Alas, that blogger was slayed sometime after October/November. My posts have been sporadic (or less so), my reading of your blogs pitiful and embarrassingly non-existent. It’s not because your blogs aren’t awesome! They are. Truly. Many of you are the type of bloggers I aspire to be.

I just don’t have the motivation/concentration/time to sit down and just enjoy WordPress anymore, whether it be for myself or for you guys.

And I feel really guilty about it. About once a week I’ll think to myself, “Libby, you should go write a blog post. And read some blogs. And leave super nice comments on ALL of them. And discover new blogs to follow. And keep following them. You really should, Libby.”

But do I ever listen to the little voice in my head?

No.

Sometimes I get as far as turning on my computer somewhere beneath all the junk on my desk and opening up Google Chrome. I’ll click open YouTube to listen to some music as I prepare myself for my amazing return to blog stardom (return? or ascend? I wouldn’t say I was ever a blogstar ) and, well, you know the rest. I’ll hear an awesome song, and decide to post it to Facebook. And then I spend the next hour clicking through pictures of Anne Boleyn and Lord of the Rings (though not usually in the same photo) and before I know it it’s time to get something done that I should have done three hours ago, or three days ago.

You all know it, and I know a lot of you have gone through similar stages in your blogging careers. Some of you may have given up on your blogging dreams and are no longer with us. Some of you pulled your act together and kept going for the rest of us to enjoy.

I can’t stomach either of those right now.

I know I can’t dedicate myself to re-becoming the blogger I was last year, I don’t have the time, but I don’t want to tell you all I’ve decided to abandon Blogland for greater adventures.

….So, this is my lame compromise.

I’m announcing an official leave of absence. During this absence, I plan on devoting as much time as I can (and time is a slippery little bugger) to my current WIP. (Yes! I have a WIP! Hallelujah!)

Now, during this time, I’m sure I’ll get a stellar idea for a blog post, but worry not! The urge will be satisfied. I will write the blog post and save it to my hard drive. And once my leave of absence is over, I should (hopefully) have enough accumulated enough blog posts to make a bit of a comeback as my former blogger self.

The lovely blogger I used to be got awards like this from other lovely bloggers like Diane, Darlene, Dreampunk Geek, and Writing Underdog. Thanks guys!

I don’t know how long this leave of absence will be. I’m going to say something like…until I get 30 000 words done on my WIP. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but my writing stints are short and sweet and the IP part of my WIP is very IP. Who knows how long that will take?

I’m really going to try to get back on track with reading your blogs, however. It’s been too long, and it will be longer until I decide to make my insanely successful comeback in a couple months. I wouldn’t want you to forget about me, and I certainly want to keep myself up to date on what’s happening in your sections of Blogland.

I feel like a politician with all my promises.

Sigh.

Farewell until next time, my bloggy friends!

Hugs!

~Libby

BUT WAIT.

THERE’S A POST SCRIPT.

WHOAA.Click for source. 

PS: I do have a kind-of-not-really-legitimately acceptable excuse for my recent weeks of non-blogging. I’m actually still blogging. Just not here, and not as me. I mentioned back in November I had a new idea for a YA novel, and you might even remember her name (though I went back later and changed it to try to deceive you). The character in this idea was a seventeen-year-old blogger/eco-hippie by the name of Storm Rose Bennett-Clark, and you might happen to follow her blog, which launched back in March. During the winter months, I tried putting her story into a novel, and it just wasn’t working — so I decided, somewhat impulsively — to create a blog for her, and tell her story that way.

I’m sure some of you pieced that together already but…Storm isn’t real, and neither are her brother Mica or her friend Hanna. They’re characters I created, characters who may or may not end up in a book one day. They’re not involved in my current WIP, but anything is possible. Pedro the Gnome, however, is real. He sits on my bookshelf, hating the permanent smile etched on his face when he just wants to cry. All four of these characters have Twitter accounts, and you can watch them interact with each other and interact with them yourself.

Storm Bennett-Clark: @StormRoseBlog

Mica Bennett-Clark: @MicaIsaMineral

Hanna Withrow: @HannaTheTerribl (her Twitter account is run by Zozie! Thank for being such an awesome Hanna-impersonator!)

