Recently, Amazon and Penguin Group (USA) announced the fourth annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, an international competition seeking fresh new writing voices. CreateSpace will once again host the submission platform for the contest. Here is the information the competition emailed me as a past participant. Important details about the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award: What are the prizes? […]
Book Talk
How to Set Up Google Alerts – Simple and Free
Would you like to get regular updates, via email, about something that interests you whenever it appears in the top 20 web or top 10 news results? Would you like to get news about you and your blog? If so, Google Alerts is for you. It’s simple and it’s free. It only takes about six seconds to set up an […]
Big Ambitions
I have big ambitions for the coming year. I need fresh ideas for my blog–posts that both share my journey as a writer and also inform. I’ve been blogging for a while. I should be a pro by now. Ha. Where to begin? Here comes the “big ambitions” part. To keep the creative juices flowing, I plan […]
Freedom is Choice
I hate losing stuff. I hate losing valuable time. I hate losing friends. I hate losing money. But most of all, I hate losing freedom. I would give up stuff, time, and money for freedom. I’d give up friends who threaten my freedom. Losing my freedom is unacceptable. Pure and simple. But then again, we give […]
Complications Worksheet
I’d like to share a plotting worksheet with you that I found very helpful in revising my novel. It was written by Martina Boone, one of the publishers of Adventures in Children’s Publishing. Don’t let the blog’s title, Adventures in Children’s Publishing, fool you. Most of this blog’s content, as well as this worksheet, apply to ALL fiction, not just children’s fiction. Here’s a sampling of Martina’s […]
Incorporating Fragments of Conversation Into Fiction
For a homework assignment in a creative writing class at UCDavis Extension, I was asked to write an incident that included a fragment of conversation, keeping as close to the actual incident as possible. 250 words. Next, I was to write an invented scene containing that same fragment of conversation. 250 words. In other words, I was to: Incorporate […]
