Loving this community!

First, I want to open with a link to a contest (not the one I'm begging votes for...that will come at the bottom of this post). DNA Writers, a dynamic group of seven lovely people, is having a contest. You could win gift cards, books, Starbucks, and critiques -- the grand prize is a substantial edit of a full book! Click here and check out these great writers.

Second, I want to say how touched I am by your support for me in the Jane Austen Made Me Do It contest. Thank you for your comments, votes, and especially to Laurel at Laurel's Leaves (she's Poet of the Month over at at Angela Felsted's blog, My Poetry and Prose Place -- go check out her beautiful poetry) for the shout-out on her blog. It's no secret I sometimes find the social media scene a little overwhelming, but it's things like this that remind me why I want to be a part of it. So whether I'm a finalist or not, I feel like a winner. Thanks for that!

The contest ends tonight, with the ten finalists (those stories with the highest number of votes) being announced tomorrow. One of those finalists will be selected to appear in the Jane Austen Made Me Do It anthology, alongside best-selling authors including Lauren Willig, Karen Joy Fowler, and so many more, by Ballantine Books in October.

So if you haven't voted, please stop by the contest to read some fantastic stories and vote. My story "Intent and Intensity" (#74) is a modern retelling of Sense and Sensibility. You can vote once only, for up to three stories. If you like my story, I'd appreciate your vote (because as much as I already feel like a winner, I would like to be a finalist, too!).

Thanks again. For everything.

In Which I am Naive...

Sometimes, success is about talent. And sometimes it's not.

As I've mentioned, I am participating in a particular short story contest. In this contest, writers post their entries and voting is opened to the public for two weeks. In the first round, voters can vote once for their three favorite stories. The ten entries with the most votes go on to the final judging, with editors choosing the finalist for inclusion in the anthology.

I worked hard on my entry and allowed myself to think that perhaps, just maybe, enough people would read it and like it enough to vote for it and put me in the top ten.

Twelve hours after the contest opened for voting, they posted the voting stats. And I was stunned to see that a bunch of entries had 30, 40, and even 50 votes. The majority, however, had 2-10 votes.

I was absolutely stunned. Could these high numbers really be the result of people who had read all the entries and chosen their favorites? After all, half of the 88 entries went up on the last day. A brief Google search suggested that maybe the high numbers were a result of promotion -- sending out pleas via email, Facebook, Twitter and blogs to go vote for the writer's story. That's not to say those stories weren't well written (most of them are great -- I know because I've read most of them) but I find it hard to believe that that many people had a chance to read that many 5000-word stories in the first hours of voting.

When I saw those numbers, I panicked. I hadn't told anyone about the voting yet. I only had two votes (but in truth, this made me feel good deep down because these were anonymous readers who read and liked my story enough to vote for it.) But in order to have a shot at the top ten, I knew I'd better start selling myself, and hard. So I did.... here, FB, emails, friends and neighbors, and so on.

And it makes me feel terrible. I would rather it be about the writing. I'd like to be in the top ten because my story is one of the best, not because I have the most friends and followers. I know I'm naive. I know that this is representative of the industry -- and society -- in general these days. We all know promoting yourself is key.

Think ABNA. Think American Idol. Popular votes are everywhere. When you open things up to the popular vote, it becomes a popularity contest and may or may not have anything to do with talent. Wonderfully talented people sometimes go unnoticed because they don't have the presence.

But for all my ranting, I am realistic. I still need votes. (But thank heavens they've taken the vote count down, otherwise I'd be watching that they way I watch my comments and followers count!)

If you haven't voted yet, I'd appreciate it if you could head over here, read a few stories and cast your vote by Feb 28. You do not need to register on the site to vote and you can read as few or as many stories as you like. My story is "Intent and Intensity" (#74) and is a modern take on Sense and Sensibility. I really appreciate it. And if you've voted already, a great big thank you.

But I'd also like to know what you think. Do you have any thoughts on popular votes in contests, whether in writing or singing or anything else? Are they a fair way of assessing talent?

Read and Vote and Affect the course of History

OK, so not really change the course of history. My history, maybe.

