I can’t believe it’s all over, the April A to Z Challenge completely flew by.
This is my second A to Z challenge – last year I went themeless, just winging the posts everyday with whatever came to mind. This year, I had a theme and I had all my posts pre-scheduled before April began.
My theme was 100 word flash fiction on the dark side of human nature. I loved this theme – I love writing horror fiction, and shorter posts always do better through the challenge.
A to Z Challenge: What I Liked
I love the challenge as a whole, but here are some of the main things I enjoyed this year:
- I think having a theme means visitors know what to expect, so you are more likely to get repeat visits.
- Finding some fab new blogs that I loved and will continue to visit long after April.
- All the lovely, encouraging comments.
A to Z Challenge: What I Disliked
- I felt a little apathy mid-month due to not writing blog posts everyday – this lead to slightly lower than average page views because I was doing next to no social media promotion.
- Not getting to visit every blog. That was my goal, but I was also doing a final draft of my novel, and obviously that had to take priority. I did visit over 900 blogs though, so it’s not too bad considering.
- Captcha – say no more!
A to Z Challenge: Suggestions
I only really have one suggestion. I think a lot of people are put off visiting a blog that has the AC label (personally I’m pretty hard to offend so I still read them). I think there’s a world of difference between someone writing about hard core sexual experience and someone who uses the odd f-bomb. So maybe it would be a good idea to have sub-categories within the AC label.
What’s Next For Me: Life After The A To Z Challenge
Throughout the challenge, commenters regularly said they wanted to know more about the stories and the characters and it was suggested several times that I make an e-book of my challenges pieces. I was debating doing that and the comments made me realise it is a good idea.
Twisted Tales is now available on Amazon featuring extended versions of some A-Z stories and some completely new ones.
Please do sign up below to receive an email when new books are released (no spam, no hounding, just the odd email to announce a new book’s release).
And of course I am now back on my normal blogging schedule. This still means blogging daily but I don’t have Q, X and Z to contend with.
Blogs I Visited
Obviously I’m not going to attempt to list them all, but here are some of my favourites which I visited daily. The list is in no particular order except the order I came across the blogs.
Jingle Jangle Jungle – Women in Music. I learned a lot of new, interesting facts about some of my favourite artists and I found some artists that were entirely new to me.
J H Moncrieff – Even though this blogger had to drop out of the challenge early, I still wanted to include her here because her posts were that good. The posts are all about occult mysteries and her writing style really brings them to life.
Stephanie Faris – Unsolved Mysteries. It’s crazy how many people have disappeared with no real explanation. This blog always got me thinking.
Rebel’s Notes – Warning: Not for the easily offended! Read all about Rebel and her husband’s BDSM lifestyle.
Double The Monkey Business – This blog didn’t have a theme, so everyday was different. I loved the writing style and hats off to anyone who goes self-hosted mid April and still doesn’t miss a day of the challenge!
Djinnia and the English Language – Urban Legends. I found these cultural tales absolutely fascinating.
Laws of Gravity – A mixture of crafts and teaching. I loved the classroom anecdotes.
Read is the New Black – Books from the blogger’s teen years. It was so good re-discovering some of my favourite child hood books!
Kimberley Cooper – Short stories. I loved that all these stories has a twist and never ended how I thought they would.
Fantasy Boys XXX This is nowhere near as hard core as the name implies – it was erotic flash fiction.
Life in Dogs – Dog Rescue. I loved this theme – full of fab tips, videos that will make you cry and life as a dog rescuer.
Patricia Lynne – Phobias. It was great learning some of the obscure phobias that exist in the world – phobia of weeing anyone? I also liked that Patricia wrote a short story about each of the phobias.
Melissa Sugar Writes – Crime Fiction. Full of useful tips and tricks for writing in the crime genre.
XOXO Make – Short stories. These stories were all happy, feel good stories, it was like a mirror image of my theme.
Words from Sonobe – Today at work… Funny stories from the blogger’s workplace. And stories about the worst manager ever.
Journaling Woman – Bizarre Deaths – These posts told of those deaths that make you go “what?!”.
Art of Leo – Harry Potter. Say no more.
These are all blogs I would recommend and I will definitely still be visiting them all throughout the year.
Thank You
Finally, I would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who visited me and commented on my posts.
