Happy New Year, friends!

Ah, yes… the inaugural post of 2011… I feel I should provide you with some words of wisdom, or some deep insight gained from moments of reflection upon the past year, or perhaps some resolution drawn from a yearning for–

Aww, forget it. Technically, I’m still on vacation for one more day.

I hope you all had wonderful Christmases / holidays / New Year celebrations, full of food, friends, and great books (and maybe some relaxation? maybe?).

I’ll also admit that I didn’t get around to posting my final Christmas Giveaway, which I’d planned for December 24th (genius, I know). I neglected to consider that the majority of people in the writing & book blog circle don’t post for the two final weeks of the year… so I’m going to save that one for later this month.

That said, because I didn’t put the final contest up, I’m going to keep entries open for the other two until Jan. 5th, so head over and enter if you haven’t had a chance to yet!

Giveaway #1: Rosy Thornton’s ‘Tapestry of Love’

Giveaway #2: Writing Prize Pack

So… enjoy the first weekend of 2011.

Here’s to a great new year of writing & reading!

Joy to the wooooorld!!!!

The prizes are heeeere!!!!

…and despite the fact that I am achy, my throat is on fire, and I can’t talk (some people may find this an improvement), I’m not letting a little Cold from H-E-double hockey sticks keep away my Christmas Spirit!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the Day 1 giveaway with Rosy Thornton! If you haven’t had a chance to enter yet, never fear! I’m keeping entries open until Dec.24th.

Today, I want to ask you something reflective: How did your writing year go? Did you accomplish what you set out to do? Did you make it through the first two weeks of January and then discover that staying on task was a little more difficult than you’d planned?

Well, my friends, I want to help one of you out in some small way. I want to help you stay organized in the writing year ahead, so that one of these days, I’ll click open your blog and go “Omigosh! Lookit that!” because of all the wonderful things you accomplished.

So today, I have a little prize pack for you! It’s made up of a few cute little things that I’ve collected over the past few months here and there, all Very Important Things for keeping a writer organized:

Botanica Sticky Notes

Click here for an inside view!

There are 3 normal-sized sticky note pads inside, one large-sized with lines to write on (perfect for jotting down ideas or quotations), and four lovely tab-sized sticky pads.

I don’t know about you, but I keep stickies with me at all times in my purse! You never know when you’ll get a moment of inspiration or need to write an important reminder to yourself.

Chocolate-Scented Calculator!

(Just one… I’d love to give you a whole box, but alas, that would be one hefty shipping fee!)

Ever need to calculate the amount of words you have to write per day to finish that novel by the end of the month? Or how about when you’re in the bookstore with a coupon and want to know what the price will be with discount? Or how about when you’re craving chocolate like a madwoman/man and there’s none to be found?

Ah-HAH! You’ll have a chocolate-scented calculator to help you out. Isn’t it just what you always wanted?

Two Helpful Notebooks for Different Moods!

Ah, yes… these poorly lit pocket notebooks say “Really Good Ideas” and “Ramblings”… so no matter what comes to mind, you’ll have a place to scribble it down!

I don’t know about you, but I always have a notebook in my purse, just in case. You never know when inspiration is going to strike!

And with that… who wants to win?! You’ll get the fancy stickies, the calculator, and two little notebooks. Admittedly I’d meant to break this up into two giveaways, but the sickness has dictated that one post is better than two, so one of you will get it all!

How to Enter:

• Leave a comment telling me how your writing year went, or how you plan to stay organized in the New Year
• Your Name
• Email address (don’t worry, it’s just for contacting the winner)
• If you feel like sharing the contest somewhere, mention it in your comment! I’m not giving extra entries for Twitter/Facebook/etc. this time, but if someone wins who shared the contest, well… I just might throw in some extra stickers or something

Contest is International and Entries are open until Dec. 27th.

Thanks for entering, and happy writing!

Sooo… there’s something wonky going on with my Google RSS reader, because I could have sworn I “followed” a whole truckload of blogs a few weeks ago (and many others subsequently) but they don’t seem to be showing up in my reader. I’m not really sure why… has anyone else had this problem?

And if you follow me, and don’t see me “following” you, could you let me know so I can return the favor? Some of you also don’t have your blog or website listed in the Google profile that pops up, and if you haven’t commented (which is totally fine, I tend to lurk a lot as well!) I have no way of finding you to return the favor!

If you’d like a return follow and don’t have it, let me know!

If it looks like I’ve been following for a few weeks but you haven’t seen a comment from me and are wondering where I went off to, let me know that too, because it could be an issue with the blogs I’ve hit “follow” on and that aren’t showing up in the reader. In that case, I’ll re-follow you through RSS so you don’t lose a number in your follower tally, but I can actually read your posts…

If you’ve had this same issue where blogs don’t show up after hitting “follow”, can you tell me what’s wrong and how to fix it?!?!? I’d really like to know… :S

Thanks for your patience, bloggy friends!

…that’s right, I didn’t get any new books this week!

