Meet the wHooligans!

Happy St. Patty's Day, everyone!

Hope you are all enjoying the day of green, orange, and blarney! Since my team is the wHooligans, and hooliganism is a favorite Irish pastime, I figured today to be the perfect day to introduce ourselves!

My name is AJ Lauer. I'm an author and educator based in the Front Range of Colorado. You can find me at my site, or on Twitter @ayjaylauer. I wrote an interactive apocalyptic fiction novel called Armageddon: Pick Your Plot in a crazy two week writing spree with a friend. It's great fun. You should check it out :)

Here are my answers to some of the questions posed by our readers a couple weeks ago:

Q: What is THE Tip you would like to share with the people who would be doing the A to Z Challenge for the first time?

A: Visit, visit, visit! Our list contains so many talented people with great ideas. Go see what is out there :) 

Q: How do you manage your time during the A to Z Challenge? 

A: Very carefully! So usually I've got about 60% of my posts written before April starts, and I do the other 40% on the fly. This year my theme involves audience participation, so I'll be writing every evening. I find that visiting folks is great to do during my lunch hour at work. It's a nice way to pass an hour.

Q: After you successfully complete the 2015 A to Z, and they stick television cameras in your face and ask "So, what are you going to do now", what will you answer?

A: I just did something that is perhaps a little crazy. I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo, which is also occurring in April. So I will probably just grunt and grumble something about words before shoving my head under my pillow.

Q: Isn't it phenomenal?

A: I am awed by how phenomenal it is. I get out to appreciate our world whenever possible. (see the above picture!)

And now... A brief introduction for my wHooligan team!

Sue McPeak

TaMara Sloan @peedeemama

Shilpa Garg @shilpaagarg

LuAnn Braley @kentuckygal

Kripali Kulkarni @precarious_me

These ladies are fantastic. They'll be working hard all month to say hi to as many participants as possible, so go pay them a visit to say thanks in advance! :)

Themes. Themes. Themes.

The first year I did the A to Z, I didn't use a theme. To be honest, I didn't know that most people did use themes. I didn't do much advanced planning that year, either. Every morning I wrote a post, alphabetical, of course, so I got that right. And I visited as many blogs as my nimble brain and fingers allowed, then I patted myself on the back. Great job!

What I discovered was the bloggers who created thematic posts were the most interesting to visit. Guess what? The second year I had a theme.

To wax a bit nostalgic  here are some of the themes that I thought were the most exciting in the 2014. I couldn't get around to the hundreds out there, so I know there were others I would have put on this list.  Here are a few that I returned to daily and really enjoyed.

• Lexa Cain
• Hillary's Positive Letters
• Michelle Wallace's Writer in Transit
• J.L. Campbell's Character Depot

Why were these among my favs? Here are the qualities these bloggers brought to the Challenge.
They were

• informative
• humorous
• fun with puzzles or games to play
• short or with lots of white space
• well-written
• easy on the eye (no fancy dark background with green fonts or flashing gifs)
• no word verification

This year I'm looking forward to finding more favorites, and I have a feeling that the themes I'll gravitate to will have these qualities.

Ready? Set? Almost GO!

Post A to Z Road Trip! - Stormy and I Pahk the Cah in the Gahrage.

It's been almost a year since Tina and Nicole asked me to be a part of the Road Trip.

I was thrilled and honored to be asked by them, two women that I highly admire.

I still have all of Tina's emails, about the Challenge and the Road Trip, and I still get choked up when I see them.
We miss you, Tina.

Nicole did a fantastic job on the Road Trip. I enjoyed working with her very much.

Stormy and I had an incredible journey going through so many wonderful blogs. I hope we shared a few that you found interesting, informative, and fun. That was our intent.

Stormy and I will be putting the ol' Road Trip car in park and unpacking our bags, but we wanted to say thank you to those of you that came along for the ride.

Tom Cochrane - Life Is A Highway

You can come see us anytime at my blog, The Waiting is the Hardest Part.