And also, a huge thank you to Arlee Bird from Tossing It Out for starting, and continuing to run, the April A-Z Challenge. Thank you Arlee, and all the team, running something like this is immense. You all rock!
Now, time to start planning next year’s challenge…
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I’m sad it’s over, purely for the fact that you won’t be writing any more dark and twisty things! I cant wait for your book to be released! Totally buying it! Also, I’ve just gone through and ive opened all of these pages I need to have a nosy! Sounds like you and I have very eclectic taste when it comes to reading… I can’t wait to get stuck in! Although the fantasy boys Didn’t open/says it doesn’t exist any more… xxx
Thank you – there will be more dark and twisty things coming, hopefully more in book form 🙂 I hope you enjoy the other blogs, they are all good ones! I wonder if the fantasy boys one is just for the challenge, because it’s two bloggers working together on it, it’s maybe just a side line x
Aww, thank you for the mention. Yes, I’m a little sad it’s over, too…I met some great people and read some very interesting blogs, including yours!
You’re welcome 🙂 I did too, I love finding new blogs to read and the challenge is a great place to find them!
Thank you for the mention! That means quite a bit to me. I loved this challenge, and I’m just sad that I wasnt able to visit as many blogs as I should have. I guess I know what I’ll be doing for much of the rest of the year – visiting blogs!
Mary
You’re welcome, I loved visiting your blog! Yes, there’s always the road trip!
You were one of my favorite blogs I found thanks to the challenge as well!
This year I didn’t find many capchas, but I also didn’t get to visit as many new people as I wanted. I might need to rethink how I visit next year.
Thank you 🙂 There wasn’t as many as last year I found, but still too many! Next year, I definitely won’t plan on editing a novel through April lol
Enjoyed your A to Z posts immensely and added you to my blogroll!
Thank you so much, I’m so glad you enjoyed them! Thanks for adding me to your blogroll and thanks for all your comments and visits 🙂
I, too, am not easily offended, so the AC doesn’t bother me. I think we’re in the minority, though.
Oh, the Captcha! I think that turned on randomly throughout the Challenge. Because some of my usual blogs required it, and I know for a fact that it’s not enabled on their blogs. Those days were rather long.
Congrats on the book. Great idea. And it looks like we visited many of the same blogs. Thanks for including mine.
Yes, I think a lot of people expect something much more hardcore so they avoid them.
That could be it then because I noticed some of them sort of appeared mid way through, maybe the upsurge of comments triggered something.
Thank you 🙂 You’re welcome, I really enjoyed your classroom posts!
I liked that you had a section in your A to Z Reflection post for Life after A to Z 🙂 I agree, I disliked captcha too and I always have a problem commenting when it’s a blog hosted by blogspot. I have no idea why.
Thanks for the mention and I look forward to your book! Wow! 😀 I’ll be lurking!!!
I often find on blogspot blogs there’s no comment box and I have to reply to an existing comment, I thought it was just me!
You’re welcome and I hope you like the book 🙂
Congratulations on completing the challenge so successfully! Fabulous idea to make a book out of your posts as well. I’ll definitely check it out. 🙂
My biggest regret is not getting all the posts written ahead of time, so I was spending more time writing and didn’t get a chance to visit as many blogs.
Thank you 🙂 I hope you like the book!
I found that last year that’s why I was so determined to have everything pre-written this year
Sounds like an interesting month. I would be interested in doing an A to Z challenge sometime maybe next year I might join in. 🙂
It’s so much fun Angela, you should join in next April then you have ages to plan your posts 🙂
Aw thanks for the mention 💕 I have to admit I am missing the challenge! Off to check out some of the other blogs you mentioned 🙂 x
You’re welcome 🙂 It’s weird how you miss it isn’t it! I hope you enjoy the other blogs x
Congrats on Twisted Tales! I’m signing up for the email for sure. That’s great that you are turning your posts into an e-book. Fantastic!
You listed several blogs that I also visited daily. There was some great stuff out there this year.
Thanks for posting the link to all your A-Z posts. I have to go back and read some more of them. I like dark and twisted! 🙂
Michele at Angels Bark
Thank you, I hope you enjoy the posts and the book 🙂
There really was some good blogs took part in the challenge this year, I found so many I wanted to keep up with even on the theme reveal!
Thanks for including a list of some of your favorite blog sites for the AtoZChallenge. I will visit those I missed.
