writing

Thursday News: The tax man cometh; Avon Romance restarts a community writer’s forum; Color eInk reader introduced in Russia

Thursday News: The tax man cometh; Avon Romance restarts a community writer’s forum; Color eInk reader introduced in Russia

This is just for fun and because Jayne sent it to me. Internet sales tax: who’s for it, who’s against & what comes next – An Internet sales tax is about to pass the Senate and may do so as early as the end of this week. It may surprise you that Amazon is a(…)

Fan Fiction Author Roundtable: Cyndy Aleo, Tamara Allen, Jane Davitt, & Jami Gold

As part of our fan fiction series, we asked four writers of both fan and original fiction to talk about their experiences. We had a wonderful email conversation that I’ve reluctantly chopped down to fit into a very long article. Rather than take up room with my words, here are brief biographies of the participants(…)

How I Came to Appreciate Fan Fiction

How I Came to Appreciate Fan Fiction

I’ve been reading genre fiction (romance, mystery, SFF) for a very long time, but I didn’t become aware of fan fiction as a category of writing, much less its role in creating community, until I found internet blogs about fiction writing. Back when I was reading mystery blogs regularly, I ran across a ranting post(…)

Interview & Giveaway: Patricia Gaffney, Putting Characters Through the Wringer for Your Reading Pleasure

Interview & Giveaway: Patricia Gaffney, Putting Characters Through the Wringer for Your Reading Pleasure

Update: Here are the winners of one of the re-released Gaffney titles:   1) Karenmc 2) Vidhya 3) Asia M 4) Evangeline Holland 5) Danielle D 6) Brenda C   7) EmilyW   8) Kathryn 9) TaraR 10) Frekki Please scroll to the bottom to fill out the form. Thanks. Jennie and I are the original Patricia Gaffney fangirls. Back in 1997, I read my(…)

First Page Saturday: Inspirational Contemporary

“You go first.” Her voice was soft and nudging in his ear, and he recognized the sound of it immediately. Without even glancing towards his right, Christian Wallace was certain of the identity of the woman who stood there, despite not having heard Rosie Donovan’s voice in more than four years. He knew instinctively who(…)

Thursday Midday Links: Writing Is a Cold Door

Zane is interviewed by Mediabistro about her self publishing origins. I haven’t listened to it but hers is a success story. **** For all those writers out there, an iPad fan figured out how to hook up his alphasmart to the iPad. ***** Korea is testing out a vending machine lending library and in Germany(…)

Tuesday Midday Links: Stephen Covey Decouples

I have no idea the contractual terms under which Stephen Covey made his publishing deal with Simon & Schuster but apparently it is allowing him to sell his digital rights to Rosetta Books in a deal that will make two of his bestselling books available ONLY on the Kindle platform for one year.    My guess is(…)

Backlist Title Dilemma

[poll id="213"] I was emailing with a friend of mine over two backlist titles from authors whose recent work we both enjoyed tremendously.   The backlist titles were such poor quality compared to the recent works and I thought that had I read those backlist titles, I would never have wanted to pick up the recent(…)

Penguin and Amazon Team Up Again for $25,000 Writing Prize

Penguin and Amazon are launching their second annual search for the next great fiction writer .  The prize is a hefty $25,000 advance (that's big money, particularly in today's publishing economy unless you are a celeb or writing a Dan Brown knock off).  Amazon reviewers get first crack at the slush pile and the top 500(…)

Feel The Heat Writing Competition from Mills & Boon

Feel The Heat Writing Competition from Mills & Boon

I don’t know if this is common knowledge or not, but Harlequin is one of the few major publishers that still accept un-agented manuscripts (Dorchester and Tor are others). From time to time Harlequin holds writing contests and the winners receive the editing services of a Harlequin editor for a year. One thing that was(…)

Aspiring Authors:  Want an Editor for a Year

Aspiring Authors: Want an Editor for a Year

Harlequin Presents is moving up its production schedule to 12 books a month. Mind boggling, no? In order to meet the apparently increased demand, HP is looking for new authors. Presents is inviting unpublished authors to submit a first chapter. The submissions must be made on-line from January 1st to February 14 2008. The grand(…)

Online Interview with Diana Norman

Online Interview with Diana Norman

A sharp eyed DA reader found this online interview with one of my favorite authors, Diana Norman/Ariana Franklin. And good news, she will take my request for her OOP books to be reissued back to her publisher. Rosina Lippi is holding a contest related to the interview. Post a comment, and your name is in(…)

Blog Regular Wins Writing Contest

Blog Regular Wins Writing Contest

Gather.com has announced the winners of its First Chapters Romance Writing Competition (a contest sponsored by Simon & Schuster, Borders and Gather.com) and we are thrilled that the winner of the grand prize is a Dear Author regular. Meredith McGuire, a 28-year-old PhD University of Chicago student also known on Dear Author’s comment threads as(…)

The Search for the Next Joan Wilder Is Narrowed to Five

Borders and Gathers have narrowed down the thousands of aspiring romance writers to five entries. The manuscripts of the five hopefuls are in the hands of the judging panel. The winner will be announced on October 30, 2007, and then one more author will join the ranks of the swollen genre. I think there should(…)

Amazon, Penguin and HP Partner to Host Writing Competition

Amazon, Penguin and HP Partner to Host Writing Competition

Gathers.com, Simon & Schuster and Borders collaborated to run a writing contest that resulted in two well received mystery novels published in September 2007. Currently, the same three companies are running a writing competition for romance novels. Amazon must have seen the benefit of this and joined with Penguin and Hewlett-Packard to host “Amazon’s Breakthrough(…)