Be still my beating heart… Valentine’s Day is coming. And the blog world wants to share the love. At least that is the result of my little poll. We had 15 votes, and a clear winner. The Secret Valentine it is!!!

To reiterate – this is the plan:

The idea behind the Secret Valentine is to create a little occasion for the community to hone in on itself and spread the blog love by focussing on individual bloggers. To that end interested participants send in their name to me, and I will assign a secret Valentine to them, using the ever-reliable principle of coincidence. There is no buying or crafting presents, no postage or calculating of despatch times, no costs attached – not counting the time you may have to spend engaging (secretly) with an as yet unfamiliar community member and conjuring up your contribution. All you need to do is write a Valentine’s post for your assigned RA world friend. Creatively, everything is possible. From a lovely letter to a beautiful edit to a specially written ficlet or a poem – whatever expresses your appreciation of your assigned Valentine. And depending on the level of anonymity that you would like to maintain in your submission.

This is an initiative that particularly welcomes participation from commentators – since you do not have a blog, it is that little bit harder for bloggers to return your support, attention and comments in kind. The Secret Valentine is the perfect opportunity to give a little bit of love back to you!

A specially created blog site will be created to collate the posts for posterity and access. It already exists but is virginal pretty empty now – but on February 14th it will be teeming with love, I hope. You can have a look at the site here – not much to see yet, I am afraid… But it might be worth while clicking on the “follow”-button!

So please, fellow RA-loving bloggers and commentators – send me an e-mail to guylty(at)photographer(dot)net and let me know you are part of this fun little venture. Sign-up is until February 5th, 2014. Please put “Valentine” in the subject line. Assigned Valentines to be sent out by February 7th, 2014. Submission deadline is February 13th, 2014, 23:00 GMT. Illustrations of your post welcome! Early submission encouraged!

I look forward to spreading the love with you!!!

Edit-PS: Thanks and credits to Agzy and Arkie for bouncing suggestions and ideas back and forth behind the scenes!