Pedro the Gnome: @GnomeThePedro

That is my confession, my dark secret. But, if you enjoy my writing (which I hope you do) and enjoy Storm, Mica, Hanna, and Pedro, then you can get the best of both worlds by reading her blog, leaving comments, and Tweeting them. I think Storm is going to start blogging more about her personal life in the next couple weeks, and you get to hear all about Jonas Blythe and learn more about Mlle Rousseau!

And if Storm leaves a comment or likes your blog or even Tweets you, you should feel pretty honoured to have a fictional character knocking at your virtual door! Can you imagine if JK Rowling got Harry Potter a Twitter account and blog?

Or at least, it was. Today’s ongoing, albeit light, snowfall kind of ruined the point of this post, but whatever.

The last few weeks have been delightfully spring-ish — the melting snow, the scent of last year’s grass, the muddy mess that destroys any shoes that aren’t rubber boots.

It’s made me very anxious.

This time last year I was in the midst of a writing frenzy, attempting to finish a novel by the beginning of May and that I had started in February(ish). I was writing all the time, everywhere. In the woods, in my room, in the car, before breakfast, during supper, until the wee hours of the morning. This time last year I was writing between 3000 and 6000 words a day, seven days a week. I ate, drank, thought, slept, breathed writing.

And, as you all pretty well know by now, I haven’t really done a whole lot since then. I told myself I deserved a break, but I’ve come to the conclusion I exhausted all my drive to write. Aside from a few brainstorms, a dozen or so poems, and the odd essay or two, I haven’t committed myself to any heavy writing in almost a year.

However, these last weeks, with their wet-ground scent and snow-melt dripping sounds, something has been triggered. Muscle memory? My brain and fingers remember these sounds and tastes and smells…and something is stirring. My body has come to associate the mucky month of March with insane amounts of heavy writing. I went for a walk the other day and realized after about ten minutes that I was thinking of my fantasy novel.

What does this mean?

Nothing, at the moment, other than the fact that I’m distracted, especially when I’m outside.

There’s just too much going on right now, unfortunately, for me to act upon this bizarre reaction my body is having to the weather. Hopefully I can bottle it up and save it for later. Does it work that way? Well, no, but if I tried to simulate spring by splattering mud all over my shoes and melting ice cubes above my head when June arrives…

Silly, Libby.

I will try to blog more often, though! I’ve missed you all!

Aaand, here a few blogs I think ya’ll should check out if you haven’t already:

The Storm Project

Janice In Nunavut

I hear you.

Reblogged from The Storm Project:

Hello, Internet! Welcome to the launch of The Storm Project, which, if you haven't figured out already, is a blog. My blog, specifically.

What happens at a blog launch, I'm not entirely sure, but feel free to make a cup of tea and mingle among the, er, crowd. Take notice of all the twinkle lights I put up earlier, glittering in the low light of the early 1900s theatre against varnished wood, and the artfully stacked books, and the bean bag chairs by open fires so you can talk about your favourite books with a fellow book lover.

Read more… 1,066 more words

Your curiosity will soon be sated, however! You will finally be properly introduced! We’re launching the blog tonight/tomorrow (depending on where you live) but things are still rapidly changing and evolving. I’m ridiculously busy with this project, and it’s not even my blog! Customized headers and backgrounds, themes, editing, Twitter, Facebook, logos, promoting — it’s a lot, which why a team of elite bloggers, readers, writers, friends, and secret agents have been selected to help Storm out on her blogging journey.

Not really. It kind of feels like that, though.

Don’t worry. I have a few blog posts of my own up my sleeve, and once Storm’s blog gets underway I’ll try to blog more. Try being the key word here.

BUT THIS ISN’T SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT ME.

Storm’s blog — which, in her interview with me yesterday, was announced to be called “Storm’s Blog” — will now be called “The Storm Project.” Her Twitter is still @StormRoseBlog because @TheStormProject was already taken (???), but her Facebook has been renamed and can be found here.

Go like, follow, and whatnot. I believe Pedro the Gnome is trying to convince Storm to let him get a Twitter account, so stay tuned for that…I might also invest in a Twitter account at last. Maybe. There’s a lot of maybes going around, isn’t there? Is there a vaccine for that?

