guy!

Blogosphere spotlight – Angeline

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a spotlight on another blogger, so here’s Angeline Trevena.

I found Angeline’s blog because she did the Novel Films blogfest last week, but she’s also got some great posts about her passion for Camp Nanowrimo, blogfesting for inspiration, an interview about spec fiction and some funny stuff about the paradoxes of using social websites as a writer. So go check out her site!

Progress update, June week 1

So yeah, I figure it’s time for another post about how I’m doing with my writing goals lately:

• The rewrite of ‘Harry and Mars’ is going pretty well – I’ve got up to about three thousand words, starting from scratch, and it’s addressing a lot of the issues from the last critiques I got. On the other hand, I’ve only got 1 more week to polish up both stories and send them in to my Kansas peeps.
• Preparations for going to Kansas are also doing well – I’ve gotten a lot of the logistical arrangements made, including shipping off a box of linens so that I don’t need to pack them into a suitcase to take on the plane, and I’ve started to get to know the other students on the class forum.
• I’m a little behind on the draft of “Won’t somebody think of the Children?” for the free Createspace proof – I’ve got one chapter done out of six, and I have that annoying feeling that I wasn’t paying 100% attention for the last few pages. Well, I’ll be able to get something sent off I’m sure, and if it’s not perfect then it’s not.
• I’m back on the Nanopubye forum and getting to know some of the regulars there.
• Posted a few more entries into my fanfic tracker, and realized that I really need to be working on that from the desktop tower, because that’s where all of my old fanfic chapters are stored, not necessarily on the laptops.
• About half a chapter written for my Roswell/Pern crossover.
• And I’ve been doing a LOT of blogosphere work lately, first making the rounds to try to get some votes on my next in-depth review series, (Prisoner of Azkaban still in the lead by two votes!) and visiting everybody who participated in the Fun and Games blogfest. I’m sorry that I couldn’t comment on everybody’s, but if you were on that linky list, I did come and take a look!

So that’s what I’ve been up to. How about you?

Crusader spotlight – The Golden Eagle!

This is going to be another short spotlight, because I’ve been running around finishing things from my February to-do list – and helping with the Haggle. But I wanted to do a spotlight on another crazy crusader, and in fact, I’ve decided to officially change Blogosphere Monday into the Crusader spotlight for the duration of the Platform-building Crusade!

So – the Golden Eagle has a cool writing blog. She’s preparing for the A-Z challenge in April, she’s a Nanowrimo winner, and a Ninja novelist. Also, she absolutely fooled me with her first Crusader challenge entry – I thought that she couldn’t swim, but… well, I’ll let you read the spoiler for yourself!

Blogosphere Monday Incoming special – Catch-up for Crusaders.

Okay, the Platform-Building Crusade is off with a bang, and I’ve been having a great time getting to know the other members of group 14 and the other crusaders who’ve dropped in to comment. I’ve also gotten a very warm and fuzzy feeling seeing my subscriber count and daily hits go up!

So, first off, I’ve got a stupid question that I hope somebody can help me with, and then, I’m going to steal a really good idea that I saw on another Crusader Blog to catch you up on what I’ve been doing lately.

EDITED – stupid question has been answered! To see the updates from blogspot sites that I’m following, all I need to do is go to http://www.blogger.com – that’s the step that I was missing! (Full question ramble has been moved to the end of this post.)

The really good idea that I’m stealing, is to do a fairly quick catchup of some of the cool stuff I’ve been doing on my blog lately, along with links, so that if you happen to see something and think ‘Oh, that sounds really interesting, I should check that out!’ you’ll be able to do that easily and without much fuss. So – the Top Ten List of fun stuff I’ve done on my blog in the last six months…

10. Blogosphere spotlights. I tend to get a little too focused on what’s going on with myself and lose sight of the way blogging can be a social activity, so Blogosphere spotlights are a way of reminding myself to give shoutouts to other bloggers or fun blogging events that I run into – I often put my blogfest entries under the Blogosphere tag, or introduce things like the Crusade itself.

Blogosphere Monday: Alison Pearce Stevens

Prior Blogosphere spotlights.

Well, it’s late and I need to go to bed soon, but I’m sending a shout-out and a spotlight tonight to Alison Pearce Stevens’ blog.

Alison writes science picture books, how cool is that? Her blog has lots of great stuff about marketing writing, and she’s in the A-Z challenge and a fellow crusader! She’s also putting together a great blogfest about snooping on your characters, so surf on over and take a good look!

See you on Wednesday for a new chapter of ‘Wizard of Mars’, I guess.

Blogosphere Monday – Rachael’s Crusade.

Blogosphere index

So, another week, another upcoming blogosphere event to promote.

This time around, it’s the second Writer’s Platform-building Crusade, organized by Rach writes. I’m not quite sure what’s involved in the crusade, other than:

• It’s a way for writers who blog (or bloggers who write) to network with each other.
• There will be crusader challenges.
• Participants will be grouped together by genre.

I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops though.

Rachael’s blog also has other interesting stuff, including contests, random factoids, cover pages, tea tips, interviews, and revision plans, so go check it out!