After the party...Crusade biz,

The Publication Parties are over. It's been seven weeks of following writer's journeys to becoming authors and I hope those of you who came along learned as much as I did. A warm thank you to authors Christine Bell, Clarissa Draper, Alex J Cavanaugh, Helen M Hunt, N.R. Williams, Lisa Maliga and Ann Best who gave generously of their time and expertise. During this series I have been too busy to take in all the advice/links that these wonderful authors provided, so I'm hoping to chill a little and do that in the next few weeks - as well as getting back to my myriad of writing projects. I have several short stories I'm about to submit, and two novels to complete. I'm glad I've got access to the wonderful Writers Knowledge Base too (link in the right sidebar), so I can access more info on the dreaded synopsis, pitch and query.

The final two winners of Publication Party goodies were - Jai Joshie - congratulations! who won the Synopsis critique by Ann Best and the Grand Prize was won by Tony Benson, a tireless blogger who came to every party and commented on every post. Congratulations Tony! I'm sure you'll share the goodies with your wonderful Margot.

So what I'm saying is you won't be seeing me as much as usual around the blogosphere, (cough, cough) but I'll still be around - Writing First, Blogging Later. I can never resist a blogfest (a great way to hone writing skills and to showcase a WIP). I have an entry in JC Martin's Race for Survival Blogfest. This will be published on my Flashquake blog on Friday (where I have the link). Then there is the Broken Heart Blogfest (link in my right sidebar) in a couple of weeks, and before long many of us will be heads down doing the A-Z Challenge. I'm publishing daily on my L'Aussie Travel Blog where I can showcase a different country, travel-related story etc. Looking forward to April 1 (I already have some posts prepared).

And finally..some blogging issues...

Lately many new followers aren't leaving a link back to their blogs.  The solution has already been thought through by the fearless Crusade leader, Rach at Rach Writes. She's written a marvellous detailed post about it today: Blogging tips: following blogs and making sure you can be followed (Part 1). If you're new to the blogosphere you will find this invaluable.

Another issue is that email is becoming the new 'comment'. Most bloggers write posts hoping other bloggers will read them and leave a comment so they can gauge reactions and at times get a conversation going regarding the point of their post. If you send an email instead it is just between you and the blogger; no one else gets to see what you think. If we all did this, there'd be no comments and posting would lose much of its purpose. I'm sure you've seen some bloggers who say 'I blog for comments.' Well, that's a big part of it. And the best way to comment (unless you have something private or unprintable to say) is to leave a comment at the end of a post.

On a brighter note, blogger is now offering more fonts (thank goodness!) and soon they're adding even more. So if you haven't been desperately digging around looking for something a bit larier than the few they had on offer, you can find these new fonts if you go into Template Designer, Advanced...

So if you got to the bottom of this post, please leave a comment.