Weekend Coffee Share: In Which I Am Not Sure Whether I am Coming or Going

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’m not sure when I last published a coffee post. It’s been awhile. I’d have to go to the archives to figure it out. And no matter, it’s good to be here today.

I’d tell you I’ve not only been absent from the blog, but absent from the entire Internet for a week or three now. I’m on my way back, but it will take awhile to return to form, because blogging is like any other skill-based activity. You get rusty when you don’t do it for awhile — even if it’s only a little while.

And I’d tell you I am not sure where this blog is headed at the moment. I’m keeping it running at least through the first week of November, because that’s our two-year anniversary. At the very least, I’m marking that occasion.

Since Luther’s agreed to recap The Walking Dead (which starts tonight!) here on Saturdays for the duration of the season, and since he delivered his Fear the Walking Dead posts for the past few weeks even when I myself wasn’t posting. Well. We’re extended at least through the end of The Walking Dead’s season.

A not-so-random aombie from The Walking Dead – Season 1 – Episode 01

Which is probably long enough to get things back on an even keel and keep right on rolling for another year. (Luther’s got a new release coming this month, btw. I have a feeling it’s gonna be something a lot of people get interested in and fall in love with.)

From me, for the next little while, you can count on a #weekendcoffeeshare post on Sundays, an early-week gaming post, and weekend music on Fridays. If I do nothing but that for the next couple of months, and Luther brings the Walking Dead Saturdays, this blog survives into 2016.

But you know there’s gonna be more. You know once I get back into the swing of things, I’ll bring the photos back on the off-days. You know I am going to keep bugging active contributors for comics posts and sci-fi posts and even though we missed the interview this month, I want to keep doing the interviews.

I’m back, folks. Or at least on my way back. Still trying to take over the internet.

Remember this guy?

From here on out, the blog threads get answered first. Facebook and Twitter can wait. Every good thing that’s happened to me on the internet in the last two years has happened, directly or indirectly, because I built this blog.

I’m done neglecting it. I’ll neglect the entire rest of the internet first. Comments will be answered in good time either by me or by a contributor from here on out.

Have a music video. I’m off to write a post for tomorrow.

If you don’t know about Comparative Geeks and Drifting Through by now, you should totally take 10 minutes to check those blogs out.

You still have time to add your coffee post to the linkup at PartTimeMonster and share it with #weekendcoffeeshare on Twitter.

From the Instigator-in-Chief: I am not Myself These Days

I’m shaking things up a bit. For the next little while, I’ll be posting some personal-ish stuff when we don’t have anything else going. I figure doing that gets us more than we get from me posting a status update on Facebook, and we’ve got the space. I haven’t known whether I’ve been coming or going for the last ten or so days.

I won’t run down the laundry list of problems I’ve dealt with in the last little while. I’m not convinced anyone wants to read that stuff on a blog — that seems to be what Facebook is for — and everybody’s got problems. Tl;dr version: the activity level here has suffered from my lack of attention, and I’m doing my best to ramp it back up, starting today.

What that means is I’m redirecting most of my Facebook time to the blog. My jaunt into Facebook over the last 10 months was about giving that network an honest chance and exploring its potential for growth. I won’t say it has NO potential, but I will say that I’ve failed to make it work, and failed at the expense of the blogging. So done with it for now.

I’ll still check in on FB and keep up with my Facebook friends. Post a few status updates a week and share a link or three now and then. But as far as blogging on Facebook goes, I’m done. If you want to keep up with Gene’O though this last quarter of the year, best be reading this blog.

And it’s almost planning time. World Domination season is upon us once more. Time to start talking about what we’re doing in 2016 on the blog, and about how to make more lovely friends 🙂

We’ll see how it goes. Might not work at all. But since the Facebook thing is no longer working, and this blog needs WAY more content than I’m able to wrangle out of other people just now, well. I’ll just have to produce it myself.

This is a really great thing about Facebook and Twitter: If I spend the next twelve months doing nothing but pay attention to blogs, FB and Twitter will be right where I left them when I decide to go back. The blog works differently. It will run down if I don’t keep it up.

I’m not letting this blog run down. I’ve invested too much into it, and really. Without the blog, there’s no point to the rest.

Brace yourself! Gene’O is coming.

The Ultimate Roundup of Blogging A to Z in April Theme Reveals

First: Thanks, Chouett.com, for the awesome interview, and for featuring Sourcerer this week. It was a LOT of fun, and you made it oh so easy for me.

Some of our contributors are doing the A to Z Challenge at their own blogs, and I promised to toss their theme reveals into a roundup today. I also have friends who aren’t contributors here who help me mightily week-in and week out. If I had a couple of hours to really think and gather up links, I could probably round up 60 or 70 theme reveals for you.

And I haven’t even actually hit the list yet on account of I’ve been answering threads and loading posts all night. Since I don’t have the time to make a huge list, here’s a list that includes four categories of blogs.

• Sourcerer contributors.
• Feminist Friday hosts who are doing A to Z.
• Bloggers I (or in one case, a friend) started following to during last year’s challenge and they’re still commenting on our threads.
• One’s here because we met through a blogger I started talking to during April last year, and we talk OFTEN.

Just to make things more interesting, I’ve alphabetized the list. That way, if  you are just joining us and you don’t know who my sister is or which one of these blogs is the first one I linked to, they all have an equal chance of grabbing your attention because you have nothing to go on but the blog title.

As always with a list of this magnitude, if you belong on it and I’ve left you out, that is an oversight and if you point it out to me, I’ll apologize and add you.

Alex Hurst, Fantasy Writer in Kyoto

Comparative Geeks

Infinite Free Time

Melissa Barker-Simpson

Nerd in the Brain

Not a Punk Rocker

Part Time Monster

Things Matter

Victim to Charm

Write On, Sisters!

(No Tuesday Texture today because honestly, I just don’t have time to load one and this post must take precedence. But there will be a Wordless Wednesday tomorrow, and the Tuesday afternoon photos ain’t going nowhere). 

#geekpastiche FTW!

To Friends and Contributors RE: Blogging A to Z April Challenge

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.

If you know me well enough to ask and want to play #AprilA2Z games on Twitter, I have @AprilA2Z and some friends on a list. Happy to add you

— Sourcerer (@Sourcererblog) January 21, 2015

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.