Let them grumble!

Oh, by the way: the little pics we used to ‘design’ those little promotional ads in this post were found by using Google Image with key words like “clip art” “nature” “adorable.” The websites they were from were mycutegraphics.com; bestclipartblog.com; dker.com, and webclipart.about.com (at least according to the notes Storm sent me)…

Well, you can’t see her, but trust me, she’s here, at least virtually.

Storm Bennett-Clark, who, as I mentioned before, will be running a personal blog to be launched on TUESDAY MARCH 11, has stopped in for a little visit and an interview. We’re loving this whole promotional aspect of her online presence. Can you tell?

All right. Here we go.

What will your blog be called?

Storm: Probably just “Storm’s Blog,” because I’m original like that, but the URL address will be something like ‘beaniehatsandtea.’ It depends on what’s available, but as soon as I find out, you’ll be the first to know!

What made you want to join us lovely people here in Blogland?

Storm: Hahaha, a lot of things. I really enjoy reading blogs and watching vlogs, which is something I only started doing recently. I enjoy the community aspects that can grow up around them, and the social interactions that people all over the world have with each other really fascinate me. And, as I hope to become a journalist someday in the not-so-far future, I thought it would be a good chance to hone my writing skills.

And your life is pretty fascinating.

Storm: Haha, yes, some people think so.

Are you going to incorporate your personal life in your blog?

Storm: Definitely. All 4 of my grandparents lived in the States in the 1960s, and were avid members of the social movement involving hippies. That’s how my parents met. Today, the Bennett-Clarks are what we like to call “eco-hippies” — this basically means we try to live as environmentally friendly as possible; instead of being commercial consumers we try to focus on other things, like family, literature, learning, arts, yoga, organic eating, and self-expression. We don’t think of ourselves as hipsters (hipsters never think of themselves as hipsters, anyway), and I’ll talk more about this in the blog.

What else can we expect from you?

Storm: I would say to expect nothing too unexpected. I like schedules and outlines, but being spontaneous is something I enjoy as well. I’m going to talk about things like my family (twin brother Mica, two younger sisters Sepia and Moonflower, best friend Hanna, awesome parents), my hobbies (reading, music, crafting, drinking tea, movies…eating), and opinions (feminism, hipsterism, conformity), and how I generally live my day to day life. 

Will you tell us a little about Pedro?

Storm: Ah, yes. Pedro. He’s an interesting little guy. He’s a wanted fugitive by the Global Garden Gnome  (GGGG), for reasons which will be explained on the blog. When Hanna was in England a few years ago for vacation, he crawled into her backpack and smuggled himself into Canada. She and Pedro didn’t exactly get along, so he came to live with me. Hanna calls him my souvenir, but he’s decided to be my “sidekick.”

I’m intrigued. Okay, just a few quick questions. Favourite band?

Storm: Bon Iver. Or Daughter.

Favourite food?

Storm: Peach yogurt.

Favourite colour?

Storm: Orange.

Favourite book?

Storm: I personally don’t think that’s a question. It’s unanswerable. I like Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice, The Hobbit, The Inheritance Cycle, Little Women, The Picture of Dorian Gray…just to name a few of my very favourites.

Anything else you’d like to say?

Storm: I’m excited to finally join Blogland and hopefully start building relationships with readers and sharing my story! I know Pedro is, too. If anyone has any questions, they can leave them here for you to answer or stop by my Facebook or Twitter! See you all on Tuesday!

• Storm’s Facebook
• Storm’s Twitter

Reminder that the launch of Storm’s blog will be on Tuesday! She’s really looking for help promoting, so feel free to share the links or any of the little promo pics we made (see this post).

Copyright Storm Rose Bennett-Clark.

Did the title get your attention?

I hope so. I love chocolate chip cookies. They’re beautiful.

However, I attempted to use a misleading title to get you to read this.

I’m sorry if I insulted you, but I thought it was clever. *cough* cheap *cough*

I’m really just doing some more promoting for my friend Storm. In case you haven’t read my last post, Storm and I, with the help of a few friends, have been working hard the last few weeks on creating a blog detailing events in her life, hobbies, opinions, tutorials, and whatnot. She’s a truly amazing person and her blog is going to be fantastic!