The Jane Austen Made Me Do It Short Story Contest is now open for voting. There are 87 entries for you to read through and select your three favorites. And if one of your favorites happens to be my short story "Intent and Intensity" (#74), all the better! (And I can use all the help I can get...I didn't want to canvas but when one story garnered 55 votes overnight, it became clear I needed to start campaigning too).

Ten finalists will be chosen by popular vote and then the editors will select one story to include in the anthology published by Random House in October. More info on it here.

I've been reading the entries and there is some amazing writing out there. And don't worry, if you aren't into the Jane Austen style, there are plenty of modern approaches (including mine) to Jane-era subjects.

Happy Reading (and voting) (for #74) (mine) (go on and vote... now)!

The Bridport Prize Writing Contest

Another writing contest for you...

From The Bridport Prize press release:

The Bridport Prize is the richest open writing competition in the English language - with £5000 first prize for a short story (of up to 5000 words); and £5000 first prize for a poem (of up to 42 lines). The new category of Flash Fiction attracts £1,000 to be won for the best short, short story of under 250 words.

The Bridport is also known as a tremendous literary stepping stone - the first step in the careers of writers such as: Kate Atkinson, Tobias Hill, Carol Ann Duffy and Helen Dunmore.

Anyone can enter - so long as the work is previously unpublished. It costs £7 per story, £6 per poem or £5 per flash fiction and the closing date is 30th June 2011.

Full details are available at The Bridport Prize website. Note that this is a UK contest but is open worldwide.

I like writing contests because I work best with a deadline (I try to enter 3-4 contests a year). And I like this writing contest because it has excellent judges, a low entry fee (just over $10 for a short story), and a great payoff if you win (both monetary and reputation). The competition is tough so it challenges me to send my very best work in. I haven't been short-listed yet but I will keep trying!

So if you are a short-story writer, or need a deadline to get you writing daily, this is a great one to check out.

Jane Austen Made Me Do It Short Story Contest

Are you inspired by Jane Austen? Love to read her books? Looking for a way to build publication credits? Whether your love to read or write is inspired by Jane Austen, here's a contest for you.

The Republic of Pemberly, an amazing site for all things Regency and Jane Austen, is hosting a short story contest in conjuntion with Laurel Ann Nattress of Austenprose (another great Austen site) and Random House. The winner's story will appear in the anthology Jane Austen Made Me Do It, to be edited by Laurel Ann and published by Random House this year.

Jane Austen Made Me Do It contains more than twenty best-selling and popular authors who have contributed short stories inspired by Jane Austen, her novels and her philosophies of life and love. From historical continuations of her plots and characters to contemporary spinoffs and comedies, the stories encapsulate what we love about our favorite author: romance, social satire and witty humor. Contributing to the line-up are best-selling authors Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club), Adriana Trigiani (Brava, Valentine), Lauren Willig (The Pink Carnation series), Laurie Viera Rigler (The Jane Austen Addict series), Syrie James (The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen), Stephanie Barron (Being A Jane Austen Mystery series), and the husband and wife writing team of Frank Delaney (Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show) and Diane Meier (The Season of Second Chances). Many Austenesque authors and others from related genres have already contributed to the project. One spot in the anthology remains open for the lucky Grand Prize winner.

To enter, you must submit an original, previously unpublished 5000 word short story of your own creation inspired by, or based upon, Jane Austen, her novels, characters, letters, philosophies of life and/or love. The story can be set in any era and may include romantic and suspenseful elements, but you must stay within the realm of Jane Austen's sphere of social decorum, avoiding profanity, violence or "adult" content. The contest is open to previously unpublished (short stories OK) US residents. Full details are available here.

The contest is open now and runs through February 13. Voting for the Top Ten finalists runs February 14 - 28, 2011 on Pemberley, with the Top Ten finalists announced on March 1, 2011. The Grand Prize winner receives $500.00 and a contract for publication in the anthology Jane Austen Made Me Do It.

Since Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors, and as I spent the better part of a year researching the Regency for my novel, I am definitely entering this. Plus, a shot at publication in a Random House book? Sign me up!

If you like writing short stories, head on over. If you like reading short stories, head on over! There are currently a few entries up for viewing and I'm hoping mine will be there soon. And don't worry, I'll post a reminder when it is time to vote.

