HAPPY BLOGVERSARY TO ME!

When I wrote my first blog post back in December of 2010, I had no idea six years later I would still be sharing a part of myself with YOU, my awesome readers. I've come a long way and connected with thousands of people from all over the world...

Moldova.

Singapore.

Germany.

Russia.

Over 20 countries.

Now, 564,000 people later, I'm still feeling the love of connecting with this wonderful community. I feel like I've grown up here...grown stronger in my role as a writer and hopefully, I've occasionally shared a post which inspired, amused, or entertained you.

This past year found me expanding into novels (completing a young adult fantasy novel, LUNADAR: HOMEWARD BOUND), revising early reader historical fiction chapter books (ALL ABOARD TITANIC and CHOCOLATE TRAIN WRECK) and even a number of picture books. I've even began research on my third historical fiction chapter book to take place during World War II. 

My world revolves around the beautiful symphony of words dancing across a computer screen. Swirling phrases and descriptions creating worlds as real to me sometimes as the everyday one I live in. A new year on this blog is beginning for me and a new series where I study how certain words affect my writing. The fact I can sneak in a story here or there about my interesting childhood is just icing on the cake.

Not exactly as cool as the icing on the cake above, but hopefully enough to carry me through another year...;~)

Happy Blogversary to me!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO ME & A GIFT FOR YOU

 

I can't believe it. It's that time of year again when I can celebrate another anniversary here on my blog. What began as a nugget of a blog idea four years ago has grown into a a stopping place for almost 400,000 page viewers. Visitors from more than 20 countries slide on by to check out my posts and I am incredibly humbled by those numbers.

My first post on December 6th, 2011 was in response to the wonderful time I had participating in Tara Lazar's PiBoIdMo. Who knew 840 posts later I would be celebrating my 4th anniversary doing what I love to do and that is reaching out to all my lovely followers.

To help celebrate these past four years and hopefully the start of the next four, I would like to share an anniversary gift with some lucky reader of this blog. One lucky person will have a chance to win an autographed copy of my picture book, THE STORY CATCHER, as well as a swag bag chocked full of STORY CATCHER goodies. The more you follow me, the more chances to win!

Here are different ways you can enter:

Follow me on this blog
Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Donasdays
Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/donasdays
Follow one of my boards on Pinterest at www.pinterest.com/donasdays
Join my STORY CATCHER Fan Club 
Comment on this post & tell others about my giveaway

Just click on this Rafflecopter link and enter my giveaway!

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/10046a021/?

Good luck and here's to another four great years!

 

Blurb: Addie comes from a long line of readers or "story catchers" as her family likes to call themselves. Every time Addie tries to catch a story on her own the wiggly words play tricks on her. She tries different ways to make those words sit still but it will take a little faith for Addie to become the next STORY CATCHER.

Buy Links:Amazon Kindle ¦ Paperback ¦ B&N ¦ Smashwords

JOIN THE STORY CATCHER FAN CLUB!Membership includes:

 
Membership Certificate

Bi-montly Newsletter full of mazes, puzzles, games, news, and other goodies

Reading Log for earning STORY CATCHER AWARD

Happy Anniversary To Me!

Sometimes in the rush to balance everything on my plate, I forget just how far I have come with this blog. I realized last night that today, December 6, 2013, is my official TWO YEAR BLOG ANNIVERSARY. Time to do the happy dance!

Then I had to stop and catch my breath for a second. Two years. Two wonderfully, turbulent, mesmerizing, overwhelming years where i worked hard to take this blog from an audience of one...thank you, Janet...to something much, much bigger. I looked over this blog's current stats and thought I would share just how far I have come in twenty-four little months:

Number of posts written or hosted...500

Number of pageviews...253,721 (That's a QUARTER OF A MILLION VIEWS PEOPLE!)

Number of followers...2525 (People who follow me or this blog through Blogger, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Tumbler, and Quora.)

Number of countries visiting...19 (This little blog is read in the United States as well as Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada, Russia, Germany, Australia, India, Malaysia, Philippines, China, France, New Zealand, Spain, South Korea, Bahamas, Bangladesh, and the Ukraine.)