She now has Facebook (you can like the box over on the right side of your screen) and Twitter! She’ll gladly follow anyone back and is eager to chat with you all! @StormRoseBlog or http://www.twitter.com/StormRoseBlog

I’ll be promoting heavily for Storm and she’ll take a visit here over the next day or so for an interview.

Stay tuned!

…and here’s a chocolate chip cookies recipe, claiming to be the best. I haven’t tried them, but faith is key here. They look delightful.

Mmmm!

An idea has been formulating in my mind since about October, and the last several weeks I’ve been preparing it for public consumption.

No, it’s not a cook book, fortunately for you all.

I’ve been working closely with a remarkable young lady for the last month or so, and with her help — and the help of a few close friends — we’ve decided to create a blog.

Whoop-dee-doo, you might say. You already have a blog. So what?

The what, my dear sceptic, is that this isn’t going to be my blog. This blog is going to belong to Storm Rose Bennett-Clark, a seventeen-year-old future journalist, yogurt-fanatic, and heavy tea-drinker. And it’s going to be awesome. Storm is writing all the content, but I’ll be helping her out with web designs, tech support, and promoting. Really, it’s her blog, but it is my deepest wish that you all join her on her blogging journey as you have joined me this last year.

I can’t give too much away just yet, but Storm will blog about personal aspects of her life, what it’s like to be the granddaughter of four 1960s hippies, and things she’s interested in (i.e., tea, writing, crafting, garden gnomes, witty musings, old books, and societal issues). She will be sharing some of her favourite recipes, organic versions, and debating with her twin brother Mica and best friend Hanna. Mica and Hanna don’t really know about this yet, but Storm has all confidence that they’ll be on board once she brings them in on the know.

Storm, aside from having the blog, will have a Facebook page and, eventually, a Twitter account. We agreed that it would be amazing and fantastic if we managed to get a vlog (video blog) up and running for her, but right now we’re trying to focus just on the blog.

We’re just trying to nail a few things down before we launch the blog on Tuesday, March 11. Until then, enjoy and share these cute little promo pics we cooked up! Feel free to post them on your own blog, Facebook page, Twitter, whatnot. Storm wants as many people, especially young women, to be a part of this experience as possible, so spread the word! Of course, she’ll gladly do a ‘promo for promo!’ Your support will be paid in kind.

Her Facebook is already up and running SO MAKE SURE YOU LIKE IT.

Shameless promotion. I won’t apologize.

By the way, Happy International Women’s Day!

Whenever I mention Mary to a group of non-history addicted persons, they always light up a bit, pleased they know something, and say, “That’s Bloody Mary, isn’t it?” They proceed to ask me about the curse and the mirror and the alcoholic drink while I try not to pull a Henry VIII and hit the executioner’s emergency number on my speed dial.

I always felt sympathetic towards Mary, especially the Mary I encounter most often, in my reading of the 1520s-1530s, during which time she was declared a bastard, separated from her mother, ignored by her father, and servant for her infant half-sister.

Most of the portraits I’ve seen of Mary are after this time, during her time as Queen or shortly before, and few captured the image I had of the daughter of the beautiful Catherine of Aragon and the (once) handsome Henry VIII. It never made sense, and I feel that in our vain, shallow society, modern perceptions of Mary remain negative in part because of the sour middle-aged woman they see in the well-known portraits that are plastered across book covers and websites.

Admittedly, I know little enough about Mary to properly defend her in conversation, but she’s suffered from misconceptions and generalizations just as dozens and dozens of other controversial women in history.

In my copy of Francis Hackett’s Henry The Eighth – which, from what I can tell, is a 1929 first edition — an apparently rare portrait of Mary stares coyly out at the reader on page 130. I had never seen Mary portrayed in such a youthful, flattering light. Bedecked in beautiful jewels and in the same French fashion as her loathed stepmother, Anne Boleyn, Mary smiles intelligently and piously, an open book on her lap beneath her folded hands.