Cooking up more strange stuff

As I mentioned last week, my former job was a recipe developer.  I was given a product and had to use it as an ingredient in a recipe, which might be printed on the back of the packaging or perhaps put on a website for users to access. For three years, I worked for a company that made gravy, sauce, and bakery mixes. After a while, you use up the run-of-the-mill recipe ideas for beef gravy or pancake mix and start to get a little creative (read: weird).

Here is a list of the some of the strange recipes I made:

• Rootbeer Float Pancakes: I had to come up with 15 pancake recipes in one week. (And we're not talking about "Add 1 cup blueberries.") I used rootbeer instead of milk to make the pancakes. They tasted a little strange with maple syrup, but they very tasty with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
• Instant Stuffing Sauce: A restaurant chain wanted a mix they could combine with water and pour over day-old biscuits to make stuffing. It smelled just like Stove-Top , but was kind of thick and sticky so that it didn't make the biscuits soggy.
• Mole Sauce: Mole (pronounced Mow - lay) is a wonderful Mexican sauce made from roasted chilis, corn tortillas, almonds and chocolate. Somehow, I managed to turn Beef Gravy mix into a passable mole (OK, not passable here in San Antonio, but they accepted up north just fine). This one took me about twelve attempts to get it right. 
• Chocolate Cream Pie: I made chocolate pudding out of Biscuit Gravy. This is not quite as weird as it seems when you realize that biscuit gravy is basically flour, corn starch and milk (no seasonings), which are the same main ingredients as pudding. I made up the hot gravy and stirred in sugar and chocolate chips. When the chocolate was melted, I poured it in a prebake pie shell and topped it with whipped cream. OK, yeah, that is pretty weird.

So there you have it: culinary strangeness.

If you missed it, go check out my last post on recipe development as a writing analogy for a little contest. Comment here or at that post and there might be a cup of coffee in it for you (I'm giving away a $5 Starbucks gift card -- sorry, I'm cheap these days as I am no longer employed as a recipe developer!).

Cooking up another writing analogy

Writers love analogies. And we really love analogies about writing. Some days, it seems like every other blog post out there ends with a comparison of how the day's topic compares to the writing process. I did one on shoes not too long ago.

In my past life (meaning the era before I chucked my career to write full time) I was a recipe developer, working in the test kitchen of a food manufacturer. This also happens to be the job of Lara, my MC in THE SHADOW SCRIBE. As I was revising, I came upon this passage, something Lara says while working:

Recipe development is not a job with immediate gratification. Some projects – like this one – take me five, ten, even twenty tries to get the recipe perfect.

So of course, that got the analogy juices flowing. Let me tell you how recipe development works:

You start with an ingredient (usually a product made by said company). And then you come up with a target recipe. You write out a version of the recipe using the necessary ingredient and then you make the recipe. And you taste it. And you change a few ingredients. And then you make it again. And adjust a few more things. And then you make it again. And taste it again.

By now, you are getting tired of the taste and you are losing your objectivity. So you have a few other people taste it. They give you their opinions; some think it needs more salt, some think it needs less. So you change it again. And you taste it again. You start to think you never want to taste that recipe ever again. But you must, because it is your job, you've worked hard on it, and you are a professional. You remake and retaste a few more times until you think it is perfect.

When you are confident it is finished, you serve it up to the VIPs (usually sales and marketing types). Sometimes they say it isn't quite what they are after (at which point you go back and rework and retaste a few more times). And sometimes, their eyes glaze over, they make yummy noises, and they eat the whole thing. Score.

I'm not going to draw the writing/editing analogy for you -- you are a bright group and I'm sure you'll figure it out.

So that is my "_______ is like writing" analogy.

Let's have a contest (my first ever)! In the comment section, give me your best/most obscure/most ridiculous "_____ is like writing" analogy. If you've already posted an analogy on your own blog, link to it. If you've seen someone else with a great analogy, link to that. If you don't have an analogy, comment anyway. I get lonely over here sometimes.

For anyone who comments or links, I'll throw your name in a hat for a $5 gift card for Starbucks (yeah, it's a small prize but, heck, every writer could use coffee, tea or a muffin). There's an extra entry for anyone who makes a "Writing is like Starbucks" analogy or who mentions this contest on their blog. You've got until Thursday, April 29 to enter.

