Greetings beverage sharing mortals!
This weekend the veil between the realms will shrink precariously thin. May we suggest you pay close attention to the surroundings as we enjoy our hot drinks and treats?
Eek! Is that a shrunken head floating in your tea cup?
*Sigh of relief*
No, it’s just a tea infuser. An error anyone could make on such a menacing day.
Heather and I are co-hosting today’s coffee post; we are both running bereft of time. NaNoWriMo 2015 is hovering over us like a scythe ready to swipe off our heads, and we’re working our fingers to the brittle, white bones finalizing the last details on our project outlines.
Still, we couldn’t let this perfectly gruesome holiday pass without a few cruel kind words for our bloggy fiends. I mean friends, of course… silly me.
Before we get started, would you care for another witch’s finger? Or perhaps some deep-fried spider. No? Well, more for us!
Recently, we received a blogging award and we have been sadly remiss in addressing it. I suspect we left our brains in the other jar; so frightfully annoying when that happens.
Today we accept the Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award from Solveig Werner.
The rules of this blog award are painless: we simply thank the person nominating us. Thank you, Solveig! We would send you some poisonous hemlock in the mail, but customs would surely hold things up for too long, and your poor flowers would arrive… dead.
Next, we must entertain you all with 9 random facts about our existence:
1) Heather and I both own cats. Not black cats, mind you, but the world is an imperfect place.
2) We had horses when we were young girls, mine was a bay, almost the shade of dried blood.
3) We share naturally dark hair. However, there are neon highlights in mine right now, but I’m not sure if I’m keeping it.
4) We cast a wickedly good love spell. We ensnared our soul mates/best friends long ago. My spell came with kids; hers did not.
5) We met each other in the fifth circle of hell, AKA the online critique group.
6) We fight the siren call of the internet, on demand TV and YouTube on a daily basis. Must watch Adult Wednesday Addams, iZombie, Walking Dead, again and again …
7) We enjoy reversed living situations. I was born in a huge city and moved to the country last year. Heather was born in the country and moved to a big city. We would never swap places again. Each of us makes the Evil Eye at where the other person calls home.
8) We love Halloween and enjoy brewing up our own costumes. We also have a tendency to host huge Halloween parties for our ghost and ghoul friends, however neither one of us has time this year. No loitering. Back to the graveyards with you all.
9) We enjoy reading and writing about dark, dismembering characters. Demons, ghosts, a little madness. It’s all good.
Now we would like to nominate 9 fabulous bloggers to ritually sacrifice share in the fiendish fun.
Things Matter: Hannah Givens. Hannah’s blog is an amusing mix of mostly pop culture. She recently guest posted for us and she will be back with a piece on the writing style of C.S. Lewis very soon. She also runs #queerpop on Twitter. It’s a great place to pose gender questions or share good resources.
Lemon Shark: Sarah Brentyn. Sarah mixes it up nicely on her blog. She features lots of creative writing pieces and also lifestyle posts about being a mom/writer. She is often pretty darn funny.
Eclectic Alli: Allison Gammons. Allison has a very diverse blog and she runs several series, like Passionate Geeks, Top Ten Tuesday, and Celebrate the Small Things. All week she ran a fantastic Halloween party.
Scribbling in the Storage Room: Elizabeth Hein. Elizabeth keeps her blog fun with lots of book reviews. What I like best is when she shares her countless research discoveries. These tidbits always entertain and enlighten.
Daisy Smiley Face: Tara Paray. Tara likes to work hard. She runs this blog, which is devoted to showcasing just how super quirky and hilarious she is, and another more serious blog, which is all about her local art scene. That blog is also under another name, but don’t let that fool you. It’s still Tara.
Phoenix Grey. Phoenix is a bit newer to us then some of the other bloggers. I think we met her through Sara Letourneau, who would be included here too if she didn’t already have this award. Phoenix’s blog is always jam-packed with creative writing, and she never seems to miss a round of Blog Battle or Friday Phrases.
And no blog award collection would be complete without our three favorite Sue blogs:
Rewriting Mary Sue. This crew of bloggers rocks. They are tackling gender stereotypes in literature head on and doing a great job of it. If you write female characters (and who doesn’t?) you need to read this blog.
