How to Prepare a Dragon Cave Without Tossing Your Dwarves

Today’s Challenge Participate Feature is the awesome Father Dragon Al!

Al’s dwarves had committed to being Ninja Minions during the Challenge, which meant they were busy before April. Dragon caves need cleaning. Dwarves must be tossed. And in between it all, Al had to maintain his sanity…

Your theme was the preparations of your dwarves for visitors to the Dragon Cave during the Challenge. What made you chose that theme?

I tend to be wordy and that makes me terrible in flash writing. Previous to the challenge, the advice I saw the most was to keep the posts between 100-300 words. Keeping it short was a challenge in itself for me. Since the subjects I discuss at the dragon cave often take longer than the average post, I searched for a "lighter" theme. My usual readers know I focus more on exploring the dragon wisdom but the name "Father Dragon Writes" sometimes makes people to think I am focused on fantasy. I thought it would be fun if I put aside the philosophy of life for a month and show the magical (or chaotic) side of the Cave and the "finest" dwarves in my staff. It really helped me to get reasonably short but still entertaining posts.

What was your favorite letter?

R for Rehearsal. It was the day the Dwarf Cheering Squad presented their new drill "Fireworks". I had so much fun with it that the clip still puts a smile on my face each time I see it. At least in my case, the Squad's success was total. They do cheer me up.

For F, it was Father Dragon – and a sculpture. (Which was amazing by the way.) How long did it take you to make that?

Two months, but it is not finished yet. This was funny. I promised my knight friend I would make a dragon for him. When I was wiring the skeleton, I had a different dragon in my mind. While I was shaping it, I thought it would be cool if the dragon have a special meaning for both of us. I thought on how our friendship started and how he encouraged me to let the world know who I was. All of a sudden, I was shaping Father Dragon and making plans to add the dwarves, S.A.M (the ninja muse) and a knight as a set. I'll have to make another dragon to make up for the time this project will take but I'm stating in my last will the whole set shall go to him.

Is Pancholin a good dancer?

Not really. In his mind, he has two left sides and two right sides. Tell him to go right and he moves left. Say "front" and he goes right. Motion him to step back and you'll have him spinning. Tassin came up with the idea to have Pancholin hold a taco on his right hand and a beer on his left. He did better at the orders of "taco" and "beer" but he also won some extra pounds. Besides, being shy made things even more difficult.

Tell us about the X-Dwarf Files.

Must I? I still have nightmares about cloned dwarves coming out of a tea pot like ants smoked out of a hole. When I allowed my dwarves to become Ninja Minions I thought I had trained them better than to be snooping around the Ninja Headquarters. Tassin was in charge to report their daily performance. At first, it sounded like they were not doing good and many dwarves went missing. I suppose that's when they found the cloning machine. Aware of their crime, they tried to hide it from me by sending a picture of the group. Just they sent me the picture of the clones instead. I almost had a heart attack when I got 600 dwarves back instead of the original 150. Look, I still suffer a nervous tail twitching as a consequence. It got better after I took most of them to the pawnshop for fantastic creatures, though.

How does Dwarf Tossing work?

Dwarf Tossing is a championship to see who can throw a dwarf farther. I used to throw them when I was angry and found out it was extremely therapeutic so I invited my friend, Sir Jeff, to try. That's how the competition started. Since these are Heavy-duty dwarves, they are also dragon proof. They are certified under the DWARF 9002 Quality Standards so they are resilient and bounce well. If you want to enter the championship, you are required to bring your own certified dwarf. However, I offer lessons for beginners and the fees include a dwarf for practice.

Do the dwarves enjoy playing Angry Birds?

No, if my nephew is involved. The hatchling likes to play rough, you know. But it's part of the dwarves' job profile. There is a specific clause that reads they have to wear any clothes (or costumes) their Master may require, be it Angry Bird, cheerleader or Copacabana show dwarf.

After a tour of the Dragon Cave, guests were invited to hit the souvenir store. What gifts were available for purchase?

The original idea was to have lunch boxes, t-shirts, and coffee mugs. Unfortunately all dwarves were on commission as ninja minions. Zenon, the oldest of my dwarves, did a few postcards for the souvenir store. He didn't sell anything but we made him believe the Metropolitan Museum of Art bought them all. Now he spends his time creating "Post-modern Doodlism."

What about the Challenge stands out to you most? What moments were really cool?

The chance to meet some really wonderful and interesting people was what I liked the most about the Challenge. There were many cool moments. The first week was very special for me as I got surprises that touched my heart. However, I must confess the coolest moment was when I realized people actually liked my posts. I had started blogging only four months before I heard about the Challenge. This was my first A to Z and as I said, I had no experience in flash writing. Honestly, I signed up pleading the Higher Powers for help, so I wouldn't suck too much. I certainly didn't expect the positive response I got. I must thank all those who visited the cave and I take the chance to thank you too. I was very surprised you thought it would be interesting to interview me. I feel really honored.