Come on... you're a writer! I know you've got an analogy floating around there somewhere!

Fun and exciting news

Fun and exciting news -- Laurel at Laurel's Leaves has chosen my excerpt from THE SHADOW SCRIBE as the third runner up in her Eleventy One Celebration Contest!

For this contest, the scene or story had to be dialogue-driven and show an instance of negotiation and/or persuasion. I selected a scene from THE SHADOW SCRIBE, my novel out in query-land. Here's the brief blurb:

Soon after Lara Ramsey moves into Heraldsgreen House, a Georgian house in the Scottish countryside, she starts talking in her sleep. Every night, Lara’s story is captured by the voice recognition software on her computer. Every morning, Lara wakes to read a new chapter about an artist who loses the woman he loves and tries to find love and inspiration once again. Stranger still, the style of language she uses is from two hundred years ago. Lara is beginning to think she’s crazy, her dream home is starting to scare her, and her skeptical husband, David, is never there. For the sake of her sanity and her marriage, she must find out what the story is and why she is telling it.

In this excerpt, an exhausted Lara meets with her friend Isobel and tells her of the strange goings on.

“Lara, has it occurred to you that there may be more to this?”

“Like what?”

“There is a huge amount of energy in this world that most people are completely unaware of,” she said, pointing her biscuit at me.

“What do you mean by energy? Currents?”

“Sort of. Forces, like the life force, move through all of us. Some are more sensitive to it than others,” Isobel said with a meaning look. “Maybe you are channeling some of this energy as you sleep.”

“Channeling? Like a medium? Ghosts? Are you serious?”

Isobel shrugged. “You live in a really old house. Are you telling me you’ve never considered the possibility?”

I didn’t answer right away. “I guess I never really thought about it like that,” I said slowly. “I don’t think I believe in ghosts.”

“That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.”

I was glad the waitress came to take our order because I needed a few minutes to think about what Isobel suggested. We were both silent until the she placed a basket of rolls on the table and left.

“Isobel, it can’t be ghosts.”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t seen anything, or heard anything weird.”

“Other than the sleepwalking or telling a historical story while you are unconscious?” she asked patiently.

“Right, good point.”

“Look, I’m not saying that ghosts are strolling down the hallways of Heraldsgreen. I’m only suggesting that there may be some unresolved energy in the house.”

“David is going to think that is ridiculous,” I said, more to myself than to her. “He doesn’t believe in anything like that.”

“Why not?

“He’s a scientist. If it doesn’t have academic backing, he’s not interested.”

“Scientists drive me crazy,” Isobel snorted, tossing her long hair back over her shoulder. “They are always so sure what they know is true, right up until the next big discovery proves them totally wrong. Then they hold on to that theory as if it is the one true answer. Look, if he says anything, throw this at him: The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, right?”

“If you say so.” Where did she come up with this stuff? It was pure Isobel. She probably had copies of Popular Science next to Reflexology Monthly.

“And we’ve proven the body has energy: brain waves, electrical activity in the heart, the energy we create by eating and drinking, the heat we give off and so on. David would have to admit to this, right?”

“Of course.”

“So what happens to all the energy, the electricity we know about – and all the energy we don’t – when we die? Is it so hard to believe from a scientific perspective that the energy remains after the body passes on?”

“You make a good point.” Isobel blew me away. She was always like this, sometimes she seemed so flaky, yet she was so intelligent. Her brain just seemed to work a little bit differently.

“Just something you can use to get David on board. Tell him not to eliminate something just because he doesn’t understand it.”

Thanks, Laurel, both for running the contest and for giving me a lift when I really needed it!

Shameless Self-Congratulatory Notes

I honestly intend to turn this into a legitimate blog someday, and someday soon, Gods of Time willing. It will have a purpose other than me babbling on about how I write and what goes on in my little writer's brain.

But not today. Today I'm going to do my little happy dance, wordstyle.

Today I found out my WIP was commended in the Yeovil Literary Prize competition, judged by wonderful best-selling author Katie Fforde (if you like British chick lit, you'll LOVE Katie Fforde, so definitely check her out). It's not a huge competition, but I think fairly respectable (like all things British). Out of 299 entries, I came out in the top 20 (list was alphabetical, dammit, so I don't know exactly where, except that I'm between six and twenty). Hooray!

