Preview #1
The Nightshade Blog Tour is scheduled now--Peggy has posted the calendar here, and I've put up a blog roll of all the places I'll be posting. (Check out the right side panel for the list.) It's a terrific roster of blogs, and I thought it would be fun to give you some previews at the places I'm visiting. If you get a chance, skip on over and get acquainted with these host bloggers. Each of their blogs is very special, and they're all very different.
May Dreams As winter wears on and spring seems far away, garden bloggers just have to have a little fun. May Dreams' "Let's Talk About Hoes," for instance. It's funny, funny--and do keep scrolling on down to the pictures. But I have to say that some of those hoes look like they might wind up as a weapon in a murder mystery. Do you think?
Carol (an Indiana gardener) has been blogging at May Dreams for over two years. She says, "What has been most amazing about blogging about gardening is all the connections I’ve made with other gardeners, whom I would never have known if not for our garden blogs and exchanges of comments and emails. For my own blog, the name “May Dreams Gardens” comes from the joy I feel about gardening in general, and especially about gardening in the spring. As noted on my blog, all year I dream of the days in May when the sun is warm, the skies are blue, the grass is green, and the garden is all new again." Till then, of course, there are hoes!
I'll be at Carol's May Dreams blog on Monday, March 24, guest-blogging about the plants in the nightshade family. Join me there!
Cold Climate is one of the longest-running garden blogs on the web, providing links, book reviews, and plant profiles to help northern gardeners (USDA Zones 4 and colder). It was created over five years ago by Kathy Purdy, who also writes for Horticulture, Fine Gardening, The American Gardener, and Upstate Gardeners Journal--a blogger with lots of writing and gardening experience!
Kathy says that she started blogging about her garden because she wanted to meet and become friends with other gardeners, and share what she had learned about gardening in a cold climate. But the more seriously she took her blog writing and the more time and effort she put into getting everything right, the more her blog felt like a magazine. "I was no longer merely chatting over the fence with a fellow gardener. I was writer, editor, and publisher rolled into one. An editor from a major gardening magazine came across my blog and offered me the chance to do book reviews. I’ve worked with that editor on several more assignments, and gotten brave enough to query other editors, resulting in other work." (You can read more of the history of Kathy's very interesting blog here.)
I love hearing success stories like this, don't you? Blogging is often an end in itself, but sometimes it's a means to another, surprising end. You just never know where life is going to take you. Now, Kathy reviews books, critiques products, and offers gardening suggestions, as well as reporting on what's going on in her own garden. And sometimes she hosts guests bloggers! I'll be at Cold Climate on March 26, blogging about the China Bayles series (specifically, about the herbs in the first three mysteries). Hope you'll drop in and say hello.
Oh, and when you do come by one of the blogs on the tour, be sure and register for that blog's book drawing. You'll find the link somewhere in the post. (The drawing will be open for only three days, so you'll have to be prompt.) Who knows--you just might win a signed first edition copy of Nightshade!
I'll have more preview peeks later on, so stay tuned.
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