If you haven’t visited agent Rachelle Gardner’s blog lately, you’re missing out! She writes quality posts with helpful information, both for unagented and agented writers.

Her most recent post is something that I bet we all need to hear once in awhile, and especially on a gloomy Monday morning: Success stories of writers whose perseverance finally paid off.

The post, “Perseverance Really is Key”, is found HERE.

Head over, read it, and have a Monday Smile (which for me are far and few between!).

So… keep writing.

We can do this!

It’s contest day… there are a PILE of contests out there just begging to be entered whether you’re a writer or a reader!

Contest #1: Beth Revis’ Book Deal!

Author Beth Revis has just received a book deal, and is running a very cool contest to help us all celebrate with her! You can enter the contest HERE.

To make things even more interesting, she’s posted two different prize packages, one for writers and one for readers. Your choice which one you want to enter for! Head on over and celebrate! Maybe you’ll be inspired to work even harder on your own novel.

Contest #2: Book-Lover Carol

Enter Carol’s contest HERE! It’s open to anyone and there are LOTS of books up for grabs! This is best if you’re a YA reader, and there are going to be 4 winners total. Open until April 1st, so get on over there and enter!

Contest #3: Fangtastic Books Giveaway

Now, I’m not sure what this book is going to be like, but it sounds pretty interesting. Either way, paranormal fiction is huge right now so you might be interested in entering THIS contest for Shadowglass by Erica Hayes.

There’s a plot synopsis on the contest page, and lots of different ways to get entries in! The author herself wrote the blog post, so it’s worth checking out!

Who doesn’t want to learn, should perhaps be the question… especially when learning something relevant to your work or craft.

After reading a recent blog comment, I realized that there must be readers out there who simply don’t know where to find these learning opportunities, though they’re interested in being a part of them.

So, I’ve resolved to share with your these great courses and workshops when I find out about them.

Here’s a few upcoming courses in March/April that you might be interested in:

• March 22nd – April 2nd, 2010: Ancient Falconry

Offered by Hearts Through History Romance Writers (RWA Special Interest Chapter) – Course $20 for non-members

• March 29th – April 11th, 2010: What a Wicked Web We Weave – A Spider’s Approach to Subplots in Storytelling

Offered by the Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal Chapter (RWA Special Interest Chapter) - Course $20 for non-members

• April 5th – 30th, 2010: The Power of GMC: Crafting Compelling Characters and Kick-Butt Stories

Offered by the Celtic Hearts Romance Writers (RWA Special Interest Chapter) – Course $20 for non-members

• April 5th – 30th, 2010: Prose and Contests – Everything You Wanted to Know About Contests But Were Afraid to Ask

Offered by Black Diamond RWA - Course $25 for non-members

…and I only checked out a few places, and these were all RWA chapters! There are many, many workshops out there, from obscure topics to general ones. You’ll definitely be able to find something you’re interested in.

One more tip? Register early! Some registrations close a week or more before the course starts, and others fill up quickly… so if you’re interested, register right away.

Now go learn something!

You have from now until Feb. 7th, 2010 to get your entry in for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest!

Admittedly, I forgot about this contest and so I don’t think I have enough time to get anything in for it (all my manuscripts need serious work before they’re ready for submission), but if you have something that’s ready to go… why not?

The prize they’re offering is publication with Penguin books, plus a $15,000 advance. Not too shabby for a first-time author!

I haven’t read all the material on the website about the contest, so I can’t say for sure whether there’s any ‘fine print’ to be aware of. All I know is that it sure sounds like a fantastic opportunity to get your work out there and directly in front of the eyes of editors from a highly respected publisher.

If you’ve entered this contest before, what was your experience like? If you haven’t entered, what’s keeping you from submitting something this time around?

I’d hoped to have a new version of this blog up and running by now, which is why I hadn’t posted yet… I wanted the first post of the year to be NEW and SPECTACULAR and EXCITING…

Well, sometimes life gets in the way and things don’t quite work out the way you expect. But that’s alright. I’ll get back into the swing of posting sooner or later, but for now I just wanted to say “hello, blog readers” and “no, I’m not gone, I just had an extended holiday from blogging”!

I have several outstanding book reviews from 2009 to post over the next few days (not outstanding as in quality, though I’d like to think my reviews are half decent… I mean outstanding in terms of time), so there’s something to look forward to!

I’ve also neglected to post my thoughts on the Holly Lisle courses I’m taking, so hopefully I’ll get to that sometime this month. I’m taking both her ‘How to Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers’ and ‘How to Revise Your Novel’, and they’ve been invaluable thus far… and I’d like to share why

Until then… happy writing, reading, and revising (there seem to be a lot of us doing that these days), and I’ll see you soon.

By now, I’m sure most of you are sick of hearing about the Harlequin controversy that’s going on right now, with the launch of their new vanity press. If you haven’t heard about it… clearly you’ve been living under a rock without internet access to check your blog feeds, because honey, this is BIG.

And  if you’re like me, you might have read all the press releases, blog posts, rantings, and gone… “Huh?”

At first, I thought “isn’t everyone just blowing this a bit out of proportion?”

This morning, I read a few more posts about it, and began to change my tune. What helped me understand the whole thing was a post over at Jackie Kessler’s blog, where she breaks it down in a fictional dialogue between a writer and the Harlequin vanity line.

