Image acquired from the Internet Hive MindÂ
Category: Other Cool Blogs
Other Cool Blogs: I is for My Indie Bookshelf
Logo from the website
Hey, hi everyone visiting for the A-to-Z challenge. I have a variety of types of blogs I do, one is pointing to other cool blogs. Today is pointing to a cool website. Many people participating in the challenge are readers, book reviewers, and writers. If you haven’t checked out this site, I highly recommend it. Looking for your next favorite indie author? You might find them here.
How it works is indie authors just upload their books, and you get randomly recommended one (within the limits you established). Best-selling author or brand-new, everyone gets the same chance to be recommended. Plus you can sign up for Beta read and ARCS.
Check it out!
G is for Good
I know for A-to-Z, the concentration is on blogging, but I also do a (nearly) daily vlog over on TikTok. Mostly it is book quotes, but sometimes the viral sounds are just too delicious to pass up. The books presented are: The Enchanted Rose by Emily Leverett (a historical romance series with paranormal elements) and The Royal Nothings by Drew Bailey (an apocalyptic horror fantasy).
Answer this question in the comments – what would you consider a Good way to mark a book you are reading and what would be an Evil way?
Magical Words: Motivation (D is for Diver)
Photo by Ricky Shirke on Unsplash, meme words added by Erin Penn
The admonition of the meme is harsher than my normal, but I think the picture captures the base of it well. The dancer works every.single.day to have her body respond elegantly and swiftly to the dance requirements. Her workouts don’t only include the present dance, but other muscle memory building techniques, stretches, balance, movement, and freezes.
Writing is the same. It can’t be a sometime thing. It can’t be put off until tomorrow, and then tomorrow again and then tomorrow again. A to Z blog tour can help break the cycle of “I’ll find time to write tomorrow.” Writing muscles – from speed of typing, creative flow, self-editing as you go, having the characters actually talk to you, grammar and paragraph flow, and dozen of other techniques and skills, need constant work. Of course sometime life interferes, just like sometime a dancer can’t dance.
I’ve been a better writer. I write faster and more, when I write daily. It’s what works for me. A doctor-author-friend can only write on weekends; this method works for him. What writing exercise builds your muscles and gets you to your goals, that is the path you need to dance on.
I got the meme words from Lucienne Diver in her Magical Words post from October 3rd, 2012, “Motivation”. The URL is: https://www.magicalwords.net/lucienne-diver/motivation/
Other Cool Blogs: ACLU – The Interstates
Photo by kaleb tapp on Unsplash
The interstate system brought America together and sealed our dependence on cars. It provided says to traverse the continental-sized country, bringing easy transportation of good, reducing costs, providing prosperity, and spreading manufacturing across the nation.
Putting in the system required land, lots of it, near population centers. The obvious choice leveraging eminent domain in acquiring the needed land was to use it to remove the less desirable areas, the run-down, the poorer sections whose voices could be ignored.
Those struggling on the edge were pushed off. Solid working communities were divided by a road system connecting the prosperous. Black, indigenous, and immigrant populations were disportionally impacted.
Was it really necessary to build America the infrastructure to help businesses and their owners on the ill-fortune of the working class and blacks yet again?
Check out the opinion blog on ACLU for more details. It is eye-opening.
Racism by Design: The Building of Interstate 81 by Jay A. Fernadez (August 10, 2023): https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/racism-by-design-the-building-of-interstate-81