Congratulations on completing the Challenge this year!
They are all worth a read 🙂 Thank you!
Managing to visit 900 blogs is amazing. How on earth did you find the time whilst writing? I visited as many as I could, but I’ve no idea on the number.
Great idea to bring out an ebook of your challenge, I’ve signed up and look forward to hearing more about it. Good luck!
Lots and lots of extremely late nights lol! Thank you, I hope you enjoy the book 🙂
Well done and great theme!
Thank you 🙂
Not sure about dark and twisty any more. I tend to avoid them.
Thanks for the visit.
Life would be boring if we all liked the same thing! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
I agree that a theme was helpful during the challenge and set the framework of what to expect when visiting a blog. I’m impressed at how many blogs you were able to get to during the challenge. I visited every day during April, but think I only ended up hitting around 700 or so. It was far more time intensive than I realized but something I really loved doing.
Yes, it does require a lot of time – I only had extra time for visiting because my posts were pre-written, but the visiting is one of my favourite things about the challenge so I think it’s worth the time 🙂
Congrats on completing the A to Z! I had your blog saved on a list to visit, but yours along with some others got lost in the shuffle of work, writing posts, and commenting on my new visitors. That’s awesome that you are publishing a book from this! And it is amazing that you made it to 900 blogs!
Thank you 🙂 Yeah, I had a fair few that happened with myself!
Blinks, did you really say 900 blogs?? Super impressed, even on my best years I managed nowhere near that number… Wow!
Congrats on the the book idea, will have have to pop back and have a proper catch up on the posts, am saving all the reflections post into a separate folder so I can remember which ones I need to come back to!
Mars xx
@TrollbeadBlog from Curling Stones for Lego People
I think it helped that I had all my posts pre-written so I had a bit of extra time.
Thank you 🙂 I hope you enjoy the posts! x
Whew – well done with the challenge, the reflection, and visiting 900 blogs! And what a clever idea to put your posts into e-book form. While I did manage to visit quite a number of blogs, I’m still looking forward to a summer road trip to catch up. Happy writing (and publishing)!
Thank you so much 🙂 The road trip is a great way to catch up on any of the blogs you didn’t get to in April!
Glad you could join us again in April. Congratulations on finishing and doing a great job on visiting other blogs. 900 visits is not too shabby.
Re: AC rating. I guess we could do a range like movies do. We continue to retweak the labeling process. Some people don’t like visiting sites that they find offensive so it seems like some sort of labeling process is fair to consider. Then people have a choice.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.
Arlee Bird
A to Z Challenge Co-host
Thank you, I love visiting the other blogs, it’s my favourite part!
I agree with having labels, just maybe like you said some sort of rating so you know whether it’s something you would be comfortable with. Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Great Reflections post! And kudos on visiting 900 blogs. That is beyond phenomenal!
All the best for the book,
Thank you so much 🙂
Debbie, congrats on crossing the A2Z victory line! I didn’t find you during the blog challenge, but I’m glad to see you have all of your posts in one place for me to read. I’m bookmarking this post, so I can go at my leisure in the coming months. I really enjoyed your reflections post. It inspires me to think deeper next year when rounding things out. I’m awed by the talent in Blogosphere. Thank you for visiting and I hope you have a funtastic weekend!
Thank you 🙂 It’s so annoying when you come back to a blog later and the posts are buried isn’t it! You have a great weekend too and I hope you enjoy the posts
I agree with your comment about the AC label. I noticed that a lot of those blogs had next to no comments, which probably meant that people were put off by the AC tag. A few of the blogs you mentioned were a joy to read, especially the short stories of Kimberley Cooper.
Congrats on finishing and surviving the challenge. And thank you for dropping by and leaving a comment. 🙂
Yeah, I noticed that too, it’s a shame for them as most of them aren’t even offensive, most of the ones I found were erotic fiction. Kimberley Cooper’s stories were fab! Thank you 🙂
I used a theme this year for the first time, so I saw the repeat visitors like you were talking about. It was a lot of fun doing a theme even though it took a lot of time and patience figuring out what to talk about and making everything work together.
