A-Z Participant Profile: AJ Lauer, author of Armageddon: Pick Your Plot
Hi, AJ! Welcome to the Blogging from A-Z blog! Why don't you start by telling us about your blog?
Naturally Sweet started as a place to put my early-college angst. It was a way for me to keep in touch with friends from high school and my first boyfriend, a daily journal of writing snippets and figuring out how I fit into the college scene. Over the years it has become a bit more intentional. I use it now still to keep in touch with friends, but also to reflect on my profession and our adventures here in Colorado. And of course to share my writing efforts.
How did you find Blogging from A-Z?
Last February, I caught a horrible, awful cold. After about 2 days of whining and moaning and TV, I got bored and challenged a fellow writer friend to a duel. We spent the next four weeks duking it out creative-writing style in a shared Google doc. It was so much fun to push myself to write every single day. When we finished I knew I needed another challenge, and knew as soon as I saw it, that A-Z was the perfect next thing!
You've already signed up for this spring's challenge. What brought you back?
I had so much fun last year! I met several of my favorite blogging buddies, and truly enjoy the challenge of coming up with things to write about every day for a month. A-Z is also part of the reason that my co-author Dan approached me to write Armageddon. He is a talented graphic artist and does something super-cool every year for his birthday. Last year he decided to have an armageddon themed birthday party in honor of the Mayan calendar myth, so decided to make a Pick Your Plot book that explores apocalypses. He'd seen that I had been doing a lot of writing, so asked if I would like to co-author the project. Of course I said yes - how could I resist such an offer? So I'm back this year for the challenge of the writing, and also just to see what neat things come out of it.
Wait, a Pick Your Plot book? Yup - kind-of like a Choose Your Own Adventure (TM) book. The endings range in topic from Ragnarok to nanobots to (of course) zombies. Since it's about apocalypses which are by nature somewhat unavoidable, you die in 33 of the 42 endings. The odds are definitely not in your favor, but each one is written to be entertaining. Our friends who attended Dan's party loved the book and immediately asked about 'real' publishing, so we decided to go for it. Feedback so far has been very positive - you should check it out! ;)
That sounds awesome! What are you writing about for A-Z this year? Well, last year I did the theme of "things I like" because it was general and easy to come up with topics. This year I've decided to write a scene or character description for each letter. It will be a bit more challenging, but should lead to some fun stuff. I'll start pre-scheduling posts in March, to make sure I've got enough time to do each one well.
Thanks
for stopping by! We look forward to seeing what you write this
spring.
Thanks! I'm definitely looking forward to it
AJ's
blog: Naturally
Sweet
The
Book! Armageddon:
Pick Your Plot
Other
places to find AJ: Facebook
(public), Facebook
(book fanpage)
