Shining a spotlight on Wrimos, again

Oct 30 Update: Thanks to everybody who’s volunteered so far, and I believe I have enough signups to last me through the end of November. If you’ve just found your way here and you’re interested in being a potential alternate in case I need to substitute, by all means post a comment – I still haven’t gotten interviews back from some people who were sent their questions two and a half weeks ago. 😉

What the heck, it’s been over a month since I ran my last Ninja spotlights, and it looks as if there won’t be any Crusader or Campaigner spotlights this fall, so I’m officially launching Wrimo Spotlight 2012 season early. Throughout October and November, I hope to post nearly a score of short, fascinating interviews with writers who will be participating in National Novel Writing Month this year. If you’re interested, please comment here, (making sure to add an email address where I can reach you, if it’s not linked to your WordPress profile,) or email me at chrisken zero at gmail dot com. (Replace the zero, at, and dot as appropriate.)

What’s involved? Well, I’ll probably have a few stock questions about Nanowrimo that I’ll ask everybody, plus some sneaky and funny questions that I’ll pick randomly just for you. You can also take up to 200 words to shamelessly plug your website, your book, your twitter feed, or whatever, and include a small image (400*400 pixels, or I’ll shrink it down myself) to serve as a visual aid to your answers, help you promote something, or just add interest to the interview – but no photographs of yourself, please. Think outside the box!

I’ll hopefully be able to give everybody at least a week to answer their questions over email, but if you’re a Speedy Gonzales, that’ll get you posted sooner. And no, you do not have to have a blog or link to me on your blog; if you’re doing Nano and interested in filling out the interview, I’d love to spotlight you. Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you all.

It’s Campaigning time! (But I’d rather be a Crusader.)

So, the fourth crusade is up and running, and one of the requirements to join is to post about the campaign and link to it. So that, obviously, is what I’m doing write now. 😉

I’ve had a lot of fun with the third Platform-building Campaign, but I’m sorry, I have to say, to me, it just didn’t have the immense cool factor of the second Platform-building Crusade. I know that there were people who were offended by the word ‘Crusade’, and Rach made her call to change the name, but I just loved being a Crusader, and I’m a little sad that there were people whose feelings were hurt by that word.

If you don’t know what either the Campaign or Crusader are about, then basically it’s just a huge months-long fest of blogging writers linking to each other, getting to know each other, and having fun together. You can follow the links to Rach’s blog to find out more.

Moving on – Campaigner spotlight interviews! If you’re signing up for the Campaign too, and you’d like to do an interview and get the spotlight on your book or your blog or anything else you’d like to plug, you can reach me by:

• Email at chrisken zero at gmail dot com (deciphering that email address shouldn’t be hard for anybody who isn’t a bot.)
• Commenting on this post
• Waiting for news about the Fourth Campaign yahoo group, which should be starting any time, and joining. I imagine I’ll be posting a call for Spotlight subjects there in the next few days.

If you’ve contributed an interview for the Third Campaigner Spotlights or the Nano spotlights in 2011, then I’d rather give new people a chance rather than give you a second chance, but I don’t mind you dropping me a line to let me know that you’re available in case I need somebody to fill a spot.

And, if you’d like to contribute questions for the interviews, post a comment below! I’ll probably vary the interview format a little, with a few questions that are sent to all spotlight bloggers, a few that are repeated often, and a few that are unique.

Hope to see you all on the Campaign trail!

Crusader spotlight: Word + Stuff

Okay, first off, I’d like to shine this week’s Crusader spotlight on Trisha, over at W O R D + S T U F F, as she spells it.

There’s a lot of cool stuff over at Word + Stuff, including Trisha’s Crusader challenge entry, music spotlights, really cool blogfest entries, and a 200 follower competition. And no, I’m not doing this spotlight just to get another chance to qualify in the competition for mentioning it in my own blog, though the prizes are indeed pretty nifty.

I had a lot of fun exchanging thoughts with Trisha in the ‘Hone your Skills’ blogfest last week.

And speaking of blogfests… I feel like an idiot.

I was feeling so excited about the Snoop blogfest, went over to Alison’s blog to check on if there was a word count limit or other rules – and found out that I’d missed the date by nearly three weeks. I mean, I knew that I was absent-minded sometimes, but how the heck does that happen?

All I know was that somehow I got the blogfest connected with March 23rd in my brain. I knew that it was a Wednesday, and I actually rearranged my blog schedule and shifted the Wizard of Mars series away from Wednesdays so that I’d be able to do Hone your Skills and Snoop. Except – well, you know. Snoop came and passed me by, back when I was working out a few other changes in my Blog schedule, and getting up to speed with National Novel Editing Month.

I’d still like to do the Snoop challenge, even though it wouldn’t be a formal part of the Blogfest. But I think that I’d feel too ridiculous posting it tomorrow, and in any event, I have a Crusader Challenge to write! I may try doing it on April 22nd, if I can’t find anything else I’d rather do that starts with an S for the A-Z challenge. Or, I might just do it in a week, and slip it in before A-Z starts.

Crusader Spotlight: Writes of Passage

This week’s Crusader Spotlight is on Writes of Passage. Take a look at the available microfiction, let the serenity of a haiku come clear to you, or check out Dominic’s Book Blurb.

Dominic also has an interesting series going on ‘Engineering for Writers’, which I thought was a cool idea. (Hmm… could I do a similar series on math malapropisms or something of the sort?)

Oh, and thanks once again for inviting me to the Crusader Group party, Dominic!