Blogging A to Z 2013 Theme

The Blogging from A to Z Challenge is going to be upon us again soon, and today there’s a bloghop within a bloghop reveal of themes, hosted by Mina Lobo and David Macaulay. This year, participants have the option of selecting a category, like writing, books, music, movies, history, and photography. I went with writing, though my original idea for a theme had been music-related.

I was going to spotlight and briefly review a favorite album for most of the letters of the alphabet, but then I realized there would be problems. Some letters would be no contest, like E for Empty Glass, I for It’s Hard, and Q for Quadrophenia, but there would be some letters that would give me problems with choosing just one.

For P, would I choose Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme, Psychoderelict, Plastic Ono Band, or Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones, Ltd.? For W, would it be White City, Who’s Next, The Who Sell Out, The Who by Numbers, Walls and Bridges, Who Are You, or Wednesday Morning, 3 AM? For R, should I pick Revolver, Rubber Soul, or Rio? (And yes, I know one of those things is not like the others.)

So I decided to go with a bit of a similar theme to last year’s, character names. This year, I’m going to spotlight some of my favorite chapters I’ve written. I’m old-fashioned and like to name my chapters, giving them the feel of being like short stories, miniature novels unto themselves, not just short scenes that only last 3-4 pages.

Some of the chapters I know for sure I’m going to be spotlighting:

“Brouhaha at the Buffet,” from my 10th Max’s House book. I wrote the first draft over a decade ago, and this chapter still makes me laugh every time I read it. Everything that could go hilariously wrong does go wrong at a Seward-Green family outing to a new buffet.

“Daphne and Rózsika,” Part LII (52) of my handwritten magnum opus Cinnimin. Set from March-August 1998, it’s a cautionary tale about two of Cinni’s teen granddaughters who think they know better than everyone about their respective issues. One story has a happy ending, the other not so much.

“Paternity Warfare,” Chapter 15 of my first Russian novel. This has long been my favorite chapter of that book, and it’s also the shortest, only in the upper 4000s. I lost all my old formatting when I converted my old MacWriteII and ClarisWorks files, but I hadn’t forgotten that some of Ivan’s dialogue was in bold italics because he was so livid!

“Ellis Island,” Chapter 22 of my first Russian novel, the first chapter of Part II. I had a really good time doing the research for this chapter, set in May 1921, at the tail-end of mass immigration to America.

“Who Will Stand, Who Will Fall?,” the 42nd and final chapter of my first Russian novel (barring the brief Epilogue). Though Boris is the antagonist of the first two books, even I felt sorry for him at the end. His emotional collapse in the courtroom is real, even if he does deserve to lose his paternal rights.

“Rendezvous with Destiny,” Chapter 26 of Little Ragdoll. This was one of my favorite chapters to write, since its central event is based on the real-life event that inspired the entire book.

“Union with a Snake,” Chapter 41 of my Russian novel sequel. This was one of my proudest achievements, not just because it was a bit over 17,000 words in the course of just three days, but because it’s just so filled with tension, drama, underhandedness, and black moments. Boris is at his all-time snakiest here, and I had so much fun writing it, as much as Lyuba suffers from his vile, depraved actions.

Along with that theme, I’m going to be attempting another theme, fonts. For each letter, I’m going to be coding each post in a font starting with that letter (e.g., Palatino, Bookman, Helvetica, American Typewriter, Didot, Georgia, Lucida, Verdana, Rockwell). This secondary theme may not show up on everyone’s computers, since you need to have the font installed on your computer in order to read it. I’ve deleted several fonts from my computer, such as Arial, Comic Sans, Curlz, and Times New Roman, so I won’t be able to see those fonts as such even if I’m reading a webpage that was coded such.

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