Doorway Between Worlds: Sue Archer. Sue is our go-to blog for cool, real talk about English grammar and all its faults and foibles. And there are many!!! Sue has a gift for making any homophone confusion into a word party.
Murder Blog: Sue Coletta. If you write crime fiction, Sue is your blog. Cop slang, gun facts and blood spatter patterns, nothing cozy here. I feel it’s best to read Sue’s blog on an empty stomach! She sometimes runs a series of posts on a major crime, looking at it from many angles, and you just can’t stop reading.
And now for your questions, you poor cursed bloggers. We pity you. Not really, your palpable fear amuses us.
Cue maniacal laughter, ravens cawing and other cliché sound track items of gothic significance. In a scary voice we say:
We grant you NO questions! You will embark on this quest with zero help from us!
Call it a gift from the spirits, but we sense you’re the best arbitrator of your own random factoids.
Feel free to beguile and bewitch us with your tales of misery and intrigue.
If We Were Having Coffee is a blog hop inspired and run by the lovely and talented Diana, over at Part Time Monster. Please drop by her place for coffee. You can also see what other bloggers are hosting a coffee party by checking out her hashtag: #WeekendCoffeeShare on Twitter.
Thank you so much for the award, ladies! I always love hearing about new places to visit (although I think I will avoid those circles of hell if I can, even if they made me laugh today). Casting my best magical spell to grant you a successful NaNoWriMo!
Aw, thanks for the nomination! And to find myself in such good company. With such great food… Nom, nom. So I thought critique groups were the 7th circle of hell, the 5th circle was editing. Did I flip that? Apologies. I knew there was a reason I loved you gals (aside from your brilliant writing and fabulous blog, of course). Your love of cats and costumes. Yup. Cats rule the world. Also, one is never too old to dress up for Halloween. Cheers! 🙂
Hi Sarah,
I’m glad you liked the party, and the goodies. Yes, cat votes! Always happy to see more of those. I think all writers love to play dress up. The “what if” gene and the pretend gene must be DNA cousins. : )
Wow, 7th circle of hell! You must have one mean critique group.
OMG! There’s an eyeball in my coffee!!!!! It’s been a rough weekend running away from skeletons, ghosts and witches invading the streets yesterday. Thought it was about time to call Ghost Busters but as soon as the lollies ran out, they all disappeared.
Good luck with NaNoWriMo 2015. Every blog I seem to visit is doing it or at least has good intentions. I am starting to feel like I’m going to be on the outer this month but November is an incredibly busy time here and it’s Summer. Why lock myself away with my computer when life’s a beach?
That said, I’m pretty determined to get some solid writing done this month.
Anyway, thanks for the coffee and the complimentary eye ball. I loved the personal touch!
xx Rowena
Ugh! This will never do, the eyeballs were for the cheese trays. Please accept our sincere apologies. Coffee and eyeball is a nasty combination, the coffee positively destroys the delicate flavors of the eyeballs. Next year we will make sure your coffee has extra powered tree frog in it.
Writing on the beach sounds ideal to me. The sound of waves is one of my favorite white noise tracks. Don’t feel bad about opting out of NaNo 2015, there is always next year. Or even Camp NaNo in the Spring. : )
Funny funny post. Good thing I wasn’t hungry when I began to read.
Hi Sharon,
Happy Halloween!
Oops! Sorry, we didn’t want to make any nauseous, just a little queasy. : )
Thanks for the coffee…now to figure out what was in it. I know it wasn’t just coffee! Hhhmm…lumps…the color…well maybe I don’t want to know!
Yes, knowing would be bad! We employed some “help” with the party food this year, and they took some liberties with the coffee. You know how unpredictable the undead are!
Thank you for the nomination! It’s nice to be thought of. 🙂 And consider me jealous about the horses. One of my dreams to be able to ride them/own one.
Hi, Phoenix!
Happy Halloween!
You are very welcome. It’s well deserved!
My kids keep saying the same thing about a horse. They claim I’m depriving them of their rightful childhood, or some such thing. Considering they never feed the cats, I think a horse would be a bad pet choice at this time. Horses are an insane amount of work! My advice is try to make friends with someone who owns a few instead.