AND this week, one of my short stories will be published in Woman's Weekly, a UK mag with circulation of 350,000. This is the same magazine that published another of my short stories (back in 2006 -- I am not a prolific short story writer).

Will either of these things get me a book deal? Of course not. But I'm just hoping these credits might help lift me to the top, if not out, of the slush pile. And if nothing else, it was some validation for my WIP that I was sorely needing.

So this is a good week!

Impatience is not a virtue

I must admit that I have a little problem. When I am expecting to receive some news or response to an important message, I check my email over and over. and over. and over and over and over and over and over. I do it even though I know it is a Saturday and said email is coming a business that is closed on weekends. I do it first thing in the morning and late at night, even though said email is coming from a different time zone where everyone is sleeping. I do it even though I checked it ten minutes ago. It's an illness, really.

This is going on now. I entered the beginning of my WIP in a writing competition (which I will name in a later post) and their website states 'Results will be posted here in September.' The trick is that they didn't say WHEN in September, which means I am checking the website several times a day. This instance is particularly trying for me as the website where you can check on the status of your entry originally listed my WIP as 'Not Shortlisted.' (This prompted my very first post on this blog.) But when I checked back last week out of curiousity, my entry now is listed as 'Work Commended.' What's up with that? As they have not announced the winner yet, I am not making any assumptions, good or bad. But it is killing me. I am trying to control myself but it is very VERY difficult.

This OCD checking for the results does not bode well for my querying experience. I may have to resort to restraints and intravenous margaritas to stop myself from refreshing my inbox every three minutes.

Giving in to the inevitable...

It was going to happen. We all knew it; some knew it before others. It was only a matter of time before I started to blog. Like I really need something else to distract me from what I should really be doing, which is writing. A book. Not a blog. But I'll chalk it up as the first step to building 'my platform'. For those of you who don't know the oh-so-complicated world of publishing a novel, your platform is your presence out in the book-buying world. Ideally, you'll have a flashy website that thousands visit every week, thereby giving you your potential buyers of your novel. At the barest minimum, you have a blog. So here we go.

Today has been a day of a little high and a little low. I sold 'Spa Break' to Woman's Weekly, a woman's mag in the UK, the same one that published my other short story 'The Way to a Man's Heart' back in 2006 (not exactly prolific am I?). The money is minimal (but I'm not in it for the big bucks anyway) and it is hardly a prestigious literary publication. But it is read by 350,000 people each week and it is rather competitive from a writer's perspective. So I'm not complaining. Actually, I'm pretty chuffed! One more thing to put on my writer's resume.

As for the little low, I found out today that neither of my novels-in-progress were shortlisted for the Yeovil Literary Prize. Well, shoot.

WOMAN OVERBOARD was a long shot, I know that. It is far from polished (and VERY far from finished) and I really shouldn't have wasted the entry fee submitting it. But I figured I'd put it out there as it was chick lit and the contest was judged by Katie Fforde who writes great chick lit. After all, what if something in it just resonated for her? Sometimes that is all it takes. Clearly not the case here though. S'okay. I'll get over it.

But I am a bit disappointed that NIGHT WORDS (or HERALDSGREEN HOUSE or UPON THE SHADOWED PAGE or whatever it is I'm calling my WIP this week -- another post on that very soon) didn't even make it to the short list. However, after discussing the second draft with four of my readers over the past weeks, I know that the first six chapters are not the strongest of the book. And I also think that my synopsis is not as good as I can make it. And that is what this contest was judging (I sent the first 15,000 words). So if I wasn't motivated to fix the first quarter of the book before this news, I certainly am now. Truly, I am STOKED for fixing the book. I can't wait to get stuck in to the third draft because I know that I can make it better, thanks to the great advice of my fantabulous readers.

Highs and lows. I think this blog will be mostly about the highs and lows of this process. The writing, the feedback, the editing, the submitting, the rejections, the rejections, the rejections, and with any luck, the ultimate high of getting this silly little novel of mine published.

Thanks for joining me on the journey.