Introducing the Multicolored Lady's Minions of Might & Magic! Csenge's #atozchallenge team

Sziasztok!

I'm the Multicolored Lady, the Challenge's resident Hungarian co-host. I have already introduced myself earlier - this time I am here to introduce my marvelous, much appreciated multicolored minion team, my

Minions of Might & Magic!

(*confetti*)

Erica is a lover and practitioner of Music, Meditation, and Storytelling. You might remember her from her amazing theme of Hindu mythology last year! I hear she will have something equally fascinating for this year's challenge. You can find her blog here.

Freya writes about herself thus: "Incurable Drama Queen, Mind-Vagabond, OCDed Control Freak, Innate Traveler, Proud-Softie Dog Mama, Insatiable and Irregular Blogger. I'm Freya and I live in Bangalore, India. I love to read, that's my thing. I'm a housewife and have 5 dogs who fill up my life along with the husband. Mostly that's what my blog is about too."

You can find her blog here, and you can also connect with her on Twitter or Instagram. 

Lancelot is 25 years old, and describes himself as "a foodie who loves to eat (not so much love in the cooking department), part-time wanderer, blogger since 2014, an A to Z survivor and basically trying to live 100% a life without regrets since 2015!" You can find his blog here, and follow him on Twitter here.

Last, but not least, the team would not be complete without our Everyday Fangirl, Patty. She is from Michigan, and lives disguised as a mild mannered data analyst for an advertising firm. You can find her blog on all things fandom here, follow her on Twitter here, or check out fandom blogs The Cantina Cast and The Bearded Trio where she also regularly posts. 

The Minions of Might & Magic will be visiting you over the course of the Challenge, helping us make sure everything is in order and everyone is having a great time.

See you all in April!

*disappears in another shower of confetti*

So... what exactly is a Storyteller?

Did you know that a total of ten professional storytellers participated in the A to Z Challenge this year? That's like, nine more than last year. I know, because I am one of them. Also, I compiled a list of their blogs so you can go and check them out for yourself.
The A to Z challenge is all about stories. Written stories. Musical stories. Old stories. New stories. Fantasy stories. Romantic stories. Stories in pictures. Histories. As people of the word, we are all too familiar with the idea of story.
So, what am I doing here exactly with a title like that?

Let me introduce myself first. I am your friendly neighborhood A to Z minion, one of the Seven Ladies of #TeamDamyanti. My name is Csenge, I am originally from Hungary, and I am a professional storyteller. I go to schools, libraries, festivals, museums and other interesting places, and I tell stories for a living. On stage. By heart. From memory. I travel around the world, I collect new tales wherever I go, and I bring them home to my audiences.
(Okay, so maybe I hoard them like a squirrel. So what? Squirrels are cute.)
 I mostly work with folktales, fairy tales, myths, legends and epics (lots of epics). I am crazy about old stories, long stories, heroes, adventures, and imaginary places. I also tell and translate a lot of Hungarian folktales into English for international audiences.
I decided to use my time in the A to Z spotlight to talk about some of these tales, what we can do with them as storytellers, and why they are important. I am going to post every 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month, and talk about a special topic within storytelling. Today's post was only meant to be an introduction, so without any further ado, I'll announce the next theme right now:

Ladies and Gentlemen, mark your calendars and check your blog feeds, because on Wednesday, May 21st, the A to Z Blog will be taken over by...
TRICKSTERS!!!
from all around the world.

In the meantime, if you are interested in stories, you can check out my latest book, Tales of Superhuman Powers. It is a collection of 55 folktales and legends with superpowers in them - everything from telekinesis to laser eye beams (yeah, really). It started out as a bet to see if I could find at least one traditional story for every superpower on my list. The book includes four categories (physical, mental, elemental, and transitional), and 61 individual powers. It was the most fun I have ever had with research (I mentioned some of the tales in my A to Z posts both this year and last year).
If you ever wanted to be the coolest person in a room full of teenagers, I strongly suggest take a look at some of these stories.

Also, feel free to visit either one of my two blogs:

The Multicolored Diary - Adventures in storytelling. This April I filled it with folktales and fairy tales about colors, from the Azure Lion to Zaffre and Alchemy.

MopDog - The crazy thing about Hungarians... On this blog I post weird and amusing things from Hungarian culture and history. This year's A to Z ran from the Aggressive Piglet all the way to Zanzibar music. Also, the blog features a lot of gifs about puli dogs. You have been warned.

You can follow me on Twitter under the handle @TarkabarkaHolgy

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