The AC label does put me off, so I agree with you in that there should be levels. If I had known that there were blogs that only occasionally used the f bomb, I might have been ok visiting. I did try to visit a few AC blogs, but most were pretty sexual in theme, and I wasn’t too interested in reading that. :-/
But wow! I can’t believe you got through 900 blogs! I only got through just over 200! Did you have time to do anything else in April?! (You said you did, but I’m having a hard time believing it!) Congrats on managing that! That is some feat! 🙂 Were you a minion? … Or are you going to be one next year?
And one more note – congrats on the publication of your book! That’s so exciting! 🙂
The theme can make planning a bit harder because you can’t just talk about whatever pops into your head but I do think it helps with traffic.
Some of the AC blogs I visited were erotic fiction but some I visited used maybe 2 or 3 swear words across the full 26 posts (some were even parent blogs, just with the occasional sweary rant!).
I did manage to get my novel’s final draft finished and go to work in between lol – there were a lot of extremely late nights though! I wasn’t a minion this year but I’ve applied to be one next year so we’ll see!
Thank you so much and thanks for the fab comment 🙂
Great theme! I really like the flash fiction format and it really is perfect for this challenge. I liked your little twists. 🙂
And kudos for visiting 900 blogs over the course of the month! That is quite impressive. I had a hard time picking blogs just by their titles. Rather than just a category, it would have been great if people had put just a one or two-word description of their theme so that it would be easier to know what was behind the door. Although I guess that would make the list that much longer …
Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed them 🙂 I gave up trying to pick and choose – I had my list I wanted to follow from the theme reveal then the rest I just went in order down the list. I agree though, some of the names give nothing away!
wow! you really did get round to visiting a lot of blogs. 🙂
I love visiting the blogs and finding new ones 🙂
Congratulations on making it through the A-Zs, Debbie. I like your theme of super short horror posts. I read your “Zero” — excellent. I should think writing it would be cathartic. It was for me reading it.
Samantha Mozart
Thank you 🙂 I think short posts work better through the challenge. I’m glad you enjoyed Zero! It really was. Thanks for stopping by
Now THIS is a great reflections post! Cheers, MDC
Thank you 🙂
Yep, we were mirrored themed! I looooved reading your stories and I definitely will read your ebook. I actually am planning on doing the same with mine, I let a lot of loose ends on my short ficlets and I want to evolve them into something more complete and publish it 🙂
Thank you, I hope you enjoy the book 🙂 Oh cool, let me know when it’s available, there was loads of your stories where I needed to know what happened next! x
Congratulations on completing the challenge. I loved your stories when I had a chance to read them and e-book sounds like a brilliant idea. Good luck.
Thank you 🙂 I’m really glad you liked the stories!
Thank you for visiting my reflections post! I am making my way around! It was a fun challenge. My 4th time! I am sure I’ll be back next year too!!
You’re welcome, hope to bump into you again on the next one 🙂
Even i felt a vacuum after it got over but that is part of life… I am glad that you pour your heart out regarding your likes and dislikes..
And you visited over 900 blogs … OMG really !! thats is fantastic..
Hope to see you next year too.
Yes, true, it’s just weird those first few days! Thank you 🙂
I visited some of the blogs you mentioned above.
There were SO many interesting themes, and because I didn’t want to miss any posts on certain blogs, it meant sacrificing visits to other blogs. I suppose you can’t have it all, hey?
Congratulations on visiting over 900 blogs! That’s quite an accomplishment!!
Thank you for visiting my blog.
That’s true, the list in this post were the ones I read daily. If I hadn’t done that I probably could have gotten around more but I wanted to follow the ones I really loved right through to the end
I am still plodding my way through all the participants, so sorry I am just now discovering your blog. I agree with you that having a theme is great not only for the blogger, but the reader. After reading many, many comments and recaps, those who prefer reading as well as writing themed blogs outnumber those who prefer randomness at least 5:1.
As I was reading your list of favorite blogs, I wondered also if the admins would consider adding a little more detail to the participants list in future. As few as 10-20 words of theme description such as you have included, in addition to the two letter codes for the blogs, would really help lure in readers IMO.
Great recap and congrats on finishing. I look forward to catching up on some of your posts.
No worries, it takes a long time to get through them all!
I love that idea, it would really help in deciding if it’s a theme you would enjoy reading or not.
Thank you and thanks for visiting 🙂
Nice post and i loved it,but unfortunetly im offline reader so i cant check all those blog you mention.
Any how nice post