Happy 2015 Theme Reveal Day!

Phew. Y'all. It's been a crazy couple weeks. Long story short, I was passed over for a promotion at work, into a job that I created for myself to be promoted into, so I quit my job. Can't stay in a place that doesn't reward hard work and vision. My last day was Friday. While it has been disappointing and frustrating, this change has also given me an opportunity to try something I've always wanted to do. I'm going to dive headlong into being a full-time writer! Eeek! It's a very exciting and also terrifying time and I'm extremely thankful that my family has the means for me to be able to take this dive.

One of the fun things about this is that I'm feeling much more confident about my ability to be successful with my A-Z theme this year! (and I will have a LOT more time to dedicate to the Challenge overall. Yay!) And so on this Theme Reveal Day I present to you....

An interactive fiction adventure from A to Z!
The concept is simple: We are going to follow a character through an adventure and my visitors every day will vote in the comments section about what direction they want to see the character go. Options will have to do with the appropriate letter of the day. So on A day, you'll receive choices that have to do with the letter B, on B day you'll find out about what happened with your choice and vote on what happens for C, etc.

I'll be writing the post for the next day every evening before bed, once the tally is in. I have absolutely no idea where this is going to go, as it depends upon what my blog visitors tell me to write about. It's going to be SO fun! Also, I have a minor surgery partway through April, so my awesome co-author Dan is going to write for you for a couple days while I am recovering, and that's going to be great too :)

Happy Theme Reveal Day! Can't wait to see what you all are doing...

Updates and under construction!

Hello friends!
You might notice that when you click on your old frodofrog.blogspot links you are given a redirect page to my new, improved, ajlauer.net!

I'm so excited about launching a 'real' domain! It has struck me that creating my own domain, with my real name rather than ye olde frodofrog alias, feels like a very adult thing to do. Odd how we've changed in this digital age that there are things that represent maturity in our digital world as well as in real life. I had my blog at frodofrog for 14 years, so we've been through a lot together. And of course it's not gone, just changed a bit.

Not sure if google friend connect/blogger will automatically update the link on your feed, so you might need to go in and manually change it from frodofrog to blog.ajlauer.net. (let me know on this!)

Please celebrate with me by joining my email list! The form is on the sidebar to the right. I promise not to send with too much frequency. Probably not much more than once per month with more frequent updates, of course, here on the blog :)

If you have any suggestions for the new site - things I'm missing, that you'd like to see, or that you particularly dislike, please let me know in the comments. This is definitely a work in progress, so community assistance will be much appreciated.

Happy Monday, everyone!

IWSG? Already??

How is it at all possible that it's time for another Insecure Writers Support Group post? Where in the world did this month go so quick? And next month is the April A-Z Challenge? Egads.

(do you ever feel like your life is going really fast and how are you going to do all the things you want to do and there are so many things to see and stories to tell and agghhh..)

This last weekend I attended my first writing workshop! Well, my first since middle school creative writing camp, anyway.. It was a three day intensive, so we met for three hours Friday night, eight hours Saturday and four hours on Sunday. It was a loonnnnnggg weekend, but so deliciously educational and fun. Going back to regular ol' work on Monday was rough. No lie.

I spent the whole weekend working on the second of my two NaNoWriMo projects. Specifically on developing my hero character and having consequent revelations about how those developments impact the plot of the whole thing. At the end we had to read aloud a three page concept document and I was SO nervous! I haven't really done that kind of sharing with an unfinished project before.

I got some really great positive and constructive feedback. One of the things people said was that I could make it into three novellas, rather than one long novel. And I LOVE the idea, but oh man it's going to be some work. I'm totally stoked to do it, now just to find the time..

What projects are you trying to find time for this month?

This post is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group, a bloghop dedicated to writers supporting one another through this crazy thing called 'being a writer'. They're a good bunch - check my buddies out!

The Great and Powerful A to Z Theme Reveal Blogfest!

(EEEEK My theme! Y'all... I think I've signed up for something big! It's going to be awesome, and also will involve daily writing. No pre-posting for me this year. Can't wait!)

Sign-ups for the 2015 A to Z Blogging Challenge are already under way. If you have done it before, you know how much fun it is (good for you!) and if you have not, this is your chance to give it a try! You can sign up to participate here.

One of the most burning questions participants ask themselves every year is: "Should I have a theme?"
Themes are not mandatory, but definitely fun. They let your visitors know what to expect, and help you create posts that line neatly up from A to Z. They also have an added bonus: They let you participate in a whole separate blogfest!

Two years ago A to Z participant Mina Lobo started the Theme Reveal, and we thought it was such a great idea that we made it tradition. It is now our very own, grand and festive way of rolling out our themes together!

Here is how the Theme Reveal Blogfest works:

Sing up on the Linky list below, and on March 23rd (Monday) publish a post on your blog in which you reveal your theme, tell us why it is exciting, and give us a hint of what to expect from it! Then, once your post is up, use the Linky to visit all the other blogs announcing their themes. Enjoy!

This is a great opportunity for all of you to get a jump start on your A to Z experience. You can link up with fellow bloggers, scout out and bookmark themes that you look forward to, and set out delicious themed bait on your blog to lure in wandering participants! This way, by the time the frenzied posting begins on April 1st, you will already have an audience eagerly awaiting your posts.

Sign up below, ready your theme, and post March 23rd on your calendar!

Happy Galentine's Day!

SO GOOD!

My dear friend Katie invited all us ladies out to lunch today, in honor of Galentine's Day. Which, for those of you who don't know (I didn't) is a holiday created by Leslie Knopes of Parks & Recreation. It's basically an opportunity to get together with all your favorite gals on February 13th, to celebrate how awesome we all are. Not bad, right?

I had been wanting to try making chocolate covered cherries for a while, and realized that Galentine's Day would be a great opportunity to try it out, and spoil some of my favorite people in the process. Don't they look delicious? Mmm.. 

We don't have any plans for Valentine's Day. If the weather is as nice as it has been, maybe a hike? *shrug* February is a big month because it's our date'iversary, Valentine's Day, AND my birthday! So yeah.. Lots of chocolate happening here in these couple weeks. :)

For reference, here's a video of Leslie explaining Galentine's Day. What's not to love?

IWSG: February

Just a quick IWSG post from me today, from a conference (and on my phone, hence no pics or formatting!)

I am attending a conference this week called Creating Change. It is a conference for activists, organizers and leaders in the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) movement. Today is the first day and we have not been talking about LGBT issues at all. Today is all about race.

We are talking about things like: how my whiteness impacts how I speak up for LGBT people; why we are so willing to talk about other movements but remain afraid of race conversations; how I understand the world differently because I am white.

So since it is IWSG day I am also thinking about:
* How do stereotypes and prejudices inform my writing (are my only characters  of color always the bad guys?)
* Are there ways that I can further the causes of justice that I so strongly believe in, through my fiction?
* How can I show my audiences that I am an ally and though I am white, people of color will not find themselves excluded or if included always negatively portrayed in my writing?

Are these things you think about when writing?