Featured Blogger The First: Taylor Grace, Author

Hello, pup!

I am featuring Taylor Grace‘s five most recent posts at the top of the sidebar until further notice. She inspired this feature (see below for how it works) and is one of a handful of bloggers I think of as “bloggers I have known since I started my blogs.” Unless I am super-busy, I comment on her blog once a week. That is the most I comment anywhere consistently except the ones I run.

Taylor has lots of good features.

• Posts I Loved this Week is the one I try to never miss. I’ve discovered more good blogs that way than I can count — especially writing blogs.
  

  Meet Mishka!

• Pay it Forward Fridays inspired this feature.
• She also reviews books and occasionally does roundups of her most popular posts (always fascinating).
• And I just love her personal posts, especially when she writes about the social lives of Akitas.

Taylor links to me a lot — she’s probably linked to my blogs more than any other blogger in the last year except me, and I have an advantage because I run two blogs and have permission to run amok on a third one. And a lot of links means a lot of pings.

I nearly always follow pings, and most of the time, I comment when I do. I see them as reminders to stop by and say hello 🙂

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This is part one of a new feature. Here is how it works. I choose a blogger and put their five most recent posts at the top of my sidebar. No notice until the post publishes and the pings go out. The surprise makes it better, you see.

Everyone who qualifies has two things in common.

• Consistently produces quality I appreciate enough to share.
• Has had enough conversations with me that I find them interesting enough to interview if I had the time to do a more proper feature.

So, mostly bloggers I’ve been chattering with for awhile. It’s like a Follow Friday. Only it’s in the middle of the week and comes with a sidebar ad.

You won’t see this on either of  the other two blogs — it’s exclusive to this one. But I don’t mind other bloggers borrowing the idea. Not a bad way to spread some blog love, I say. It won’t be weekly at first, but eventually I will sit down on a Saturday and schedule four of them, and then it will become weekly.

This is not a test run. It’s a winner and I know it. It gets me a mid-week post that I can do consistently and allows me to do something nice for a friend. (Remember, despite the recent flurry from me here, the only post I promise at this blog is the #WeekendCoffeeShare post on Saturday.)

Obviously, if the feedback tells me readers of this blog like the idea, it will become a weekly feature much more quickly than it will if I have to share the next one on Facebook with a world domination meme to see what people think about it. Just sayin’