Author Appreciation Week–I’m In

Heidi R. Kling, author of the forthcoming YA novel Sea, has declared this week author appreciation week. Who am I to argue with something that sounds fun, is obviously a wonderful cause, and gets me out of thinking of other blog topics this week? You can read Heidi’s no-rules rules here, and decide whether you want to join in or just have fun reading the posts all week. If you’re on Twitter, watch for the hashtag #AAW, and I guess just watch for the posts to pop up on Facebook.

So there are no rules in general, but here’s a little bit about what you’ll find at my blog this week:

• I won’t be posting about any authors I know! What does that mean, in these days of social networking and virtual friends? Well, I’m not sure. 🙂 But I have too many friends who are authors, whose books I love and with whom I have some kind of person connection–online or off–that I’m just avoiding making choices out of that group! Cowardly? Perhaps? Wimpy? Most likely. But, hey, it works for Jeff Kinney.
• I’ll be focusing my appreciation on the things “my” authors do with their words–the choices they make about which stories to tell, or the things about the writing craft that those stories teach me. I think it’ll be interesting to see how else the word appreciation plays out across the blogosphere.
• I may or may not make it every day. Three authors popped pretty instantly into my head, so I’m guessing five will be pretty easy, but if the post looks like it’s going to become the camel’s straw, well, you won’t find one here for that day. Or you might get two the next. Just think of me as your own random-post generator.
• I’m using the lovely Author Appreciation avatar from Heidi’s blog, created by Sara at Novel Novice (www.novelnovice.com).  If you’ve read my blog for a while, you’ll know I can’t even draw stick figures, so there’s no way I’m going to try to create an avatar when someone has already done such a beautiful job!
• I’m going to try and keep track of other bloggers celebrating this week, and I’ll probably (possibly?) throw a few links in a the end of each post. A few. Has anybody noticed the size of the Internet lately?!

There. I’ve done my best, as you can tell, to put structure into something that has no way of staying structured, but I can always try. Enjoy the week and make sure you tell all the authors in your day-to-day life how much you do appreciate them, too!