Thursday Thirteen - 240 - 13 Things I'll Be Up To in 2012

1 - I'll start with the more personal items, although even these have writer's-life spillover.

Giving the garden some TLC. I was SO busy last year getting SAINT SANGUINUS ready to release in November, the garden was pretty much left to its own resources. As it filled out through the spring and summer, I could only mow the lawn and do emergency triage gardening. This year I'll be able to pace myself better.

2 - De-cluttering the apartment. For my husband and me, this is going to be a year-long project.

3 - Continuing with my acupuncture. For a migrainer and chronic pain sufferer like me, acupuncture has given me more concrete relief in a two-and-a-half-year time span than my previous treatment which lasted for more than a decade.

4 - Here at A Piece of My Mind:

I'll be taking part in the year-long Movie Madness Challenge.

5 - In April I will once again take part in the month-long A to Z Challenge hosted by multiple bloggers but with a central sign-up site.

6 - In November I will take part in my 5th Blog Blast For Peace.

7 - This year I'm planning to expand my author interviews to include more arts industry folk.

8 - I'll be concentrating on widening my Facebook reach.

9 - And also expanding my Twitterverse.

10 - This spring, my serialized dark fantasy tale following Scorpius, the falconer's apprentice turned lord's manservant, will be collected into novel form and self-published through Amazon and Smashwords.

11 - That will require making a non-live-action book trailer to promote it.

12 - Then I will be sending my little darlings out for reviews.

13 - And most exciting of all, I'm planning to attend Fan Expo in Toronto this August as a vendor, with both of my books.

Aug. 23rd - 26th Hope to see you there!

I'm blogging at The Popculturedivas - Scroll down for 5 on Friday and Blog Blast For Peace

I'm blogging at The Popculturedivas today.

Join me as I contemplate Mimi Lenox and the power of one individual to create a global peace movement.

Dona Nobis Pacem

Grant us peace.

Hundreds of bloggers are talking about peace today. Hundreds more are placing their wishes for peace as their status on Facebook. And even more people are tweeting peace on Twitter.

When a unified prayer like this reaches out into the Universe, it's a powerful force for change. I want to thank all of you who are reading this, posting about it and tweeting peace for reaching out to one another today.

For my Blog Blast post this year, I'm turning to my great passion - dance.

In the clip below, Louise Lecavalier performs a section of a larger dance piece for La La La Human Steps, a contemporary dance company from Quebec, here in Canada.

I had the incredible pleasure of seeing this company perform live while I worked at the performing arts theatre in Toronto in the 90's. And as I set my mind working on what to post for Blog Blast this year, I found myself gravitating toward Louise Lecavalier's signature struggling movements.

I thought about our tendency to fight things.

Not just one another in war's great theatre. Not just parental figures, romantic partners or career rivals. We fight all of these and we fight ourselves. It's the essential ingredient that makes up conflict, and where would we writers be without it to construct our heart-stopping stories?

The thing that I love about this dance piece is what happens when Louise decides to stop fighting. When she surrenders to her partner, or, on a deeper level, to the inevitable.

What would happen if we all decided to stop fighting for a moment? If we all stood still, stopped flailing, stopped using our energy to avoid, to evade and push away?

What would happen if we stopped thinking of surrender as a form of loss? Perhaps surrender is a form of courage. Peace cannot enter if we're in perpetual motion.

On this day of wishes for peace, I wish all of you that sweet moment of surrender, when we catch our breath and feel how wonderful it is to simply BE.



SIGN UP HERE to join the Blog Blast. Scroll down to the bottom of this link to find Mr. Linky.



If you'd like to take this Peace Globe and fly it, please do!

Thank you to Mimi Lenox for launching this incredible event four years ago. It just grows and grows and grows.

Through the Opera Glasses - 68 - One Month Countdown to the 2010 Blog Blast For Peace

The very first Blog Blast For Peace appeared in the Blogosphere in 2006.

I didn't begin blogging until March of 2007, but it wasn't long before I began to notice blue peace banners on the sidebars of many of my blog friends.

These are actually called Peace Globes, and they're my favorite part of the Blog Blast event. It's amazing to see what people come up with. In fact, I did a special Thursday Thirteen featuring my favorite Peace Globes in 2008:

Peace Globe Gallery at A Piece of My Mind

I didn't know the first thing about how to create one, but I really, really wanted to participate. So I messed around in my Paint program until I managed to make my very first one, in time for my first Blog Blast post.








Because there are many bloggers who don't know how to make Peace Globes, there are Worker Bee bloggers who will make one for you. My friend Travis is a Worker Bee - if you'd like a Peace Globe, contact him at Trav's Thoughts.














So what does a Blog Blast For Peace post look like?

You can simply fly your Peace Globe.

You can share a song about peace from You Tube.

You can share a poem about peace.

You can write down what peace means to you.

You can share your hopes and dreams for peace.

You can write about peace in your Facebook status.

You can tweet about peace on Twitter.

The most important thing to remember is to name your post Dona Nobis Pacem, which means Grant us peace. In this way, the same message will be sent into cyberspace on the same day.

This movement was launched by Mimi Lenox, who is thrilled, awed and humbled by the fact that bloggers from more than 50 countries around the world take part in this incredible event.

I am one of 140 Canadian bloggers who have flown Peace Globes during past Blog Blasts.

I invite all of you to join in next month, Nov. 4th, when we inform the Universe of our collective desire for Peace.