Shout Out for Blogfests

As many of you know, I love blogfests. They're a fun way to meet new bloggers, practice writing in genres or styles or with prompts you normally wouldn't, and to practice your craft.

I usually keep a list of upcoming blogfests over there on the right, but as you can see, all the blogfests on my list are expired, and I haven't seen any new ones advertised recently. Is everyone just exhausted from the A-Z Challenge? Or am I just not tapped into the blogfest Source?

Although I will be hosting a blogfest upcoming (probably at the end of June...but I haven't got the deets planned yet), I'd like to beef up the list for between now and then.

That's where you, dear readers, come in. Do you know of any upcoming blogfests I can add to my list? Join me in scouring the blogosphere for blogfests and let me know what you find. I'll add them to my list and we can have loads of fun blogfesting the summer away!

A-Z Challenge Wrap-up

So, for those of you playing along at home, you can see that I dropped the ball on the final stretch of the A-Z Challenge, having missed V-Z.  My excuses? Well, the semester was rushing inexorably toward closure and I had to hurry up and finish my MFA thesis so I can graduate, plus I had tons of grading to do for my freshman composition courses. So basically I was buried under it.

But now that the MFA thesis has been turned over to the thesis committee, I'm seriously relieved. The screenplay is pretty good, if I do say so myself. In fact, one of my mentors who has connections wanted to set up a staged reading in high places. We'll see if anything comes of that.

I still have grading of final papers to do for my composition courses, but hopefully that won't take too long.

Then I'll be back to just doing the day job...and searching for a job relevant to my new MFA. So if anyone knows of any writing jobs out there? Or teaching writing? Or maybe editing? Or something...anything?

Meantime, I'll try to finish up the V-Z posts. I still need to write Artie's tale to complete the Happy Acres tales...if anyone was paying attention to them. Which leads me to my only criticism of the A-Z Challenge: It was just too big. There were so many participants that instead of finding a bunch of fun new people to follow I ended up frustrated trying to sift through the thousand-plus participants for blogs I might be interested in. And everyone else was so busy trying to sift through them all, that my blog traffic actually went down (not that I'm all that, you know, popular to start with, although I did gain some followers, so that's good!).

Anyway, hang in there and for those of you following the Happy Acres Saga, there will be more soon. And everybody stay tuned for details about the upcoming blogfest...

What did you think of the A-Z Challenge?