Raleigh's Stacey Cochran Shares Video Application for Reality TV Show

Raleigh's own Write2Publish Meet-up founder and organizer, Stacey Cochran, is also the producer, director and host of The Artist's Craft show on the Raleigh Television Network. You can view some if not all of the shows on Stacey's YouTube channel.

His blog is a page on his Web site StaceyCochran.com. On the blog you'll find pictures, little notes and videos.

Sometime not too long ago Stacey made a video application for a new reality TV series called The Write Stuff. The video is a great summary of Stacey's accomplishments which are quite remarkable. He's met so many writers; he's hosted so many events for writers and is a real leader in the writing community.

Given that, maybe we're not surprised that Stacey's been accepted as a contestant! CONGRATULATIONS! Stacey.

Stacey also has more good news in that he's signed on with an agent!

Karen Tiede: Thoughts on Making and Marketing Art

Karen Tiede is someone I see interesting, creative and brilliant enough to make it on the global art and personality scene. A tall, beautiful, articulate woman, who reads voraciously, writes like a runner (fast), and creates original, "green", wild and cool art that includes stunningly beautiful knit rugs from recycled T shirts; wood carvings (chain saw wood carvings) that take abandoned tree trunks and logs and make them into penguins and flamingos and irish design poles; recycled bottles Xmas trees; jewel balls for the garden; and who knows what she's up to next! She's a performer also, and teaches.

She's one of my "gotta watch" people. She's published books that sell on Amazon and is a prolific reviewer.

Check out her blog: Karen Tiede: Thoughts on Making and Marketing Art.

MMM Tasty

Janelle, the runner, the twitterer, is also a blogger, dropping treats about her life in her MMM Tasty.

She has a neat way of writing about her life in short, as if it had been written for a twitter:

"born in the 718. grew up in the 516. moved to the 919."

Run Janelle Run

Twitter Queen Janelle has at least two blogs, Run Janelle Run is her running blog. 

From Janelle's sidebar:

"All of my life, I have been an athlete in some respect. I earned a full scholarship to NC State University for running cross country and track during 2000-2005. Since graduating, I still run and am part of a women's soccer league down here in NC."

"It is my hope that this blog will serve not only as a journal of my continued experience (and struggles) with this awesome sport, but that it will also offer advice and insight to others. "

Janelle has significant experience on the topic, and she writes that her boyfriend is a trainer too!

Western North Carolina Mountain Living

The Western North Carolina Mountain Living blog talks about living in the mountains in North Carolina. It's about neat places, nature, restaurants, everything special and notable about life in the mountains.  The author is Cheri.

Real Travel.com Provides Free Travel Blog Posts

The Real Travel.com site offers site users free travel blogs, which are then organized by sites. The North Carolina related posts can be found here. Click on the city you're interested in and you'll see if there are any travel posts related to that city.

The University of North Carolina Press Blog

The editor for the University of North Carolina Press blog is Ellen Bush.

The blog helps promote the books published by the press, and keeps connections with authors, scholars, students, industry colleagues, booksellers and readers.

It posts images of the recent published books on the side bar.

Why? What Have You Heard?

Writer, photographer and computer specialist, James Bengel, has an interesting, far from run-of-the-mill blog, Why? What Have You Heard? characterized on "Blogged" as:

Collected photos, punctuated by various rants, ramblings and stories from a charming curmudgeon -- or a churlish disagreeable old man, depending on your point of view.

James participates in writing and blogging and photo contests and has content that covers the range, sometimes so edgy that this blogger has to turn away, but always interesting, always with a keen intelligence. Very talented.

Dynasty Communications

Dynasty Communications is Mike Olson's business blog. His posts write about how the new communications technologies available can save people time and effort, really adding ease and efficiency to our lives. With an easy to read writing style, he gives examples from daily life.

Mike's business is by the same name, Dynasty Communications, at www.dynastync.com.

Their service could be summarized as follows:

Dynasty Communications helps you find the best products for easier, faster, more productive communications.

Phones, Air Cards and more.

Blue Ridge Blog

Marie Freeman writes the Blue Ridge Blog, a photo blog with a lot of content about Appalachian State, even though the photos are from many places. Beautiful nature photos.

Marie, humorously and seriously, says she has a fascination with Outhouses.
As long as it's just with what they look like in a photograph, that sounds reasonable.

Socks, Sockfather & Super Heroes

Diogenes Ruiz is a very creative and talented North Carolina resident. With a background in Architecture, he landed eventually with an ad agency. One thing led to another and he joined a small team of people interested in developing a new line of socks. Long story short, he has started three blogs with different angles to publicize his November 1 2008, online Sockathon.

He has the Super Hero Bulletin, in which he launched Sock Man! (trumpets and drumroll) Then he launched Sock Woman! (trombone and cymbles) Building on his Super Hero Cards, where each Super Hero has a Super Power, these two Super Heros have the power of helping reduce people's carbon footprint.

Diogenes also created Sockfather Speaks, another blog taking off from the new Godfather spoofing video Sockfather Part 1.

Then there's a third one! The Change your Socks, Change the World campaign. The Super Heroes from the Super Hero Bulletin show up in this blog too.

Whether or not these blogs will continue over time once the November 1, 2008 date has passed, we'll just have to see.

It's all for fun, seeing which voice catches on!

Dirt and Noise

Dirt and Noise is Ilina's blog. Though she looks very serious in her profile photo, she's really got a great sense of humor. She says, " I am a left leaning "mommy blogger" who focuses mostly on politics and parenting."

This is from her profile.
"I am a self-proclaimed neat freak who can't function amid clutter. I recently bought a label maker and spent a Saturday morning labeling my spices. Sometimes I just open the spice drawer to revel in the organization.

I have two boys ages 5 and 3. One is gentle, affectionate, and yummy just like his dad. The other is just like me - sassy, smart, and what they call "spirited."

I am a die-hard Democrat and don't even allow toy elephants in the house. I luckily have a dream husband who really loves me in spite of myself. I spend half my time home with kids and the other half running my own marketing consulting shop. I feel like I half-ass both."

She's been blogging since January 2006.

Musician Profile Blog: Lawrence App

Blogger Anora McGaha, just launched a new profile, a musician's profile, to highlight the work of master musician Lawrence App. Lawrence App Blog.

The blog is all about this musician, who, though based in Florida, has a foothold in Asheville, North Carolina. It includes lyrics, links to songs and CDs, photos, interviews, video and reflections.

Camilla Trinchieri

Anora McGaha, who also develops affordable websites for creative people, experimented with a blog for one of her web clients, New York mystery and thriller author, Camilla Trinchieri. Camilla Trinchieri Blog

With the translation of her most recent book, The Price of Silence, into Italian, there were so many events, and newspaper, magazine and radio coverage, the blog seemed like a natural vehicle to provide the coverage, and capture the spread of interest through other blogs and social networks.

The author writes some of the content, but she says, "I use use all my writing energy to write books."

The blog proved so valuable to the author, with people visiting from the US and Europe, that this became one of Anora's professional blogs, blogs that are developed and maintained as a business service.