Welcome Some New Blogging Networkers

Or...The Dragon invites you to network with new blogs

This afternoon, I conducted a workshop for the Gulf Coast Writers Association at Edison State College in which 30 or so folks built blogs (many of them for the first time) and learned some skills for attracting attention to their blogs. I'd like to invite you to visit these blogs, leave comments, and encourage these networkers.

For those of you who participated in the workshop today, thank you so much for your time and attention. I think we had a lively and productive discussion and got some good work accomplished. Sure, Blogger gave us a minor nightmare there at the outset, but life got better and we now have the following list of fabulous blogs to check into. I encourage everyone to click on as many of these links as you can make time for and leave comments (remember the code for boldfacing?). A few of these blog addresses, unfortunately, just didn't work. I did some clever spelling in the Blogger searches, but just wasn't successful. So if you see your blog name here (or if what we have is a Web site) without a link, type your URL for me in the comments and I'll edit this post to get it included.

Also, there were a couple of questions we didn't have time to get to at the end of the workshop. I have those on your notecards here and will address them in a post tomorrow evening. A huge thank-you to fellow author Robert Dean Bair who took photos during the afternoon.

These are in no particular order.

Life With An Artist

Author Jan Nieman

Mangoes and Champagne

Crafting and Sewing with Carol

Collage Art

Catch the Spirit of the Islands

That's My Story

Gipsy Chant

Kids and Dogs

Michelle James' Writes of Passage

Frustrating Times

Poker Prophets Book

Ninth Wave

Designing Connections

Simple Pleasures

BJElam

Libretist Lyricist Author

Otto Stanley Wulff

Peace At Lambeth Bridge

Cooking With Connie

Dance In The Bible

Lakes Park Gardeners

BIS on Systems
Sun fun Solar life

Grandparents For Great Textbooks

Peter Alden Yule

If you run out of time, just come on back to this post to visit some of these networkers/bloggers any ol' time! They'll appreciate the leg up and any networking ideas you'd like to suggest in their comments. (Note: the comment link is just below this post. Click and it will open the text window in which you type your message to me.)

"Some days, you just want the dragon to win."

Tags: blogger, workshop, blog, comment, network, blog address, link

Internet Blogging for Storytellers and Journalists
Or...The Dragon recaps a fabulous event

This will be a fast recap so I'm really not doing it justice, but the Naples Press Club (NPC) hosted a panel discussion last night at the Norris Center. Attendance was higher than anticipated and the audience stayed intently focused for a solid hour on a technical (all right, let's call it what it is - NERD CENTRAL) subject. It was a blast!

The dimly lit picture above features our moderator, Phil Lewis, the editor of the Naples Daily News, Sandy Lender (me), Brian Womble, Ivan Seligman, and (not in the photo) Elizabeth Kellan. Elizabeth is the gal who put the whole thing together so kudos to her for all her effort. Photo courtesy of Phil Jason and the low batteries in my digital camera. Phil is the co-author of Creative Writer's Handbook, available at www.prenhall.com/english, which we discussed during the punctuation series at the end of March.

If you click on the names in the paragraph above, you can check out their blogs, which I encourage you to do. These people put time and energy into these things and know what they're doing. This is high calibre blogging and not the navel-lint-investigation you get subjected to 90 percent of the time on the blogosphere these days. Yes, I believe you know what I'm talking about. :)

We're back to normal writing posts next week. We'll have another installment in the dragon stories series Monday so I look forward to entertaining you!

"Some days, I just want the dragon to win."
Tags: Naples Press Club, blogging, blogosphere, internet blogging

Some Good Blog Links
Or...this augments Sandy Lender's blogging panel this evening

Fantasy Author Sandy Lender (me) is participating in the Naples Press Club's blogging panel discussion this evening, and I'm willing to bet the following links will come up. I'm posting them here so folks don't have to scribble them down while we're talking, and so you visitors at home get the benefit as well.

A good sitemeter link is at sparklit.

A good pinging link used to be at Blogflux. I loved it. But it became erratic this summer. It may be back up but, honestly, I don't have time in my writer's life to check it daily in the off chance that they're back on top of things again.
A great pinging link that has fabulous features is at Ping My Blog.
Another decent pinging link that has just the basics is at Pingomatic.

And do you know how to build your html tags? Technorati has a tag generator.

I've used these tools in some of my online marketing efforts for my fantasy novel Choices Meant for Gods, and will employ them further when my short story anthology (What Choices We Made) and second novel (Choices Meant for Kings) are released soon. They're just extra tools to build your blog's presence and help you monitor your success. Have fun!
"Some days, I just want the dragon to win."
Tags: blog, tag generator, site meter, blogging panel, pinging, link