If you were to do the Challenge next year, what theme might you tackle?

I don't know. The A to Z proved to be extreme excitement for me. I might let Zenon do Post-modern Doodlism from A to Z. If he doesn't get lost again on his way to the toilet, that is. Last time, it took us two years to find him.

Thanks, Al! Hope you are back next year. And we’ll keep the dwarves away from the cloning machine…

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

Shelina: I Miss April, How About You?

I Miss A to Z April, How About You?

So you had this fabulous daily blogging regimen and then April comes to an end and you’re exhausted from the hectic life that is daily blogging. But your jazzed at the idea that you could do it and no one caught on that you had no idea what you were doing. You figure, going down to two or three blogs a week will be easy in comparison. You’ve balanced a full life and your blogging life at   last. A week or two passes and you start losing steam. You're barely getting out a post a week. Why?

( Business Calendar & Schedule (Photo credit: photosteve101)

You stopped writing daily.

That’s the easy answer but it’s the truth. If you wrote every day like you did during April you wouldn’t be here now, thinking, what happened? So if you’re in a blogging funk the easiest fix is to do exactly what you did for April. You don’t have to hit “publish” everyday, but you should still create posts everyday or close to it, if you want to hold on to your momentum. What I did for April was planned my posts for the month and then I had something to work from during the month and I was able to keep ahead of my posts by a week or two. That was one of my easiest blog months ever, because I planned ahead. I've gone back to that. I don't have all them blogged and scheduled yet but I have them planned out and I know what I want to say and how. It's given me more time to work on some other projects that I've been wanting to get to: editing two finished novels, my YouTube channel and a new blog concept coming out shortly. I even did my first giveaway. Don't worry it's not to late to fix things.

Writing Exercise:

If you’re a blogger or thinking of starting a blog, try to get ahead by a month you’ll feel the comfort and stress free feeling of being on top of your blog giving you more time to focus on giving your readers quality content and timely responses.

Just in case you missed my A to Z posts under the theme "Get Writing" you can download them in book form here.

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• Time Management (awriterinspired.wordpress.com)
• How Good Are Your Blog Posts? Ten Tips for Making Them Remarkable (sys-con.com)
• Reflection of creating a weblog (hazz14.wordpress.com)
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• Get MORE out of your blog! (strenghtostrength.wordpress.com)

Shelina – these are great words of advice! Thanks for being here to share.

~Tina

Tasha Beren on Fan Fiction

First of all I'd like to say thank you to the A to Z blog for hosting my post and especially to Tina from Life is Good for organising the blog hosting.

I survived the A to Z challenge this year and it was great fun taking part, I hope everyone had as much fun as I did. Although I've only been on Blogger for a little over a year and interacting with the professional writing blog community, I have been blogging one way or another for longer than I'd care to reveal and today I would like to talk to you about one of my loves: fanfiction aka fanfic.

Please don't groan and run away, fanfiction does not begin and end with 50 Shades of Grey, I promise :). If you are not familiar with 50 Shades of Grey and wonder why I mentioned it, it is because the books originally started out as fanfiction for Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.

I thought it might be helpful to define what fanfiction is first, so there are no misconceptions.

Very simply put, fanfiction is fiction written by people about a universe and/or characters they did not personally create, of which they are a fan.

It can be a fictional universe, for example Harry Potter (to the left is some fanart for one of my Harry Potter fanfics called Gold Tinted Spectacles), or it may use real people, for example The Beatles. Usually this fanfiction is written for the consumption of other fans for free, with a few notable exceptions (this link goes to a superb article with a list of fanfics you probably never realised were fanfics).

There have been a lot of misconceptions in the media recently about fanfiction and 50 Shades really hasn't helped. Fanfiction is not all about the porn. As I have mentioned before on my own blog, the fanfiction medium is definitely not afraid of sex and explores sexuality and sex in many and varied ways, but fanfiction is not just about that. There is a whole subgenre of fanfiction called Gen which has no relationships and no sex in it at all. Something the media never seem to mention in their reports about it. (Of course there is Rule 34 - if you can think of it, there is porn for it, but that goes for everything as well as fanfic ;)).

I have been a writer all my life, scribbling in notebooks all through my tweens and teens and even before that, but I did not really spread my wings with writing until I found the internet, fandom and fanfiction. One of the greatest things about fanfiction is it brings people together with shared enjoyment and, in my experience, the community is a fun, nurturing and vibrant place to explore writing and concepts and, well, just about anything you want to explore. During my stay in fandom writing fanfiction I cannot begin to explain what I have learned, everything from how to be a better writer, to social tolerance, feminism, racial awareness and so much more.

Ideas are very powerful things and the fanfiction world is full to bursting with them in easily accessible, easily digestible packages. I also firmly believe that anything that encourages reading, writing and creativity has to be wonderful.