If you’re looking for a clear and concise outline of what’s going down, please head over there and read that post. Then, feel free to rant and rave all you want:

–> The Day After: Harlequin Blinks <–

It’s mid-September, 2009. How did we get here so fast? Another summer zipped by, and another fall is well on its way… and what do I have to show for it?

Well, not much. Or at least I feel it’s not much, but here’s where I stand in terms of WIPs and so forth:

• A Work in Progress (2007) – First Draft complete, currently under second read-through.

• The Door in the Wall (2008) – First Draft complete (minus a few paragraphs at the end), currently under first read-through.

Yikes. That’s a lot of work… the 2008 manuscript needs a lot more work before it’s coherent in any way, and I feel the 2007 novel is much, much closer to being ready than it was a year ago. Lots of edits still to do, but progress is progress. The frustrating part is that I want to be able to devote myself to new stories, and I wish these ones would just be done & get out of the way for awhile. But, that’s not how we writers do things, is it? Baby steps, baby steps.

In the meantime, I’m trying to:

• Plot my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel.
• Think about which novel to write as part of a course I’m taking (more on that sometime soon).
• Do the work for above mentioned course.
• Finish my cat care ebook.
• Finish edits on an inspirational booklet for a client.
• Learn my way around in my new volunteer editor position for an online flash fiction magazine (more on that another time too!).
• Find more work that I can actually be paid for!

This comes in the midst of teaching 2 dance classes a week, taking an additional 3 dance classes for myself (two of which are performance troupes), trying to read & review all the ARCs that keep showing up in my mailbox, maintaining this blog, editing the blog for Lifeline Design.ca, keeping my friends (haha), caring for a cat/bird/husband & all associated things that come with a marriage and household. Ah, and I have an application in to be this year’s NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison for my region (which I should hear back about within the next week).

It’s a lot. I probably missed something in there, but that’s that, and now it’s documented… so people can bug me about getting my work done! I figured, it’s been awhile since I updated everyone on what I’m doing, so there you have it! Apologies if it came off as whiny… not my intention

And to all of you who have huge projects you’re dealing with, or many little ones you’re trying to juggle, I wish you all the best in the coming months. Autumn is a beautiful season (my favorite, actually), but is it ever busy… yet somehow, I look forward to it every year. Good luck with whatever you’re doing! And if you’re really excited about it, please go ahead and share it with us in the comment section!

Ah, conference season. The sweet smell of… other people attending ‘The Big Ones’, while you sit at home wondering how everyone can afford trips to Denver or California or Tennessee in the middle of the year. Right around summer vacation season, no less!

But what about attending a smaller, one-day conference someplace that you can drive to? I’ve heard that such things exist, but until a few weeks ago, I’d never actually seen evidence of one…

A few weeks back, Susan at Reviews from Innisfree posted a status message on a social networking site that asked if anyone else was going to something called ‘PYI’. “What on earth…?” I wondered, and promptly plugged it into Google to find out. Here’s what I found:

Packaging Your Imagination 2009

“A day of workshops for those interested in writing, illustrating or performing for young people”

This is a one-day conference held by CANSCAIP (The Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators, and Performers) on November 7th, 2009. From the looks of things, you don’t have to be a member to attend, though you can join for a $10 discount when you register for the conference (which is only $135.00). Your registration includes 3 sessions, morning coffee, lunch (for the first 120 registrants), and the keynote address by none other than the well-loved Kenneth Oppel. Yes, this Kenneth Oppel –>

And guess what? For all us writerly types living in Southern Ontario (or anywhere within driving distance, really… that includes you, Buffalo!), we can easily drive into Toronto, take in a day of writing sessions, and drive home, without having to shell out money for a flight/hotel/enormous conference fees or losing money from taking time off work. How exciting is it to have something like this in our own little corner?

Admittedly, I haven’t registered yet, as I’m not 100% certain I can go… but if you can, I encourage you to sign up and get as much as you can out of it. It looks like they have some great session topics lined up.

Question: For those of you who don’t live around here – have you ever attended a one-day conference in your area? How did you find that compared to a larger conference (if you’ve been to one), and did you feel it was time well spent?

Ah, that all-encompassing first line… the one that keeps us up at night writing, so that we can keep others up at night reading.

But what if someone wrote the first line for you? Then all you have to do is write the rest of the story. Simple, yes?

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a literary journal that does just that. It’s called The First Line, and I love it. When I first fell into the website, I thought “what a neat idea”… and promptly ordered a copy of their latest issue. I read it, went back to the website, grabbed the ‘first line’ for August – wrote something – and submitted. They didn’t take it (oh noes!), but that’s alright… the next issue’s submissions are due November 1st, and I’ll probably try again.

I love this journal because I find it fascinating to see where the human mind can go when everyone starts from the same place. There are so many different stories that can be told, regardless of that first line… it’s like when you sit down to plot your latest novel idea, and there are a million different directions you could take the story in. Here, it actually happens.

I wanted to share this find with others because I suspect it has limited circulation, and I’m not sure how many people outside the 30 or so bookstores listed which carry the journal actually know about it. I wish I could remember where I saw the listing for it so I could give him/her/it credit, but alas, all I can do is share it with you and hope you like it enough to spread the word. A little boost in subscriptions from this side of the pond wouldn’t hurt, right?

All I know is… I’ve subscribed, and am looking forward to curling up on the couch with the fall issue and a cup of tea in the near future.

Has anyone else recently (or in the past) stumbled across a hidden gem of a journal/magazine you wish more people knew about?