Being a Blog Host or Guest by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #BlogHost #BlogGuest

 

I have an active blog eclecticwriter and often have guests. I’ve been guesting on other people’s blogs. Since the first of the year, I’ve been noticing some things about the blogs I’ve visited. They all did something I often do not do. So I’m making a note to let the person pposting to know when their material will go live. Hopefully I’ll remember. Now for some questions from people who have blogs and those who visit other people’s blogs.

 

How do you promote your own blog when you have guests? Do you let them know? Do you post the appearance on Facebook, Twitter or other places that allow promotion? I try to do them all.

Do you go to your won blog when there’s a visitor and read the comments and make your own if needed? This is something I hope to do better with.

 

Now for those who are guesting, a few questions. Do you visit the blog and let the author know you’re glad to be there? Do you promote your appearance on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and other places that allow this type of promotion? Do you check periodically for those who have visited and made comments? Do you dialogue with those who have commented?

 

When I visit, I do promote the blog I’m visiting on the day I appear. I also chack for about a week to see if there are any comments and also to comment if needed.

 

Other people’s blogs can give you venues and find readers and writers you may not know.

 

 

My Places

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 http://wwweclecticwriter.blogspot.com

https://www.pinterest.com/shadyl717/

 

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Crazy Canucks, by J.C. Kavanagh

 

The Twisted Climb

Book 1 of the award-winning Twisted Climb series

Winter time in central Ontario, Canada, brings about snow, ice, freezing rain, blizzards and white-outs. If you like extreme weather, you'll fit right in. If you don't like the cold or any of the above weather conditions, well, you won't like Canadian winters. Me, I love it. Having the crisp, icy-cold wind ripple against your cheeks and feeling the delicate frostiness of snowflakes descending on your face... ah, that is a rejuvenating winter experience.

Me and my awesome and often crazy partner love to cavort in the elements. Summer is for sailing. Spring and Autumn are for taking care of the woods on our rural property. But winter - oh winter - it's for:

• Chopping and stacking bush cords of hardwood
• Shovelling snow (and driving snowblower)
• Hiking the property (with glass of wine in mittened-hand)
• Snowshoeing the property
• Bonfires 
• Enjoying home-cut fries/poutine around the bonfire
• More snow shovelling (and driving snowblower)
• Star gazing at back of property (with glass of wine in mittened-hand)

Ian and J (carved by Ian with chainsaw)

Firepit area

One section of trails

Clearing driveway in 'Canadian' disguise

Woodstove ready

After the hike... photobomb

And our newest outdoor entertainment: Axe/Knife throwing

My partner has this thing about knives (is it a guy thing?) and ever since axe-throwing became popular, he's wanted to build a target and set it up beside our shop. So, during the Christmas break, he decided it was time to design and build the target. Once that was accomplished, then of course we had to buy a set of throwing axes/knives. No sense building a target without deadly instruments.

Have you ever thrown an axe? Or a specially-designed throwing knife? Not for the faint-hearted. But definitely a challenge. Also a hilarious challenge. Most throws will have the axe/knife 'clunk' against the target and fall straight down. Or, it will completely miss the target (it's 40" x 50"). Great fun!  

J-I Axes homemade target. Yup, it says 'EyesBull'

Canadian chill at -25 Celsius (-13 F)

While some people might think outdoor winter activities are for crazy Canucks, I like to think they're for anyone crazy enough to enjoy the elements. That's me.

However, if you're the kind of person who prefers to curl up inside your home with a hot cup of cocoa, then I have two perfectly good, non-deadly instruments for you to hold on to. The first is: The Twisted Climb, voted Best Young Adult book, and the second is The Twisted Climb-Darkness Descends, voted Best Young Adult book in 2018. Book 3 in this exciting series is on the way!

Until next time, stay safe everyone.

J.C. Kavanagh, author of
The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends (Book 2)
voted BEST Young Adult Book 2018, Critters Readers Poll and Best YA Book FINALIST at The Word Guild, Canada
AND
The Twisted Climb,
voted BEST Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers Poll
Novels for teens, young adults and adults young at heart
Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/J.C.Kavanagh
www.amazon.com/author/jckavanagh
Twitter @JCKavanagh1 (Author J.C. Kavanagh)
Instagram @authorjckavanagh

What is Special About the First of January?

 

            The first of January, also known as the New Year, is the largest celebrated holiday in the world. In almost every country, whether Japan, Australia or Brazil, the day is marked with festivities, firecrackers and feasts.

            Astronomically speaking, January 1^st is an odd time for the New Year. It signifies neither the spring nor the fall equinox, nor does it coincide with either of the two solstices. It lies in the middle of the earth’s journey between the Zodiac constellations of Capricorn and Aquarius and doesn’t match with the end or beginning of any of the seasons.

            In original cultures, spring marked the beginning of a New Year, logically enough, since the season marked rebirth—of plants and crops, after the barrenness of winter. It’s the season when, according to natural cycles, animals and birds mate. In China, the Spring Festival coincides with the New Year. According to the ancient Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian, Iranian and Mayan calendars, the year commences with the spring Vernal Equinox, usually in March or April, when the sun starts its northern journey.

            So how did January 1 become the beginning of the New Year? The first instance occurred in Rome, in 153 BC, under the rule of Julius Caesar. It marked the Roman civil year, when Roman consuls, the highest officials of the Roman republic, started their one-year tenures. After the fall of the Roman Empire, medieval Europe banned January 1^st as the New Year, considering it a pagan holiday, and replaced it with the 25^th of March, which roughly corresponds to the date of Jesus’s death and resurrection.

            The use of January 1 as the New Year can be traced to the Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XII in 1582 as a way to correct the Julian calendar. The imprecision in the Julian calendar, which added a full day every hundred-and-twenty-eight years, created difficulties for the Church in calculating Easter, celebrated on the Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon on or after the twenty-first of March. European scholars had been well aware of the calendar drift since the early medieval period. After much debate, in 1622, the Catholic Church adopted January 1 as the beginning of the New Year.

Many people in the world follow two and, sometimes, more calendars, pertaining to their cultures and their religious holidays. Best wishes for the New Year, whenever you celebrate it!

Mohan Ashtakala (www.mohanauthor.com) is the author of  "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy, and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)

The Past is a Different Place...by Sheila Claydon

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Readers are taken back to the 1800s in Remembering Rose, the first book in my Mapleby Memories trilogy. In the third book, due out in May and still untitled, readers are taken to the 13th century. Until today I didn't expect to travel further back but now I have learned a whole lot about life 50,000 years ago.

Why? Well because my 20 year old granddaughter, who is studying Biology at university, asked me to check a paper, shortly due to be submitted, for flow, and also to advise on losing approximately 400 words without significantly altering the research. 

As it is a scientific paper I had to read it through several times to fully understand it, especially the scientific terms, but once I done that I became really interested. I learned, for example, that animals and humans have domesticated each other. Initially wolves and humans lived in the same area but without interacting, but by the time humans began to develop into agricultural societies, about 10,000 years ago, they were working together. It is thought that a human preference for smaller, more docile and therefore easier to manage dogs, are what led to the breeds we see today.

One of the interesting changes is that wolves could solve tasks by observing the behaviour of others and they could also follow the human gaze to 'see' a problem, whereas domesticated (wolves) dogs cannot differentiate between the intentional and accidental actions of their handlers. Domestication has taught them to ignore cues not specifically addressed to them. Instead, living in close contact with humans has taught them to rely on help rather than trying to solve problems independently.

Cats, of course, are very different and it is thought that initially they probably took advantage of the the mice and food scraps they found around the first settlements. Later they learned to live with humans, becoming more docile and developing behaviour and reward conditioning, but even today, thousands of years later, they are still largely independent, and able to find their own food and breeding partners.

Domestication of horses occurred much later, around 6,000 years ago and, surprisingly, given how important horses have been for transport, farming etc. over many centuries, their behaviour has changed far less than that of dogs and cats. While they benefit from the food, shelter, physical care and protection humans provide, left to their own devices they would still very quickly reassume a feral lifestyle.

There was much, much more. All of it interesting. However I found the animal/human relationship the most intriguing. Probably because I have been around dogs, cats and horses all my life but never, until now, considered how they have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. And how we have helped them do just that. And how they, in turn, have helped us domesticate ourselves. 

A Cup of Kindness

 

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Happy New Year, dear readers. 

Auld Lang Syne means “in old times,” to the Scots people. Robert Burns was trying to keep his beloved Celtic language alive when he popularized it. He described Auld Lang Syne as ‘an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man’s singing.’  

The town of Bedford Falls sang it at the end of It's a Wonderful Life, when a happy George Bailey finally realizes that his life has been a worthwhile struggle. We sing it at the dawn of a new year, to mark the passage of time. To grieve a little while we promise to do a little better, love a little stronger, be a little kinder. What words could be more poignant as we enter the third year of a global pandemic?

The words say, “We’ll take a cup o’ Kindness yet." That refers to the old tradition of toasting: raising a glass, a “cup o’ kindness,” but I am always moved by the notion of kindness in a cup overflowing, bestowed on each other at the start of each year. 

Kindness. A whole cup of it, I wish to you this new year of 2022, my friends, and beyond.