Inviting You Over for May, and Desert Island Books (including Neil Gaiman with a chainsaw)

hat does everyone think of guest blogging? It's lots of fun to hop around and catch authors and fellow bloggers on each other's blogs.

I've had a few wonderful guests here, including Ayak from Ayak's Turkish Delight, Talli Roland on What to Eat While Writing, and Sara, with a wine glass... I've been a guest myself, on Kait Nolan's blog and over at Turkish Muse. I even had a post featuring Vince Ditrich of the band Spirit of the West, listing his favourite children's books.

But it's not enough! I'd love more! If you've got an idea for a guest post and would like to visit my blog in May, please let me know.

To balance out the recent post where I discussed an article poking gentle fun at romance novel covers, here's an essay on The Awl that considers their place in the canon, and why Romance Novels are the Last Great Bastion of Underground Writing.

Speaking of books, which authors would you desperately need on a desert island?

I interviewed Barbara Rogan on Wednesday - here's her desert island authors list. Of course, I'd add Tolkien to my list, among other authors... [cough cough] Neil Gaiman [cough]

Thank you to all my new followers! Looking forward to seeing everyone on Monday, for the second campaign challenge of Rach's Fourth Writers' Platform-building Campaign. I love the way these challenges get me excited about drafting, right when I'm in the midst of slogging through edits. Still 2/3 of Rome, Rhymes and Risk to edit - I'm loftily aiming for the end of March at this point.

And if you'd like to enter another story challenge, Yikici is hosting an exciting collaborative story:

"Just like any other Flash Fiction Challenge; but with a slight twist (I can't help myself); we will each write a paragraph (no more than 250 words per entry) to the on-going story (which will start below and continue in the comment section/linky list, I will create a page to collate all the entries). Once we finish this rather exciting online project, I hope to publish our collected works in an eBook - either market it for free or put it on sale for a worthy cause, I usually choose children charities; but we can decide the final outcome all together once the project is completed."

Come join us!

(Gratuitous image of Neil Gaiman to add excitement to the blogpost. Take a chainsaw to that novel!)