The Girdle of Melian

. . has given us an award! A-to-Z Challenge Co-Host M.J. Joachim has awarded all A to Z Challenge Minions, Assistants, and Helpers with the Dragon's Loyalty Award ! Guidelines: 1. Display the award and thank the person that nominated you. Thank you, M. J.! 2. Present this award to 15 other bloggers, making sure to link to their blogs, and visit them to let them know you're sharing the award with them. I'm going to fudge this a bit and link to my last week's post below, where I featured all sorts of intriguing bloggers to visit - each one of them gets this award! And so do all the commenters! And Nicole !, who was kind enough to let her minions know about the award. 3. Write seven interesting things about yourself in your blog post when you accept the award. The last time I shared seven random facts , I noted that: "I can knit but I haven't made socks yet. Even Jamie and Ian [from Outlander ] can make socks!" Not only have I knit soc...

ink happy! I was catching up on a lot of blog comments this past week (and still have a few more blogs to visit!) so I thought I'd share with you a few of the interesting, intriguing, exciting blogs I've been dropping by: Carol's got two great craft-related posts, one on Writing Sequences of Events , and the other on Ordering Your Words In other craft posts, Jo Bourne had a great one recently on setting and the city a story is based in Forgotten Bookmarks features just that - the cards, leaves, recipes, photographs, notes, poems, etc. that people have left behind in books over the years. Plus she has a giveaway of a vintage books collection every Friday! Nathan Bransford asks whether you'd like to be a full time writer or keep your day job. Sara and Lara and ZanMarie shared some lovely photos of the southern snowstorms! Margo's got a great list of Reasons Why I Love Being a Book Reader/Blogger - I agree with them all! Ayak at Ayak's Turkis...

ermaids ! But first, we have two winners of Tara's giveaway of Hands-on Therapy : Ella and Brigitte! Congratulations! Please email me your Amazon Kindle contact info. And now, mermaids ! Teenage girls have to deal with a lot of tough firsts. First zit. First crush. First... mermaid's tail? In the fourth installment of Hélène Boudreau's breezy, fun and "unputdownable" Real Mermaids series, our favorite mer-girl Jade can't think of a better way to celebrate peace in the underwater mer-world than with a tropical vacation in the Bahamas with her family and BFF. Soon, Jade is enjoying the tropical sunshine, all-you-can-eat buffet, and island day trips. But when Jade gets lost in the island's famous waterfront Straw Market, something doesn't feel quite right. A body splashes into the water as a cruise ship enters the harbour and a teen boy selling conches from his boat behind the market knows more than he's willing to admit. With no bod...

ot a visitor today! Happy to have Tara here, talking about her new book and other writing related chat: Thank you so much for having me, Deniz, but also for all of your support over the last handful of years. It means an awful lot. Hands-On Therapy After yet another failed attempt at meeting a worthwhile man, in-charge businesswoman Marie Reid drunk dials a so-called sex therapist. Not one to back down from a challenge, she keeps the meeting even after sobering up and vaguely recalling some reference to spanking. When the guy shows up with endless blue eyes, sexy bare feet, and a commanding demeanor that literally wets her appetite, Marie’s reluctance vanishes in a wave of lust. But submitting to just a few deliciously sinful nights of hands-on therapy has her already falling for her very hands-off counselor. What's your earliest memory related to writing? The year the space shuttle Challenger exploded my 6th grade English teacher assigned the class to write a poe...

nusual sort of post today. I haven't been editing lately due to stuff happening at home (good things, but things that take time), and I'm very far behind in updating the knitting blog! For this week's ROW80 update , then, I'm cross posting a knitting update from my Simple Scarf blog! First a quick recap of 2013 in my knitting life: I was nominated for a Liebster Award in February! As part of the award, I answered eleven questions and, funnily enough, this was the first one: 1. What prompted you to start your blog? I was trying to keep knitting and cats off my writing blog! A temporary lapse in format, I suppose! I also offer the Liebster Award to anyone who'd like to accept it, but I've got eleven questions for you to answer! Next up, I shared knitting related photos from a visit to the New York Public Library , and then I offered a sneak preview of mini-Alex 's Doctor Who scarf ! Inspected by Sam, along with a Christmas scarf that...

elated ROW80 check in - from last week! (By the way, the honeycomb in that B is for all of you who might be suffering from colds or flu this week.) So I haven't actually done any editing this past week. I did finally share my vignette with a couple of betas, and am eagerly awaiting feedback. I also hope to participate in the January Exercise on the Forum before the month is out. It's a great one! " A Moment of Explosive Change In every life, there are moments where change comes upon us suddenly, unexpectedly, or with a force we could never have predicted. And in fiction, it's change we want to see. What is explosive change? Anything that has a permanent impact on your character, good or bad. What kinds of things are we talking about? Well, there are break-ups, deaths, unexpected positive pregnancy tests. There are stunning events - terrorist attacks, natural disasters, revolutions - whether we're involved in them directly, or only seeing the world as we...