Honk if You Read Me! A Brief Tune Up for A-Z Road Trippers #atozchallenge #roadtrip

Wondering how in the world you’ll keep (or even find) the energy to continue visiting new blogs throughout these busy summer months? Look no further, because your participation in the 2014 A-to-Z Challenge Road Trip can be simplified by designating a regular time of the day to carry out this task. 

It doesn't have to overwhelm our daily activities; we can master the art of having a productive and adventurous road trip experience, in as little as 30 minutes per week or as much as one hour per day.

For those multi-taskers, consider squeezing in some blog visits on your lunch break and voila! You’ll have completed your road trip activities before dinner time by killing two birds with one stone – eating and surfing the blogosphere. Try it. Morning, noon or night, creating a habit of visiting blogs along a set schedule will keep you on track to discover all those gems that you may have missed in April – and doing it all without losing your wheels and falling by the side of the road.

Happy Road Tripping!

A-to-Z Challenge Co-Hostess Nicole Ayers writes about movies and the people that make them, at The Madlab Post. She is currently on tour with her short film “ABYSS: THE GREATEST PROPOSAL EVER,” to raise money for the American Red Cross. At times, she also tweets @MadlabPost.

How's Your To-Read List?

To-Read, TBR, the pile of books in the corner... whatever you call it, is it under control, or eating you alive?

About three years ago, I went to a conference on becoming a published children's author.  One piece of advice was to read great children's books.  They mentioned some books and authors, so I scribbled them down: Skellig, the Tiger Who Came For Tea, Liz Kessler, The White Giraffe Series, Eva Ibbotson, Laura Marker series, David Almond, Marcus Sedgwick, Sally Gardner, Meg Roscoff, Anabelle Pilcher, Jonathan Gould, Pongwiffy, Boy in Striped Pyjamas....   These have a UK bias, but the ones I've read are great books. 

First I put them on a reading list on my blog.  Then I found Goodreads and put them on there - other book sites are available: I also belong to Librarything, for example.

So about twenty books found a home on my reading list.  Then I got my kindle app on my laptop, and discovered free books...  you know the story. I had 100 books very quickly.  Then I started getting books I wanted to read, as opposed to those that looked good.  Last November I went into a bookstore with a £25 ($40) book token.  I spent over £35 (nearly $60), and have only just started on those.  I listed ten more I'd like to read but didn't buy.

I am trying to read a book a week.  But I make the error of entering blog review tours, and get advance or free copies to review for the tour.  I have read some wonderful books that way, but my plan to read 60 books from my TBR list this year is under severe strain.  The book that was number 4 at the start of the year is now number 1.  And I am skipping down a way because I really want to read and review the books I won in Giveaways last year.

I'm beginning to feel anxious about all these books I have to read.  And my list isn't even that big.  Go on, guess how many it is.  I'll tell you at the end.

I saw a lovely short post from The Story Reading Ape at the end of April:  What’s YOUR TBR pile like?

Click the link and it'll open in another tab or window.

Feel familiar?  I bet!

What's even funnier is reading the comments - I'm sure they'll resonate with you, too.

I'm looking for the person with the longest current TBR list on Goodreads (or any other list, but it needs to be verifiable).  Just flicking through people who have my first book The Princelings of the East on their Goodreads TBR list, they seem to range from less than 8 books to over 29,000! (Authors, you can find this by looking at your Author Dashboard and the TBR listing for your book).

Can you beat that?

Mine's currently 270.  I have copies, print or ebook, of around 90 of them.  You can add another to yours if you want to download my latest book, Bravo Victor, which is free today on Amazon.

How many books do you currently want to read?  What's your strategy for getting through them?  I'd love to know.

Themes That Rocked! Challenge Participant Charity Bradford and the World of Dr. Who

Please welcome author Charity Bradford!

Your theme was Dr. Who. What made you choose that theme?

Two reasons. #1 I LOVE Doctor Who and knew it would be a fun topic that I would enjoy exploring for an entire month. #2 My kids love Doctor Who and agreed to help me with the posts. I thought it would be a bonus to share the Challenge with my children.

Which letter was your favorite and why?

This is hard because I must confess I loved almost every letter. Reliving the series through video clips was amazing. Looking back over the episodes knowing where the story was going made everything more emotional. If I had to narrow it down I'd pick--C, R, S and T because they cover my favorite characters.

Which letter was the most challenging?

Q, X and strangely Y were hard. I just couldn't think of anything Doctor Who and had to get creative to make it work. I finally did favorite Quotes, X-tra clips/episodes that I couldn't fit in earlier and thanked YouTube for all the great videos I used during the month.



What is your favorite race or creature from the show?

The Weeping Angels are a great race in the creepiest way, but if I could get a full make-up job I would choose to be Silurian. Every one that I've seen on the show has this aggressively sexy look to them. Plus, who wouldn't want to be a reptilian warrior?

Who is your favorite Doctor?

You keep asking really hard questions! I should qualify this by saying I haven't watched the classic Who series. David Tennant was my clear favorite until series 7. Now Matt Smith is equal if not edging slightly ahead of Tennant. It doesn't have anything to do with the actors as much as the way the story line changed a bit and drew me in even deeper. Both of them made me think about things, laugh out loud and cry. I can't ask for more than that.

What’s your favorite Dr. Who quote?

I have lots of favorites, but here's one that didn't make my Q post--"Don't play games with me. You just killed someone I liked. That is not a safe place to stand. I'm The Doctor and you're in the biggest library in the Universe. Look me up." ~The Doctor, Series 4, Forest of the Dead

Just what is a Silurian?

The Silurians were a sentient race of earth reptiles that dominated the earth before humans. At some point they went into hibernation deep under the earth's crust. The first time I saw them on Doctor Who was series 5 with Matt Smith in "The Hungry Earth". The warrior class woke from cryo sleep when their settlement was threatened by humans drilling into their air pockets. Humanity barely escaped all out war with them thanks to the Doctor's quick thinking.

If you participate next year, do you have a theme in mind?

Yes! My kids already voted and we are going to do A to Z posts from the TV series X-Files.


I’m an X-Files junkie, so that sounds like a great theme. Thanks, Charity!



Co-host Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh is the author of Amazon Best-sellers CassaStar, CassaFire, and CassaStorm, and his blog can be found HERE