Excuse me while I take a moment to put my head between my knees. My world is spinning with the possibility there are actually that many people who freely choose to stop by this blog. I am honored and humbled by such kindness and will strive to keep my posts worthy of such expectations.

These past two years have been a series of ups and downs. Some of the downsides included my Yahoo account being hacked and some people were worried I was stuck in some third world country without enough money to get home. Fortunately my friends were intelligent enough to know I never left Tennessee, so a simple change of passwords and creation of a different email account resolved that problem. Another downside was more insidious and ongoing. An ex-student of mine chose to stalk this blog and attempt to post comments which just meant I had to block the multiple accounts as they were set up, tag them as spam, and delete the comments. Small price to pay to keep my readers safe. The stalking continues but as long as that student chooses to refrain from posting comments, who am I to prevent them from enjoying my posts? Maybe they will learn something along the way...

The ups have been far greater in number. I have participated in three of Tara Lazar's PiBoIdMo challenges and came out a winner with 98 PB ideas to show for it. I have participated in Julie Hedlund's 12 X 12 forum where I now have 10 completed manuscripts and 19 works in progress under my belt. My FREE AUTHOR PROMOTION grew from 31 authors participating the first year with 350 autographed items to 43 authors this past year and 1000 autographed items! I've submitted some of my stories to 53 agents, received 2 requests for additional submissions, and managed to get one of my stories published in January of this year through Chicken Soup For The Soul: Angels Among Us edition. My WRITERLY WISDOM series (which is sadly coming to a close at the end of December) has been a joy to host where all kinds of lovely authors, agents, and illustrators have taken the time to share their own wisdom with my readers. And then there was my RAYS OF SUNSHINE blog post which has received over 15,000 page views to date! You can check it out if you'd like by clicking on the link...http://donasdays.blogspot.com/2012/05/rays-of-sunshine.html. I'm not sure why that particular post connected with so many people but it sure makes me giddy inside to realize it has!

So what's in store for the new year? 

You know me. Forever changing, forever evolving. I gave it a lot of thought and have decided to make a few changes with my readers in mind and to continue my mission to support this wonderful writing community as much as I can. With that in mind, here is my new blogging schedule beginning in January:

Monday...my readers will still receive inspirational posts but I might expand it a bit more instead of just focussing on writing analogies.

Wednesday...as an extension of my FREE AUTHOR PROMOTION, I will create my BOOK NOOK REVIEWS in which I will shine the spotlight on various authors who have kindly provided autographed books as part of my giveaways during my city's Children's Festival of Reading every May. This way, not only do I get the chance to show off their books to the over 15,000 people who walk by my booth each year, but I will now expand that FREE AUTHOR PROMOTION to my over 2500 followers...and maybe THEIR followers as well as I help spread the word about great books!

Fridays...I'm trying something new. I'm calling it my TALES FROM THE BAYOU. Whenever I tell stories about some of the things that have happened to me both as a child  growing up in the swamps of Louisiana and as a young woman trying to find her way in the world, people have said, "you aught to write a book!" So I figure, why not just tell you about the wild and crazy things that helped me become the person I am today?  Some of my tales will be good for a chuckle, some might bring tears to your eyes, and some might even touch your heart. At least that is what I will set out to attempt and you, my dear readers, will let me know if I succeed or not.

Well, there you have it! A look back at the past two years of this blog and my life as a writer. What will the next two years hold? Maybe an agent offering representation? Maybe a book deal? Maybe another Chicken Soup story to add to my collection?

I can only hope...

Happy Anniversary To Me!

