The Joyful Brigade Hits the Road

It's almost time for us to hit the ground running with the Challenge. I'm happy to be a co-host for the second year running and I'll be ably assisted by the seasoned bloggers listed below. Meet the Joyful Brigade and say howdy!

Keith Channing is retired and lives in the middle of France with his wife and two dogs, where he mostly makes up and writes lies for the sheer pleasure of doing it. Some of them even rhyme. Many of these lies, both of the rhyming and non-rhyming types, end up on his blog, as do some of the photographs he's taken from time to time.

Contact Links:
Fuller bio is at https://about.me/keithchanning
https://www.twitter.com/keithchanning
https://plus.google.com/108165500792647138091
http://keithchanning.tumblr.com/

Bish Denham was raised in the Virgin Islands where her family has been living for over a hundred years. She worked for 23 years with abused, neglected, and emotionally disturbed children before retiring. Bish has been writing off and on most of her life, but it's only been within the few years that she's taken the plunge to self-publish. She now has two books out in the world: A collection of ten stories about the Caribbean trickster Anansi, called Anansi and Company: Retold Jamaican Tales and a novel about a vain young lizard who believes he has a destiny called A Lizard's Tail. She's currently working on a Caribbean ghost story and has been blogging 9 years. This will be her 7th A to Z Challenge.

Contact Links:
http://bish-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BishDenham.Author/
https://twitter.com/BishDenham

Betty Dmochowski Wooton has been blogging for close to 10 years under a lot of different names, but finally settled into her niche, A Bench with a View, about 4 years ago. She blogs about a variety of subjects and tries not to blog more than once a week so she can save time to check out and read lots of other blogs. This will be her 4th A/Z Challenge. In real life when she's  not blogging or reading blogs she's a medical transcriptionist. She has been married for 35 years and was recently blessed with a grandson born right after Valentine's Day 2016.

Contact Links:
http://viewsfrombenches.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/betty.wooton
https://www.facebook.com/walkhumblywithMyGod

Jen Garrett writes for, about, and around children all day. But sometimes she finds time to do the dishes at her home in Northern California. She also finds time to blog, participate in SCBWI, facilitate The Writers Bloc at her local library, query agents, and read mountains of books. How? We don’t know.


Contact Links:
lexicalcreations.weebly.com
Twitter handle @lexicalcreation
Facebook Lexical Creations and https://www.facebook.com/thewritersblocinplacerville/

Sheena-Kay Graham is a writer, Christian, proud Jamaican, Harry Potter fan, Divergent lover, Dauntless Faction, Book Obsessed. She blogs about her life, books, book reviews, her upcoming novels, and sometimes random fun, plus the movies she sees at the cinema.

Contact Links:
http://queendsheena.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/SheenakayGrahamAuthor/
https://twitter.com/queendsheena
Laura Hernandez is the mother of four children and grandmother of three with another two arriving this summer. She is engaged to a retired military man and currently resides in Missouri. Her hobbies include reading, DIY projects and arts & crafts. She's always had a passion for books so wasn't surprised when she eventually started a blog. 

Those first few blog posts only had a picture of the book she read and a sentence or two for a review. Since then, reviewing books has afforded her opportunities that she never knew existed and Laura is very thankful for the many book-addicted friends she's been able to make.

Contact Links:
The Voluptuous Book Diva - http://voluptuousbookdiva.blogspot.com http://facebook.com/voluptuousbdiva
http://yabkd.blogspot.com and on Facebook http://facebook.com/yareeds
Twitter @VoluptuousBDiva 
Instagram @volptuousbookdiva

Michelle Wallace is a writer-in-the-making, on an adventure, a never-ending journey. Her many titles include writer, blogger, flash fiction junkie, wannabe poetess, educator. She looks forward to meeting and interacting with many different writers/poets/bloggers from many different places, as she believes that this potpourri of characters will enrich her life in one way or another, helping to mould and shape her writing experiences. Therein lies the success story~it lies in the actual journey!

Contact Links:
http://www.writer-in-transit.co.za/
Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/michelle.wallace.author
Twitter link: @mishy1727 Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/14191973-michelle

And then there's me, J.L. Campbell. I'm plenty happy to have this great group of bloggers to help make the Challenge fun and easy. I live in Jamaica and write sweet romance, romantic suspense, women's fiction, new and young adult novels.

Contact Links: www.joylcampbell.com
https://www.facebook.com/jcampbellchambers
https://twitter.com/JL_Campbell
https://www.pinterest.com/thewriterssuite/

Thanks so much for stopping in, I hope you're looking forward to the Challenge as much as we are. Feel free to visit these bloggers and get acquainted.

Wouldn't You Like to be a Helper, Too?

Wanna help us out? We're seeking administrative assistants to help do some of the behind the scenes grunt work with us. 

Why would I want to do that? Here are some perks to consider:

1. You'd get a special badge emailed to you to display on your blog showing your prestigious status. Most of the co-hosts have their own, personalized badges displaying their assistants, and we all stick them in our sidebars too, so everyone would know whose slave, er, helper, er, assistant you'd be. Um, you might also be called a minion. In the most kindest of “we loved those movies sort of way.”
2.  You'd also be listed as an assistant on the A-Z Challenge Blog and that would probably bring you more traffic since a LOT of people read this blog. (You can check out last year's list in the tabs above to know what I'm talking about.)

Are you game? Here's how it works. Each team member wants their own number of volunteers, and will choose their volunteers in their own way. Some co-hosts need many. Some want none. Volunteer in the comments, and each co-host will choose their assistants based on their own criteria, which are actually different for each of us.

Make sure your email shows up when you comment so that the co-host who picks you can contact you. We traditionally (in the whole other year we tried this...) had way more volunteers than open spaces, so please don't be sad if you don't get picked. Get out there, visit a lot of blogs, make connections with the community and try again next year. We are ALL about making connections and friends and building relationships. We just tend to pick the people we already have a connection with. Not a popularity thing, just a product of what we're trying to achieve. COMMUNITY.

Questions? Stick 'em in your comments, or send to the new infoatoz2014@gmail.com. Be aware there you'd get me (Tina) because that's one of my jobs. So you might as well email me directly with general questions.  My email is tndowney (at) gmail (dot) com.  Either one is fine, just I check my own more often.

So if you'd like to work hard, for no money, but lots of recognition and praise, consider volunteering. We're a crazy bunch of folks, but you knew that already. I mean, a blog-hop with 2000 people? That's nuts already. But the best gig in blogland. Don't miss out if you want in!

~ Tina, on behalf of the entire A-Z Team