I loved this post! You girls sure know how to throw a Halloween party, fried spiders and all. Or were they chocolate covered? Thanks for the award! I loved hearing more about you guys, the similarities and differences. Hope you guys kill it during NaNo. I’m rooting for you!
Thanks, Sue! It was a blast to write this one. There is so little performance pressure when it’s an award post. You know at least a handful of people are sure to like it. I think Heather chocolate covered the crickets, the spiders are deep fried. With just a touch of cayenne.
Enjoy the party!
I loved this post! It really got me into a Halloween mood. I don’t have any plans for myself for today because my husband is returning from a 3 week long European business trip tonight (and I’ve missed him) — so it was nice to read some appropriately spooky words! I too am busy planning for NaNo. I had a solid outline in place then three days ago I completely lost my mind and decided to chase a shiny new idea. Now I’m scrambling like a crazy woman, because I am a PLOTTER. I love your description of online critique group as “fifth circle of hell.” I have been active in the group I believe you’re referencing, and truer words were never spoken! I’ll be exploring your blogs further after I’ve done a little more story prep. May the ink in your NaNo pens flow black and true!
{Completely unrelated aside: Hi JazzFeathers! Long time no see!}
Happy Halloween! Glad you could join us, I feel honored since you have such a big reunion today. I remember my husband taking business trips like that, it’s such a long time! I’m happy he doesn’t have to do it any more. Now if he’s gone for even a few days our kids are a mess! They want to call or Skype with him every night!
You are brave! I don’t know if I could swap story ideas on the eve of NaNo. Keep us posted on how things are going. Have you sent us buddy requests?
I have the utmost respect for online critique groups, but they are the sum of their parts. You get a good group of people, you have a great group. You get a bad group and…. You know the rest. I don’t know if we belonged to the same site, but Heather and I don’t talk about it publicly. To be fair, some of our friends are still on there and seem happy. That site just wasn’t for us!
Both of me thank you! One of us (that means me) will partake in the fun next weekend. Muse, as you know, is demanding most of my time. But I’ll wrangle something out of her then.
Thanks for the nice words, too. Now I have to keep being hilarious…. AGH!
And I read your “the world is an imperfect place” as John Bender from “The Breakfast Club.” 🙂
I was going for a Vincent Price vibe, but I’ll take John Bender from The Breakfast Club. : ) You’ll do fine, being amusing comes natural to you.
I’ll totes hear V. Price from now on. Love his creepy voice. Must have had the 80s on my mind. 🙂
Aw, thanks. *blush*
Happy Halloween and congrats on your award! I used to make witches fingers for Halloween all the time. I got pretty good at them so I brought them to a family Halloween party when I started dating my husband. His sisters turned up their noses and talked about how gross they looked and there was no way they were going to eat them. I haven’t made them since. This year, guess what my sister in law proudly posted on her photo stream…..witch finger cookies! Argh!! lol.
Witch’s fingers are so good. Have you ever made the pretzel ones? So fun!
What a fun post. Thanks!
@dino0726 from
FictionZeal – Impartial, Straightforward Fiction Book Reviews
Thanks, Diane! I considered including you too, but you have no blog award badges up. I figured it was not your thing. I hope I did the right thing. If not let me know and I’ll make sure to add you in next time.
Oh what a lovely, lovely Halloween Coffee erm Tea share!
I must definitely check out all of those blogs (ok I know many of your nominees but the others…). Have a great halloween! ?
Sorry it took us so long. Sometimes blog awards take a while to plan for.
Thanks again for including us. : )
oh no worries, awards a such a thing, I reply to them when the time is right 🙂
I think you’re right. And the timing on this one feels darn near perfect! : ) Thanks again for nominating us.
This is a fantasitc Halloween post!
Hey, I see we have a few things in common. I also was part of CC (hadn’t visited in a while) and I live in a little (sleepy) town.
And I was recently awarded the Siblingshood.
And I’m having a Halloween post up.
Awesome, eh? 😉
Hi Sarah,
I checked your blog the other day and saw you had one already. : ) We all seem to know the same bloggers. It gets a bit crazy whenever we need to do award nominations.
More sleep town votes! Woot!
I’m heading round to read blogs next. I can’t wait to read what you have up today. I hope it’s spooky.