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suenicornOkay, I did it on Blogger. It was a fascinating experience. The idea is, you choose a theme and you write about it on your blog over a month, using the 26 letters of the alphabet. I chose the theme of Spies and Spying, because I'd written a children's book about it and so already had some background. I'm happy to say I managed to get ALL the letters in, though I did cheat a bit with X, writing "X is for eXtras." All things considered one bit of minor cheating in 26 entries was not at all bad.
Mind you, I discovered that some of the people I've written about have had their achievements questioned over the years since my book came out. History does change, no matter what you may think. I left out Jasper Maskelyne, whose boasts about saving Alexandria with magic tricks have been questioned, but then read that, in fact, he had helped with an incident in England where they needed the Nazis to think the Havilland factory was damaged. So, he could do iteksewhere, whether he did or not.
Then there were those web sites that argue that Herbert Dyce Murphy either never did the things he claimed(he was a spy who disguised as a woman before WWI)or that despite having lived quite comfortably as a man afterwards, marrying, etc., he must have been trans. Maybe - but it isn't mentioned in such sources as the Australian Dictionary of Biography on-line. I think the only thing you can do is look up several sources and make up your own mind.
For example, I researched Chang and Eng, the Siamese Twins, for an article I was working on. One said they had worked for Barnum and Bailey, another source said they hadn't. I decided to go with the latter, because from the other info I had about them, they were good businessmen who would be unlikely to agree to be ripped off by Barnum.
Anyway, A to Z was fun and I made some new on line friends and wrote something every day. And I am thinking of reworking a few of the posts and see if I can sell them to a children's magazine...
Mind you, I discovered that some of the people I've written about have had their achievements questioned over the years since my book came out. History does change, no matter what you may think. I left out Jasper Maskelyne, whose boasts about saving Alexandria with magic tricks have been questioned, but then read that, in fact, he had helped with an incident in England where they needed the Nazis to think the Havilland factory was damaged. So, he could do iteksewhere, whether he did or not.
Then there were those web sites that argue that Herbert Dyce Murphy either never did the things he claimed(he was a spy who disguised as a woman before WWI)or that despite having lived quite comfortably as a man afterwards, marrying, etc., he must have been trans. Maybe - but it isn't mentioned in such sources as the Australian Dictionary of Biography on-line. I think the only thing you can do is look up several sources and make up your own mind.
For example, I researched Chang and Eng, the Siamese Twins, for an article I was working on. One said they had worked for Barnum and Bailey, another source said they hadn't. I decided to go with the latter, because from the other info I had about them, they were good businessmen who would be unlikely to agree to be ripped off by Barnum.
Anyway, A to Z was fun and I made some new on line friends and wrote something every day. And I am thinking of reworking a few of the posts and see if I can sell them to a children's magazine...
