All I Want for NaNo ~ blog hop

From November 1-3, J. A. Bennett has been running the All I Want for NaNo blog hop, and here's what it's all about:

"I first heard about NaNoWriMo three years ago shortly after I started blogging. I thought people were nuts for even attempting to write 50k in a month. Yet, I couldn’t pass up the chance to try it out for myself. Since then, I’ve done NaNo (including camp NaNo) 4 times--this November will make 5.

Because of this, I’ve spent a considerable about of time on NaNoWriMo.org, and they’re doing some amazing stuff for people. I have a 14 yr old cousin who went to LTUE last year because NaNo came to his school, and he decided he really liked writing. If that isn’t awesome, I don’t know what is. 

In these past three years I’ve felt awful for not giving back when NaNo has been doing so much for writers everywhere. That’s why I decided to write an anthology with a few awesome friends and donate all the proceeds to NaNoWriMo." - J. A. Bennett

This blog hop requires that we post what we want for NaNo, and put a buy link to The Spirit of Christmas Anthology, as well as the blog hop code so people can visit all the other blogs that have participated. So, without further ado:

1. What I want for NaNo is to hit 50k once again, and to also keep working on revising my novella. Yeah, I really want to do both!

2. The Spirit of Christmas Anthology  - BUY

3. Here is the list:

Oh, and by the way - there are other prizes being given away, so check out J. A. Bennett's blog for more details!

P.S. It's the start of Day 3 of NaNo, and so far I'm at 5,720 words. I got a slow start because I didn't write anything on Day 1 - circumstances beyond my control! People turning 80, that sort of thing. :D - but I caught up on Day 2, and now it's Day 3 and I have yet to do most of the writing I want to do today.

Ohhhh those high school dances - a blog hop

I'm here, I'm here! It's not far off my bedtime, but I couldn't go for the night before writing up my post for this fun bloghop, hosted by two very cool bloggers, Emily R. King and Kelley Lynn! The rules of the bloghop are as follows:

I think this was Year 11
 - so I was 16.

Here are the rules for participation: 

1. Post pictures of your high school dances. (Make sure you tell us which one is you if they're group pictures.) 

2. Share with us your funniest high school dance story.

3. That's it!

I was 14 I think,
heading off to a
school formal.

Well, folks, I'm terribly sorry to say that apart from being a total weirdo in high school, I was pretty boring to hang around (unless you were an oddball like me, which my best friends in school happened to be!). We loved to listen to loud rock music, do silly drawings and pretend that our favourite book characters never really died and were still living on somewhere out there (okay, just in our heads...). We were total nutters, still are actually, and all that really mattered to us was that we had fun. The result was that there weren't any embarrassing dance stories, at least not that I can remember, and not that involved me dancing (unless you count any moment when I was dancing).

Even here, in Year 12 (at 17),
I was perfecting my frozen-in-time smile.

As you can see from my pictures, they're pretty boring too, but I will say I did hear one interesting story about the dance I was heading to in the picture to your left there up above (it's moved now). While my friends and I were hanging out in the dark dance venue at our school, wishing some hot guy would come and dance with us, the cops were receiving reports of vandalism occurring on school grounds somewhere. There was even a police helicopter out and about, casting its light around the school grounds looking for troublemakers. That's why some perfectly innocent boys arriving late to the dance got apprehended as suspects, thrown bodily to the ground, that kind of thing. I'd had no idea about any of this until a few years ago, when I ran into my former high school principal year co-ordinator! (I always get these mixed up) in the library where I work, and we fell to reminiscing about the good ole days. Haha.

One last picture to round off the post... Me looking slightly like a zombie vampire, quite unintentionally. I think this was one of those photos where everyone in the picture was looking in different directions: