Catching Up and Coming Soon

As you may have noticed, it's been a bit busy around the ol' blog in recent weeks.  There have been a number of very cool out-of-the-norm posts up lately, and I wanted to take a moment to highlight them to be sure you didn't miss anything - or in a few cases remind you that your participation is welcomed and encouraged!

First of all, today is the day the episode of The Lancast on which I am honored to be the guest goes live!  You can read all about it here: Talk Talk.  You can listen to the podcast by clicking this button:

I hope you will enjoy the conversation.

Over the past two weeks I have presented both a mystery and a challenge to you all.  The mystery involves two mp3s I found in my collection which had no identifying information on them, and I asked for your help in figuring out who/what they were.  One of the two was quickly ID'd (thanks, Jeff!) as "Tiger Tiger" by Scruffy The Cat; the other remains unidentified.  Can you help?  Oh please can you help? Really, you have no idea how much this is driving me batty! You can find all the info here: HELP! Identitfy These Songs!

The challenge I presented to you on Saturday, and I'd like to keep rolling throughout the month.  If you are on Spotify, you are challenged to come up with your own Frankenstein Playlist and share it with us all! What is a Frankenstein Playlist, you ask?  Read all about it here: Spotify vs. Frankenstein. You'll see there are already a couple very cool playlists shared in the comments section.  Looking forward to seeing what diabolical creations you mad scientists come up with!

Mike Essington, a/k/a Mike E. from the blog Strange Reaction, has written a fantastic book called Last One To Die.  I cannot recommend this one highly enough, folks - simply a must read!  Please check out my review of the book and find out where you can get yourself a copy here: Recommended Reading: Last One to Die.

There is also change afoot around these parts.  Assiduous readers have already noted that the long-time New Wave for the New Week series of posts has been put on hiatus.  After two and a half years, I've just gotten a bit burned out on them.  But I will leave it up to you - do you want me to continue the series or have you gotten burned out as well?  There is a poll in the upper left corner of the blog where you can vote "yes" or "no" to more NW4NW posts.  Voting ends 10/31.

I'm also going to begin sharing with you my journey through NaNoWriMo.  NaNoWriMo is shorthand for National Novel Writing Month, a challenge put forth throughout the month of November to write a 50,000-word novel from scratch.  I've been looking for ways to create some accountability for my writing, and as you'll hear me discuss on The Lancast, there's a story that has been floating around in my head demanding to be written.  So, with the support of my local writing group, I am diving in.  What am I nuts?

Finally, I'm considering some aesthetic changes to the blog itself.  I think it's time to spruce things up around here. Change the layout, maybe create a new homepage, link to some of the other things I'm doing online, etc.  Your feedback on these things is greatly appreciated, whether here in the comments, on the Facebook Page or on Twitter.

Hope to hear from all of you!