Friends:
The page labels on the A to Z blog have been changed to 2015. What once was the 2014 list is now a “coming soon” notice. The imminent arrival of this year’s badge was announced last week. If you know you are doing the challenge and want to get in early, which I highly recommend, you should follow the A to Z blog by email for the next week or two 😉 I follow them all year long. They post some good stuff.
If you tweet with me and you want play A to Z games on Twitter during the run-up and the challenge, let me know. I’ve got @AprilA2Z and a few friends who are already in on a Twitter list. I will be happy to add you to it. I informed Twitter of this development last night.
Just looking at the timestamps from my inbox, the A to Z blog seems to be posting between 12 am and 5 am Pacific Time, most commonly at 1 or 2, but often at 5. I don’t do well converting Pacific time eastward, for some reason. Find yourself an app and work it out. Of the last 20-odd posts I have received, a few came through at midnight Pacific, and only one posted at 7 am.
Contributors and Guest Bloggers (High Priority!):
Our working A to Z schedule is on a page at Just Gene’O. Unless someone has a last-minute problem and can’t do the posts they are listed for, we are down to three letters: N, O, and Y. I am perfectly willing to write these three posts, and to fill in if someone has to bow out later in the year. For now, these letters are open on a first-come, first served basis to current contributors until January 31.
For ties, best topic wins the day. I am giving priority through the weekend to contributors who came on board after the invitations went out and were not asked to join in because I didn’t want to ask too much of new contributors. You can say you want one of these letters on the public threads, but please do not discuss specific topics on the blog or on the Facebook timeline. That is for email or private messaging. The theme and topic reveal is an event. We don’t want the specifics to get out early because it ruins the suspense.
Ideally these posts will be 350-500 words (400 is perfection), include a single piece of creditable art, and include one link to a friend or to a post from our archives. Should be representative of our everyday content. If you write for the challenge here, linking to your own blog is acceptable and encouraged. Giving yourself incoming links from this blog is one of the perks of contributing. I will add official A to Z art as the featured image to display in the WordPress reader, and include a standard blurb that links to the A to Z blog list once the posts are in.
Those of you with access to the queue will see some draft skeletons for my posts appear in the next couple of weeks. Pay attention to the headline structure and follow it with your posts, but keep the content amongst thineselves, please. We are not interrupting our features to do this. We’ll just have an extra post every day in April.
My personal survivor badge. Earned it fair and square. Sourcerer needs one.
We’re getting a collective survivor badge, and we’re making some new friends in April.
Those of you who are also in on the Feminist Friday Project:
I’m posting the first front page announcement at Just Gene’O later this week so I can have it to share all over the Internet this weekend.
Everyone Else:
Stay tuned for Melissa’s first Arrow post later today.
Things are coming together nicely.
That is all, mateys.
Credits: World Domination Meme by Deviant Artist Shirekat. A to Z Survivor badge by Jeremy of Being Retro. The Emanuel Wynne jolly roger is a public domain image.
Sourcerer 
I’ll get my thinking cap on, but I’m good for a letter! Have a great evening/day (damn time zone!).
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May I book a letter please? Any will do. And for the A-Z Twitter games, what do we have to do? Would love to join in the fun. 😊
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If i had fewer contributors and more letters left, I would certainly do, Eloise. But, for all practical purposes, these are taken already. Posted this on UK time and got messages almost immediately. I will add you to the Twitter list, though. The idea is to mix friends who are either doing A to Z or interested in with @AprilA2Z itself. They tweet tons of shareable links all year long, but from mid-March to early may, that is a mighty stream of content. So we can all watch the list, see what one another are doing, and see what A to Z is sharing on twitter. Could be fun.
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Sounds like fun! I look forward to following along. Thank you 😊
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The A-Z twitter thing sounds fun! 😀
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I’ll happily add you . That is going to be a very useful list during March and April. I set it up a couple of months ago because I thought it would be a good way to keep up with one another during April when we are all busy reading new blogs and answering comments. If I get enough friends added, that’s probably going to turn into my exclusive retweet list during April and the way I keep up with what friends are doing with their own A to Z.
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Aha interesting! What would be expected on twitter? Just sharing a blog link with that hashtag?
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I keep swinging between doing it and not doing it on my own blog…. I think you need to sign up really quickly and get your name high up on the list order to get much out of it and I’d also have to suspend all my usually activities for the month…. I’m so indecisive…. I have done it for the past three or four years though.
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That is a conundrum. Especially if you have a lot of people reading and joining in with your normal activities (and you seem to), I’d have to think hard about suspending them. Even registering after several hundred people were already on the list last year, I did get a lot out of it, but not having at least the first two weeks ready to go was a terrible mistake and I almost did not get through it.
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My stats have been showing a steady rise as well so I’d hate to mess with my regulars. I think I’ll give it a miss and keep watching the fun over here 🙂
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Just from watching your social media, my stats, and the comment threads on your contributor announcement and your first review, I think that’s probably the right call.
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