I think that’s some kind of record… also… I feel strangely empty… MUST… HAVE… NEW… BOOKS…

Juuust kidding.

It was kinda ‘one of those weeks’ in some ways; I’m behind on reading your blogs (sorry!) and didn’t even manage to participate in the Crusader Challenge this time around. *sniff sniff*

But, on the bright side, the Muse Online Conference starts this week, tomorrow is a holiday, and I had a great Thanksgiving weekend with the family (I’m Canadian, so our Thanksgiving is tomorrow).

The coming week is going to be a good one, I’m sure of it.

Did you get anything in your mailbox this time around? If not, reading anything interesting?

I don’t typically dedicate entire blog posts to other people’s contests, but this one looked so good (and I really want to win something) that I figured it’s worthwhile.

Here’s what you can win over at 21 Pages (and the contest is International!) — your choice of:

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Linger by Maggie Stiefvater
Firelight by Sophie Jordan
The Ivy by Lauren Kunze, Rina Onur
Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

Fill out the form on the bottom of the blog post, and *voila!* …you’re entered.

Go ahead, give it a shot!

UPDATE, 11:23am: The RSS feed is fixed! Yay! And the button is back, as you can see over on the upper right — my husband added his own clever touch there. Thanks for your patience!

For those of you attempting to follow me through an RSS reader, I apologize… the feed is broken, so my posts won’t be showing up in your reader (and probably haven’t for some time).

If you’re trying to follow me and can’t find the button to do so, I apologize for that too… I just had someone update WordPress for me and the button vanished! Ahhh!!! What’s going on?!?!

Needless to say, my husband has someone working on fixes for the feed and the RSS icon, so please be patient and bear with me until it’s done — I haven’t disappeared! I’ll post again when it’s fixed so you can add me to your feed/adjust me blog in your reader as necessary.

And as a side note, the archive links over to your right are NOW FIXED!!! Yay, they work again!

Thanks everyone for your patience …all will be right with the blog again soon!

To those of you visiting this blog from my homeland… Happy Canada Day!

And to those of you visiting from the USA… just a few more days until your celebration!

And to anyone visiting internationally… I have no idea when your independence day/patriotic event is held, but I hope it’s a good one this year.

Now get outside and enjoy some sunshine and fireworks!

It’s been a week since the conference… wow, time really flies, I feel like I was just there yesterday!… and I have yet to post something I learned. Let me assure you that I learned many things, I just needed time to collect my thoughts.

…and finish writing/editing/submitting something that I’d started a few weeks ago — today’s the deadline, and I sent my short story in last night. Yay! I really loved the story and felt good about it (unusual) so even if it doesn’t get accepted, I’m sure it’ll find a home elsewhere.

As for June Boot Camp… well, I’ve fallen behind on the project I’d intended to work on, but that was because I stopped to finish the short story. I’ve come to a bit of a standstill on the Boot Camp project, but that’s all right, as I never expected it to be much more than a personal indulgence.

This afternoon I’m going to sit outside and read for a bit, coffee in hand. I’m feeling slightly burnt out from scrambling to finish the submission over the last few days, and a bit inundated with other ideas that I’m not sure how to organize in my brain.

So, conference blog posts are forthcoming, and in the meantime… have a wonderful weekend, and may you all get a chance to relax in the sun with a good book!

I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to check out the site Savvy Authors yet, but it’s a by-writers-for-writers website with plenty of resources, community, and encouragement for writers at all levels of their careers.

Admittedly, the website isn’t as user-friendly as it could be (I’m still trying to find my way around) but with a bit of patience, there’s a lot there. This month, Savvy Authors is holding a ‘June Boot Camp’ competition, a great way to kick your writing into high-gear if you’ve been stagnant or moving slowly for awhile…

Writers are broken into teams of five, based on genre or interest, and basically… you write! Or edit. Totals are posted at the end of the day (looks like it’s an honors system), and at the end of the month, the winning team gets up to $125 in credit for the website’s workshops — that’s $25 per person, or one free workshop (or two, if you choose a few cheaper ones).

I just remembered about it this morning, and I think you have just a few more days to get in on it. I’d head over there now if I were you!

Personally, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep the momentum up — as much as I love NaNoWriMo in November, that’s something I prep for well in advance — but it’s worth trying!

See you over there… and may the most prolific team win! Then again, if it jumpstarts creativity? We’ve all won!

***06/02/10 — EDITED TO ADD: Sorry!!!! I just realized that in order to be a part of the June Boot Camp, you need a paid membership to the site. I should have posted that first, and I apologize. I wasn’t trying to dupe anyone into heading over and signing up and then realizing it costs $$$… If you’re interested, a premium membership is $30/year, and there are events like this and occasionally free workshops to take that make it worthwhile (earlier this year there was a month-long free workshop event for members). If you’re not able to sign up for a paid membership, I still encourage you to head over there, as there are plenty of things for you to do and take advantage of in the meantime!