The caption beneath the portrait reads “Princess Mary, About 1537, From the Painting in the University Galleries, Oxford, London.” This makes her about 21 at the time, a beautiful young women a year after her mother’s death, Anne Boleyn’s execution, and the bastardization of her half-sister, the toddler Elizabeth. In 1537 Mary was enjoying her relationship with her father’s new wife, Jane Seymour, who shared Mary’s religious beliefs and began the reconciliation process between the king and his eldest daughter, a process completed years later by Henry’s sixth wife Katherine Parr.

Still young, still beautiful, after the trauma of her teen years and before the drama of her adult life, this image provides us with an image of Mary that I, at least, haven’t seen until last year when I first opened Francis Hackett’s book.

The twenty-one-year-old Lady Mary as noted in Francis Hackett’s ‘Henry the Eighth.’ Have you seen this portrait before?

Knowing that I had ever seen this before, which I thought was strange as Hackett implied this portrait was contemporary, or near-contemporary, I did some digging. The University Galleries Museum was renamed the Ashmolean Museum (you can read more about the museum and its origins here) and on their website they provide a description for this mysterious portrait of Mary Tudor. After an intensive cleaning in 1976, it was discovered that this portrait that it was, in fact, not a contemporary portrait, but a 19th-century piece perhaps painted over a 17th-century portrait.

At first I was disappointed by my discovery, but looking at the colour image on the website, the image I had been struggling with settled. This is the Mary I imagined, the tragic auburn-haired princess on the cusp of adulthood before her heart was broken and her reputation stained in the centuries to come. While it may or may not be an accurate representation, it’s nice to see that something of the intellectual young woman remains for the public eye, as opposed to the traditional portrayal of an infamous, quickly aging queen.

Ironically, she’s painted in a great deal of red… I suppose we can make of that what we will, but I’m going to enjoy it for what is it: a gorgeous piece of art depicting a beautiful young woman before she was labelled and misunderstood by the world.

The Princess Mary Tudor at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. What do you think? Does she look like either of her parents?

Have any of you seen this portrait of Mary before? Does anyone have any more information about where it came from and who painted it? What do you see in Mary when you look at this image?

-For more information about Mary on the Anne Boleyn Files.
-Francis Hackett’s Henry the Eighth on Amazon.
-Princess Mary Tudor at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford

Reblogged from the TUDOR TUTOR:

No doubt you've already heard the news about the Richard III identification, so I put together a linky little post for you, to get lots of Rich-III-dig info in one spot. Is some of that info comedy? Of course it is, because you know what you're dealing with on my blog, don't you!

To start, we have a video from University of Leicester on…

Read more… 211 more words

I was just minding my own business, cruising a blog I haven’t particularly been reading up on lately. And BAM.

Right in the throat.

I mentioned earlier that I received the first four books in George R.R. Martin’s highly acclaimed Song of Fire and Ice series as a Christmas present. I’m about 3/4 through the second one, A Clash of Kings.

Now, ordinarily, I’m a cheater and read the last few pages of a book just to see what happens. I read a marvelous quote by Nora Ephron the other day, “When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.”

But no, this is different. I have not touched the last pages of Clash of Kings, nor did I touch the last pages of Game of Thrones before I reached there by the natural order of the world. I’m also simultaneously watching the HBO series Game of Thrones, based on the series, and I’m taking special care to only watch the episodes that the books have already covered up to the point where I am. You know why?

Of course you do. You’re a bunch of clever readers.

YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

Especially in a series where there’s three, four, five, six, seven books. In the middle of Book Two one never wants to know what happens at the end of Book Four.

But the Internet has violated that fresh, innocent concept. The story is corrupted, told in a way it was not meant to be told. Now when I finally reach Book Four all the zeal and zest in this massive event will be diminished by the revelation discovered in an online book review that revealed a little too much.

OKAY. JUST A FREAKING LOT TOO MUCH.

Zen. Be zen.

So, in a plea on behalf of readers who’ve been deprived of beautiful, heartbreaking, and ground-shattering moments because of online spoilers that were not first addressed with SPOILER ALERT, I beg you, as both readers, reviewers, and bloggers, to refrain from ruining the golden and magical experience that comes with reading.

Has your reading experience ever been violated by an improperly declared spoiler, either by a friend or online? Tell me your spoiled woes, but without spoilers, of course.

A Clash of Kings by George RR Martin