Greetings CSFF’ers,
Hope all the US members of CSFF are enjoying the Memorial Day vacation and that each of you had a refreshing weekend.
Lots to talk over with you all this week.
First, thanks to each participant who helped draw attention to MindFlights last week. For those of you writers looking to publish, be sure to check out their guidelines: http://mindflights.com/guidelines.php . For you poets, check out their contest: http://www.teen-age-magazine.com/item.php?sub_id=4327
Item two. Starting with the May tour, I decided to give an award to the blogger who came through with the best content over the three day period. This one was an easy decision. With three excellent, interesting, and somewhat controversial posts, Steve Rice at http://ansric.blogspot.com/ came away with the Top Tour Blogger Award. What is prize for winning, you say? Right now it is nothing more than kudos and hopefully a few more visits to his blog as a result of the recognition. At some point I hope we can develop a nifty button you can display on your site, as well.
Item two sub point.
If you stopped by my site during the tour, you noticed that I am indicating which bloggers I’ve seen post, and I’ve added a kind of rating system to help guide visitors with limited time to the blogs that have the most enticing content. Those of you unable to post more than a short intro and the required links are still helping the tour and the author, but those with scintillating content are also helping their own blog.
Item two second sub point. Rather than running through the list alphabetically, when I check your blogs, I first go to those who have linked to A Christian Worldview of Fiction (information WordPress makes available in my blog stats). I next check Technorati which compiles the list of blogs that have pinged them. Finally, I check the remaining blogs. Some of you with links in your sidebar may be posting earlier in the week but are not receiving recognition at my site until the end of the tour. If you wish to send me an email to notify me that your post is up, feel free to do so, but as long as you ping Technorati, I will find your post. (For more information about Technorati, email me).
Back to buttons, item three. CSFF has buttons and banners galore, all available for your use, including some fairly new ones created by Robert Treskillard. Stop by http://csffblogtour.com/?page_id=33 if you’d like to see what’ we have. Click on the appropriate link to find the code which you may copy and paste on your site.
Item four. Our next tour is for Kathryn Mackel’s Vanished. Those of you who signed up to receive a copy from her should receive your book soon. Hopefully a good number of you have ordered the book yourself. And even if you did not, you may still participate in the tour. Kathy has made herself available for interviews. You may contact her at kathrynmackel at aol dot com but I would suggest you don’t all wait until the last minute so you’re competing for her time. Another tip. If you have a long interview, you may want to break it into various posts which you can run throughout her tour.
Item five. In July we are featuring Donita Paul and her final DragonKeeper Chronicles book. I’d really like to put on an exceptional tour for her since she helped CSFF launch. We opened in May 2006 with 13 bloggers featuring a web site, but we highlighted our first book, DragonKnight, the following month. Sixteen of us chatted and linked, and toured. We commented at each other’s sites and announced our tour on discussion boards and email loops. From that modest beginning, our membership now exceeds 100 and tour participation usually runs between 40 and 50 bloggers. God’s blessing, without a doubt. Great bloggers, too, and authors like Donita who were willing to take a chance on giving out copies of her book to an unproven group. All that to say, if you would like to sign up for a copy of DragonLight, please email me at rluellam at earthlink dot net no later than Thursday, May 29 with your mailing address.
God’s care on each of you and yours.
Becky