April Blogging from A to Z Challenge

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Is Blogging Obsolete?

In explaining what blogging is all about to a new blogger, I realized more strongly than ever before that we bloggers are a community. We chat, we talk, we listen, we lend each other a hand, we are the performers and the audience rolled into one.

Many of my friends have shut down their blogs, and moved on to twitter-- blogging is dead, they say. Too many talkers, talk for too long-- no one listens.

But I know different. Blogging will survive, in one form or the other, because we as humans have the need to discuss, debate, sympathize, rant, explore and so many other things-- not all of which can be done all the time to our satisfaction in 140 characters.

The A to Z Challenge was proof enough for me that we bloggers as a community love to mingle and hold forth on anything and everything under the sun-- from meatloaves to metaphysics.

Has anyone told you blogging is obsolete? Do you agree?

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Special Participant Feature - Andrew Leon

The A to Z Challenge saw some awesome themes. One of the most intriguing was Fiction to Reality by author Andrew Leon at Strange Pegs. Andrew put so much into his posts – the research he conducted was amazing. I asked Andrew to share a little about his theme for the 2012 Challenge:

Your theme was fiction to reality – what made you choose that?

Actually, my wife came up with the theme. I was sort of thinking out loud to her about all of the themes I'd thought of and why I'd rejected them (and having a theme was make it/break it thing for me; I wouldn't have done a to z without one), and she said something like, "Well, why don't you talk about things that started out as science fiction but are now real?" It was a great idea, and I went with it. Of course, not quite everything I chose is science fiction, which is why I did just fiction to reality.

What subject was the most difficult to research?

I didn't really have any topics that were difficult to research in and of themselves, but there were some letters that were difficult to find topics for. Like "J" and "Y." I could find physical -things- that we have that started with those letters, so I had to be a little more creative with those.

Who’s your favorite robot?

Oh, man, that's not even a fair question. Oh, well, wait... do you mean something that's just what we would call a robot, or do you also mean android? I'm gonna go with the 'droid answer, and I would pick R2-D2. I want one. Of course, I also love 3PO. I also love the character of Daneel Olivaw from Asimov.

Who was Tom Swift?

Tom Swift was a character from the, appropriately named, Tom Swift books. He was a boy genius that got himself out of trouble through his inventions. Tom Swift was conceived of by the same guy that thought up The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. There's still a current series of Tom Swift books out there a century after they first started being published.

Any plans to go back to school for a degree in Xenobiology?

You know, I think I'll skip anything that's going back to school. I think of taken a very Ray Bradbury view and decided that free education is the best education. Which is not to say no education, but reading and choosing what to read very deliberately is a much better way to learn than paying an organization a bunch of money to get a piece of paper.

You’re not secretly building a laser or raygun, are you?

Hmm... I can't really tell you that, now, can I? Just, you know, be wary if you wake up one morning to find your living room filled with a giant Jiffy Pop container. I actually do have an old story -somewhere- about a boy that makes the first handheld laser weapon. That was back in college, though, and I'm not sure where that's packed away.

If you do the Challenge next year, what theme would you tackle?

At this point, I have no idea. I haven't had any good ideas, yet, so that question is still just hovering around out there. I won't do it without a theme, though, and it has to be a theme that I'm not gonna find on a dozen other blogs.

Thanks for having me Alex! I really did enjoy all the research and stuff I learned by participating in the challenge.

Andrew, thanks for doing the interview and can’t wait to see what you come up with next year!

Co-host Ninja Captain Alex is the author of CassaStar and CassaFire and his blog can be found HERE

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Creating a Blog to Book from A to Z Posts : Guest Post by Pauleen Cass

Publishing a book does not always mean producing something to sell on Amazon or in the book stores. There are publish on demand and other publishing services that will print limited quantity or even single editions for family members, friends, or other specific audiences. Some of you have compiled your blog posts into keepsake editions.

Today we hear from Australian family history blogger Pauleen Cass who can be found at Family History Across the Seas. When Pauleen told me that she was going to publish a blog-to-book based on her A to Z Challenge entries, I invited her to share her story with us. In this post she tells about the process that she used to publish her keepsake editions for her family members.

A to Z Becomes Family Treasure

My passion, and the focus of my main blog, is family history so it was inevitable that this would carry through to the A to Z challenge 2012. Family history usually discusses the people and their lives, this challenge would focus on place as a character in its own right.

The theme I decided on was a dollop of travelogue combined with what I called a genealogue: a travel tale of the places important to the stories of our families (past and present).

My goal was to write something interesting for my fellow bloggers (the geographical/travel underpinning) but mainly to preserve the stories behind the places which might otherwise be lost from our family history.

My plan was to publish the posts in a blog-to-book thereby preserving the stories for my children and grandchildren.

Throughout April the blog toured many places in Papua New Guinea, Australia, England, Ireland, Scotland and Germany. My fellow tourists included some of my regular readers and some newbies. Their comments encouraged me to reach the finish line.

In terms of my planned book, I decided that I would combine the A to Z posts with another series, 52 weeks of personal genealogy and history from 2011, as this also contained memories I wanted preserved beyond the digital world.

I’d used Blurb previously and been very happy with the standard of the publication I received. The benefits of using Blurb are:

1. It’s possible to bring in footnotes as well as the web links from the posts. This is important in family history where citing sources is critical.

2. The file is auto-saved as you work, so you can work at it progressively.

3. It provides different photo/text layouts per page so you can choose what suits that particular story.

4. The photos you’ve used in your posts are imported and placed into the photo boxes of the layout you choose per page.

5. You can select which posts you want from your blog.

6. It also imports comments if you want them included.

Because I’d decided to combine two hefty series, the initial book length was quite long. I think this affected some of the issues I had in preparing the book. So what do I see as the downsides of the Blurb blog-to-book process and what would I do differently?

1. In retrospect I would ensure my book size was smaller as I think some of the problems I had with this book arose from its length.

2. While the importation of footnotes and citations is automatic, it doubles up the citations, cross-referring to your own post, so some editing is required.

3. Some of the comments flowed over many pages, with blank spaces, again requiring editing.

4. The photos come in at what seem much lower resolution than that of the original photos, presumably they’ve been reduced to web-standard, and some have to be reduced further –a helpful exclamation mark tells you when it’s not up to print quality.

5. To ensue you have good quality photos throughout you may wish to re-import the photos you used in the blog post. This certainly gives a better quality final product, but is surely tedious. If you get stuck and can’t find the image you used on your computer, check its title on the blog and do a search.

6. If I was doing another long series I wanted to publish in print, I would copy all the photos from my post at the time, and put them in one folder. With the A to Z, I used photos from different file directories so it’s another challenge to go back and re-import them all.

7. Blurb didn’t cope with the fancy google maps I’d used or the slideshows. Again, more importing.

Based on my previous Blurb book I expect that I will be very happy with it once it’s completed. Only the individual writer can decide whether its worth the preparation and editing process of getting it print-ready. Because recording these stories is important to me, I’ve deemed it worthwhile, though I’ve had to take a break before finishing upgrading all the photos.

Have you had any experiences with limited run book services such as this? Have you ever published your blog posts in book form? Let us know your thoughts or experiences.