One Epic Month - Reflections from A to Z

This was my 4th year participating in the Challenge and my first year co-hosting it. I would like to thank my amazing Legendary Ladies, Corinne, Lanise, Mary and Courtney, for doing a great job during A to Z, visiting blogs and gathering links. You are the best!

In my personal opinion, this one was the best A to Z year I have participated in so far! I realize that is partially due to me taking on a much more active role: The more blogs I visited the more intriguing things I found, the more new friends I made, and the more visitors I got. I also dropped in on a few Twitter chats, which were always a lot of fun. In addition, I was happy to see a lot of my fellow professional storytellers participating this year!

Here are 5 things I got out of this year's challenge:

1. New followers! The number of my followers on Blogger and Twitter is slowly yet surely creeping upwards. I also followed quite a few new people :)

2. New blogging ideas! I am fairy active in blogging about storytelling adventures, but I want to structure more. I am starting a weekly series on this blog for Story Saturdays (#storysat), and I am also going to participate in Top Ten Tuesdays and the Blood, Boobs and Carnage Blogfest (which could have been the title of either of my A to Z themes this year, really...)

3. A translation for Escanor! I wrote about how I wish there was an English translation for this Arthurian romance, and the same day I posted it, lo and behold, the Internet worked its miracle! Thank you all who helped connect me to the lovely lady who is working on a translation! (And blogging about it!)

4. More activity on the MopDog! My other blog is about Hungarian weirdness. My theme of 26 Ways to Die in Medieval Hungary was immense fun to write, and got a lot of visitors who left me hilarious comments. All in all, I am glad I was crazy enough to do two blogs at a time.

5. A whole new repertoire of epics!
One of my goals with the epics theme was to read a large number of sources, and figure out which epics I want to dig deeper into during my mentorship project this year. I have to pick two, but it will probably be more than that on the long run. *drumroll* The first one I picked was the Shahnameh, and I am already working on it. For the second, I am still hesitating between the Lianja epic and Thidrek of Bern. Decisions, decisions! :)

My 15 favorite blogs this year (in no particular order):

1. The Wee White Hoose - Scottish folklore and folktales, what's not to love?
2. Things Matter - LGBT+ superheroes and comic book characters, because representation is important!
3. The Little Princess - Daily tales of love from Indian mythology, beautifully written
4. Sara C. Snider - Tree inspired short fiction, eloquent and with some gorgeous imagery
5. Pensuasion - Movie smackdowns! :)
6. La Fotografía Efectista Abstracta - Gorgeous abstract photos on the theme of Dreams
7. Heidi Dahlsveen - Understanding Trolls, straight from a Norwegian storyteller!
8. Part Time Monster - Female monsters in myth and pop culture, and musings on monstrous femininity
9. Shells Tales and Sails - Inventions by women!
10. The Art of Not Getting Published - Famous and interesting people from the 16th century and their adventurous lives
11. A Year With the Mad Grad Student - Greek mythology, mused and retold
12. J.H. Moncrieff - All things chilling, mysterious and creepy
13. Modhukori - Tales from Indian epics, eloquently re-told
14. Wendy of the Rock - Fictional letters with great humor and wit
15. The Old Shelter - A to Z of the Roaring Twenties!

And finally, shameless self promotion:
Check out my book, Tales of Superhuman Powers!
It is a collection of folktales, myths and legends that feature the same superpowers we see in comics and movies every day - everything from invisibility to flight, shapeshifting, and eye laser beams. It includes the stories, the sources, comments and notes, and even lists of pop culture heroes who have the same powers...
Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and McFarland, both in print and ebook formats.

Check out other A to Z participants' Reflections today! Follow the Linky!