It's My Letter Day! P for Pam and P for Books, what? #AtoZChallenge

Happy letter P day!

I am so happy to share my letter day with you because I'm sure you've figured out by now that I love to talk about books. So it stands to reason that on P day Pam would have a book that begins with the letter P; 

Am I right?

Gosh, ya'll know me too well.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

I loved this book SO HARD as a girl. I've read it a few times and have seen the movie like one skillion times. And that's a lot. smile. The movie stars a very young Prof McGonagall, aka Dame Maggie Smith, from Harry Potter,  as Miss Jean Brodie herself

'Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life . . .'

That's what Miss Brodie says to her students at the Marcia Blaine School (pronounced Mar See Ah). Miss Brodie is probably the first unconventional woman I ever admired. Miss Brodie is a free thinker, a romantic, and progressive in a time where those qualities weren't appreciated by everyone. Miss Brodie collected a group of students called The Brody Set and for the price of unbridled loyalty, she poured herself into these girls, allowing them access to her thought processes, her personal life, etc. Naturally everything comes at a price and the outcome of this book is dark. But, you will forever love Miss Brodie and appreciate how she tries to change the world, one girl at a time.

If The Bad Girls Book Club (over at An Unconventional Librarian) had a group leader or a Headmistress, it would be Miss Brodie. 

Happy P Day friends! 

Offline a Bit? #atozchallenge

Offline a Bit?

Not to be confused with off-sides or being off-kilter!

Have you been offline a day or two during the Challenge?

Don’t let the sheer amount of blog posts during that time scare you.

Just focus on those who visited you the day you were absent. Return those comments and just delete all the other posts from your blog reader. People will understand.

Use Sundays to catch up. Or, if you’re caught up, use Sundays as your day to be completely offline. Spend some time with your family, go see a movie, go read a book. Regroup and recharge.

We’re over halfway – don’t get burnout now!


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

A Helpful Hint about Sharing Images #atozchallenge #blogging

Thanks to J Lenni Dorner of Arlee's Ambassadors for the following info that some of you might find helpful.  It might be a bit technical for some of you, but those who understand might be able to put this to good use.  

I am not a coding expert. I learned all of this by watching other people, Google searching, and trial with lots of error. (Ha ha) But here's an important tip on something I do know about-- using the img alt in the HTML of your posts.

1. Blind and visually impaired people sometimes use the Internet. There are programs that read to them, partly using the HTML of websites. I didn't know this when I started blogging. A blind woman told me about it. She said the "img alt" tag is used to read what the picture is of... assuming there's an alt tag, of course. "Image of a woman on horseback." vs "32343" You can understand now how defining your image is more useful than leaving just a number or something.
2. Pinterest captions your pin based on what is written inside the alt tag. Readers hitting the share button might be too lazy to edit that. What do you want people to read when your image is clicked from the Pinterest (or other sharing) site? Tag yourself with your Twitter handle if you have one! It works.
3. Sometimes image hosting sites go down. The picture you used doesn't appear. What you wrote in the alt tag will show in place of the image. Consider what you'd at least like your readers to imagine for the downtime duration.
4. With Internet Explorer, hovering the mouse over the image will create a small pop-up text block of the "alt" words. (Firefox and Opera do this with the TITLE tag instead of ALT. The two seem similar otherwise.)

Always keep it relevant, meaningful, and short!
And now it's example time!
The A to Z Challenge

WHAT DOES ALL THAT MEAN?

center means that it will be in the middle of post, not to the left. a href I have hyperlinked my image. If you click it, it takes you to another webpage. target=_blank That other webpage will open in a new window or new tab, so you don't leave me! img means image src means source -- that's always the URL where the image is hosted alt THAT'S what this image is about. I have Twitter handles and a hashtag to increase the viral trending. backslash close your tags

NOW YOU KNOW!
J Lenni Dorner can be found at the blog http://jlennidornerblog.what-are-they.com, on #TeamArlee Arlee's Ambassadors, @JLenniDorner, and on Facebook.com/WhatAreThey.