I had a dream of starting a little blog a year ago in response to a challenge from Tara Lazar to write a post describing what last year's PiBoIdMo experience was like for me.  I barely even knew what a blog was and spent many a frustrating hour trying to create a blog platform for myself.  With a whole lot of luck and some help from my new friends in the writing community (thanks Beth Stilborn and Denise Mclennan Bruce), I managed to create my blog, ON THE WRITE TRACK, and posted my very first post.  You can read it by going here... http://donasdays.blogspot.com/2011/12/piboidmo-was-piece-of-cake.html

I had read somewhere the way to become known in the writing community is to blog often so I decided to create a goal for myself that I would post every single day for an entire year.  365 posts and I didn't even know what I was going to write about.  I felt in my heart that I had something to give back to a community of people who had welcomed me into their ranks and treated me like family.  So I wrote for them and for the other newbie writers like myself who were struggling to figure this whole "writing thing" out...;~)
 

Somehow along the way I found my voice and began getting new followers.  The first time I saw 5O little face icons peeking in on my blog I did a happy dance.  When those numbers bumped up to 100, I did another happy dance.  But when my numbers crept past 200 and kept going I teared up.  Why?  Because it amazed me people chose to stop by daily to read my posts and so I tried my hardest to infuse inspiration and motivation into every sentence I wrote.  A lot of readers (over 1300 of them) read a post I published in October entitled Helping Hands (
http://donasdays.blogspot.com/2012/10/helping-hands.html) and it aptly described how I envision my blog...as a source for others to feel a little bit better after having read one of my posts.  Now here it is, a year later, and I am absolutely blown away by the stats I just pulled for this post.  As of Monday, here are what my numbers look like:

Followers:  302 and growing

Published Comments: 4855

Posts: 332 with 307 published and 25 in drafts (I had to pull some of my published posts back into drafts because of possible future publication issues of my stories)

Visiting Countries: 24

Monthly Hits: 18,109

Total Pageviews: 149,692

I know my blog is a mere pebble in an ocean of blogs but to me, these numbers represent the acknowledgment of a year's worth of effort to inspire, entertain, and inform through my writing.  My readers feel like family and you are the measure of my worth as a writer.  In honor of my one year blog anniversary, I would like to say thanks for believing in me and this blog by giving away some prizes. 
 

If you feel like leaving a comment on this post, I will add your name to the hat for one lucky follower to win a children's book, or novel of your choice up to a retail value of $15 dollars.  Or if you prefer, you may choose from my vast resource library of writer reference books and we will figure out at a later date which one you would like to have.  

But if you get the urge to tell others about my WRITERLY WISDOM coming in January or encourage others to join my FLASH FICTION FRIDAY fun,  just let me know in the comments of this post, and your name will be added to the hat a second time!  The winning name will be announced Monday, December 17th and I will try my best to get the prize to you in time for Christmas!

For anyone else who wants to take advantage of my other anniversary prizes, I will do a general critique of any story you have up to 2000 words.  Depending on how many people might take me up on my offer, I will schedule a time that is convenient for both of us to make good on that promise.

There you have it.  I didn't quite reach my goal of posting every day this past year but that's okay.  I made new friends, added a credit to my "published" list and had the chance to learn from some of the world's best writing talent.  What more could I possibly wish for?

Out On A Limb...

 

 

Do you ever have days when you are feeling stressed or everwhelmed with your writing?  When you feel you are out on a limb all by yourself and wondering how in the world you even got there?

 

As my one year blog anniversary gets closer I am thinking a lot about this past year...about the milestones I have achieved...and I'm taking the time to reflect on my growth as a writer.  I'm also planning on how I want 2013 to play out despite the dire warnings that NO ONE will figure out how to create a calendar after December.

 

But I don't want to be lazy while out on that limb.  I will be the first to admit many nice things have come my way...new followers, new writer friends, new critique groups, one of my stories lined up to be published in the coming year...all wonderful benefits from working hard and focusing on my goal to become the best writer I can be.

 

 

I don't want to turn my back on opportunities to learn from those who traveled this path before me.  I don't want to miss out on the challenges I know are waiting for me with the coming new year.   I have to pay attention to what I'm doing and hang on tight to my limb so I can stay grounded.  It can be scary out here all alone.



 

 

I know I will make mistakes but hopefully nothing serious and I will try my best to learn from the lessons shown.  I want to do this.  I KNOW I can do this.  I am driven to write as surely as I must take my next breath to live and I know I'm not alone in that feeling.

 



 

 

And when it comes time for my stories to make it out into this big ol' publishing world of ours, I will have made my home out on that limb.  Confident in the knowledge that I can finally call myself "author".  THAT is the day I will soar...