So, you may be asking yourself, “What the hell is a murmuration and why is this wack-a-doo girl using weird words for post titles?”
Well, I’m glad you asked!
A murmuration has a couple of meanings, but the definition I’m using here is “a flock of starlings”, a rare but beautiful occurrence that, if you ever saw it, will engrave the word into your memory.
No, I haven’t picked up a new bird watching hobby, relaxing as that sounds.
The purpose of the word is twofold:
First: To announce that Amid the Imaginary is now on Twitter (finally)!
Yes, I’ve set up an account and have a shiny new widget on the sidebar with a Twitter feed.
What will I be posting there? I’ve often found cool articles or publishing news that I’d love to tell you all about, but just don’t have the time to make a full post on it. Twitter is the answer to this! Just think of it as me giving you an elbow poke and then waggling my eyebrows at something cool you should know about.
I’ll put notification of book reviews there as well just to get self-published writers as much exposure to potential readers as possible.
If this sounds like something that appeals to you, I’d love for you to join the blog’s flock (I may be stressing the pun here) by clicking the little blue bird on the sidebar to the right.
Now, the second reason I hauled out the word ‘murmuration’ was for something much creepier:
As I left my driveway the other day to head to work, I noticed that the front yards of several neighbors were blanketed in dozens upon dozens of crows. That’s right, a literal murder of crows. As you might imagine, that made me a little uneasy and I did glance at the sky just to make sure the apocalypse was not, in fact, imminent. I decided to take it as a sign to get that Twitter account set up (which I’d been meaning to do since, you know, I started the blog).
The buggers haven’t returned since, though a stay-at-home neighbor friend told me they all took off as a group that day, one massive black wave undulating through the sky. It got very Game of Thrones around here. I don’t think any of them had three eyes, but just to appease the Gods of Westeros (both old and new), I’m offering a giveaway: One Kindle edition of George R. R. Martin’s “The Sworn Sword”
To enter, all you have to do is tweet #ImagineStarlings to @AnelaDeen by end of day, Sunday, August 30th.
It’s not required to follow me on Twitter to participate in the giveaway, though I’d be one happy Hawaiian girl if you did.
Meanwhile, please send some good vibes my way in hopes the crows don’t return because, for those of us in the Midwest, winter is indeed coming…
Author of speculative fiction 
In Ireland a murder of crows on your lawn is considered good luck, in spite of their rather cool collective noun, so you can relax, I think.
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I think Hitchcock kind of ruined the wonder of seeing that many birds grouped together. Glad to know it means something good too!
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