Admittedly, I am quite glad there was no internet when I first started writing, because all my really big disasters are very firmly in drawers never to see the light of day again. I will admit I have one story in the depths of that drawer where my lead female character was totally a self insert and a Mary Sue (female character who is best at everything, saves the day, marries the hero etc) and ended up with Wesley Crusher. I've always fancied the characters with brains :). My shame is locked away, but the youth of today is writing their own first terrible fiction and throwing it straight onto the internet.

Now I'm not saying they shouldn't, everyone has to start somewhere and there are people out there who love reading such stories, but I am very glad no one can ever dig up mine from Google and laugh as loudly as I do when I occasionally glance at it. I do have one piece of advice for all would-be fanfic writers, however: find yourself someone to read it before you post it to correct any hideous errors. In fanfic land we call these people beta-readers and they are very wonderful and very helpful.

I, myself, am mostly a slash writer when it comes to fanfic. This means I write mainly male/male pairings, although I have been known to write het (male/female) and ménage (threesome or moresome). This does not mean all my fiction has sex in it, just that most of it has relationships of some kind. I usually write fanfic because I'm a shipper, this means I ship (want to see two or more characters in a relationship) when they are not together in canon (the official events of the universe). I have also made it my goal in life to write at least one vampire story in every fanfiction world I choose to play in. My pairing du jour is Loki with just about any of the Avengers and if I tell you my Harry Potter pairing of choice is Harry/Draco you can probably tell I enjoy pairing the bad guys with the good guys.

People write fanfiction for numerous reasons, too many to list here, but most of all I think the majority of people write it to have fun and enjoy themselves in a warm and friendly community.

Amazon have just announced Amazon Worlds where fanfic writers can earn money selling their fanfic for the few American TV shows they have licensed. Personally I think this is a grab to gain content cheap without paying professional tie-in writers and is a truly horrible idea. I wouldn't touch it with a fifty foot pole. I also believe that moneterising fanfic in any way is asking for trouble because when money becomes involved so do lawyers and they always try and spoil people's fun. /Climbs off soapbox

Some fanfics stick closely to canon and read like another episode from the series, book or film. Some diverge so far they are known as AU or Alternative Universe where recognisable characters are placed in new circumstances, for example the characters from X-men First Class as regency ladies and gentlemen (very popular since both leading men have played regency characters) or, closer to the original, Erik and Charles meet a different way, causing a different outcome to the film. Some people also use the term Alternative Reality, but there is much debate even within the fanfiction world over which one means what, so a lot of people stick to AU.

One of my favourite sub-genres is the crossover where the author takes two or more universes and crosses them together. As with rule 34, if you can think of two universes, someone somewhere in fandom has probably written that crossover. N*SYNC meets Harry Potter is by far not the strangest. I love a good crossover (although there are some truly terrible ones out there as well), because I adore stories where characters are confronted with situations they just have no way of comprehending. I enjoy writing them too and the one I am most proud of is a Harry Potter/Anita Black crossover called Black Magic by Moonlight where I plonk Harry and Draco in the middle of Anita's preternatural St Louis.

There is such amazing creativity in fanfiction and all the media seem to be interested in is the sex or the authors/creators who have a rabid hatred of it. I honestly cannot understand the professionals who try and vilify it. If someone wanted to write fanfic of my stories I would be utterly overjoyed. I wouldn't read them, so no one could try and accuse me of copying them, but I would still be totally flattered and glow with happiness that they existed. I have never understood the idea of 'MINE, you can't play!' when people have been doing it for centuries and you can't demand people experience your work exactly the way you want them to. Reading and writing is an individual experience and that's the amazing thing about it. Fandoms that have fanfic tend to survive a very long time.

If you would like to dip your toe into some fanfic the best place to go is Archive of Our Own. It's run by a non-profit group called the Organization for Transformative Works and is very well set up and monitored. You don't need an account to read, you will just be asked if you wish to proceed if you click on a link with adult content. Most of my fanfic can be found there under my fanfic pen name Beren.

Are you a fanfic writer, if so, what do you write? If not, have you read fanfic, did you enjoy it? Also, if you have any burning questions about fanfic I would be most happy to answer them to the best of my ability.

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed the post.

Natasha Duncan-Drake
Blog | Twitter | Tumblr | Livejournal | G+ | Wittegen Press Author Page

About the Author: Tasha started writing as a pre-teen and has never stopped. She used to be a software engineer and database designer before she decided to follow her dream to be a writer full time. With her twin sister she created Wittegen Press, a small e-Book press for publishing genre fiction. Her books include novels in the contemporary fantasy, crime and horror genres as well as many short stories and novelettes in every genre from sci-fi to romance. When she's not writing she's usually reading, watching vampire movies, baking or polishing her Photoshop skills.