Friday Funnies and an OA Giveaway!

Today I bring you our regularly scheduled funnies, but also, the ladies over at OA decided to start gearing up for the New Year's Revisions Conference by doing a little giveaway! :D Just fill out the rafflecopter below or head to OA for more details :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And now, for funnies :) Have a great weekend!

Friday Funnies - Owl Extravaganza

In honor of my fellow Operation Awesome author, Lindsay Scott, who had a birthday this week, this week's funnies are brought to you Oliver Awesome style :D

March Mystery Agent at Operation Awesome!

Another Operation Awesome Mystery Agent contest is in just a few days! (We are still awaiting the results from Feb's contest. No worries; we'll post them as soon as we get them!)

For now, here are the genres our March Mystery Agent is looking for:

YA contemporary/realistic fiction YA sci-fi or light fantasy (nothing "epic")
Adult literary fiction Magical realism (YA or adult)
Dark mystery (psychological or ghostly--nothing with an "amateur sleuth" or cozy mystery)
Literary horror (YA or adult)

And these are projects the Mystery Agent isn't looking for:

Paranormal romance
Picture books/children's books
Genre romance
Nonfiction

Anything not specified in the Not Looking For is fine, though. And remember: the prize is a full manuscript request, so yeah, I'd enter this baby if I were you. Make sure you come back on Thursday, March 1st for the contest!

Operation Awesome Mystery Agent Contest Today!!

Head over and enter your one line pitch - prizes are a full or partial request or a query crit!

Blog Chain - People I Couldn't Write Without

This topic was chosen by the lovely Sarah who wanted to know:

Do you work with critique partners? How did you find your crit pals, and what influence have they had on your work?

Oh yes. I have crit partners. Probably too many LOL but I've met so many awesome writers over the years and we pretty much all exchange manuscripts at least once in a while.

My very first group I found by googling. I met some great people on there, learned a TON. I was a very VERY newbie writer. Had finished one book, paid an editor to go through it, gotten a few good suggestions from him, but it wasn't until this group (and one awesome lady in particular, Jeannie Ruesch) got a hold of it that I actually started pulling that poor manuscript together.

I can't believe how much she taught me. Stuff I'd never heard before. The adverb rule, POV tricks/rules/no-nos, ways to show different sides to my character - for all those who have read Treasured Lies, the pea scene was suggested by Jeannie. If she hadn't taken me under her wing, I don't know where I would be right now. I think I've mentioned before that I once wrote a scene where I had FOUR povs going on in ONE paragraph. Yeah...Jeannie was the one who explained why that was bad LOL

My other critters I met through QueryTracker. Toni Wilson (we are often called the eTwins by our QT friends) - I send everything to her. I mean literally everything. She often crits my emails before I send them LOL

Kristal Shaff and Cole Gibsen - again, these amazing women read pretty much everything I write. And I've learned so much from each of them. They are all awesome with things like plot flow, word choice, motivations, plot holes (and Kristal and Toni in particular are great at pointing out when I'm going overboard on the romance LOL). These women ready all my stuff and they are so incredibly sweet about reading my pages over and over again. I think they know my stories more than I do sometimes LOL

I met Elana Johnson through QT and joined a crit group with her and the absolutely wonderful Christine Fonseca. Elana is amazing - she will tell you how it is and she doesn't let you get away with anything. I usually get my pages back thinking "yeah, I knew she'd mark that." :D I'm slowly learning to just remove it before she has to mark it up LOL

Christine is amazing with emotions - I can go way overboard with them sometimes...and sometimes I don't have enough. She keeps me on track with my plot and characters and their motivations and personalities. She is also a fellow Non-fiction writer and is my main critter for all things NF (though Toni reads some of that stuff for me as well) :) It's so wonderful to have someone I can send those pages too. I don't know what I'd do without her.

And I also have my amazing Operation Awesome gals. I joined their group not too long ago (actually...I think it's been a year or so now!) It's been wonderful having a fresh group of eyes and learning from each of them - both from their crits of my work and from my crits of their work. They are an incredible group of women and I am so lucky to be a part of their group.

When I lived in Utah I was very privileged to be part of a live group with Bethany Wiggins and Bonny Anderson. I still send them pages and am always thrilled to read theirs, though I miss seeing them face-to-face :)

I have several other friends and readers that I send my pages too. They are all priceless to me. I would never be able to make it down this road without them.

Who are your critters and how did you meet them?

Be sure to see who PK shreds paper with and stop by Tere's tomorrow to find out about her crit pals :)

Mystery Agent Contest at Operation Awesome!

Time for another Mystery Agent Contest!! Head over to OA with your one line pitches. First 50 entries will be accepted. This time around our agent is looking for:

YA

• Urban Fantasy 
• Paranormal Romance 
• Contemporary 

Women's Fiction
Commercial Fiction
Multicultural Fiction

Good luck everyone!!!

Follower Appreciation Celebration at Operation Awesome!

I'm over at OA today spilling the deets on a giveaway of awesomeness! To show some love for our Operation Awesome followers, we are giving away SIX fantastic prize packs. Winners will be announced next week, so stop on by and enter by leaving a comment!!

We will also be holding another Mystery Agent contest on Sept 15th so get those pitches polished!

A Link and a Mystery Agent Winner :D

A good friend of mine sent me this link this morning - I love reading success stories like this :)

Kathry Stockett, Author of THE HELP
(awesome story, she's hilarious, and I love her attitude, though I'm really not too impressed until rejection numbers reach the triple digits. THEN I sympathize) ;-)

Annnd I'm over on OA today announcing the winners of our August Mystery Agent Contest so if you entered (or just want to know all the deets), head on over!

Coming Soon - OA Mystery Agent Contest!

New Mystery Agent contest coming up on Monday over at Operation Awesome! Get your one line pitches ready! Our fabulous new agent is looking for:

Young Adult fiction, Women's fiction, literary and commercial fiction, and pop-culture non-fiction. She is very interested in acquiring Young Adult (contemporary, sci-fi/fantasy, thriller and horror ), Middle Grade (fantasy, light sf/f, mystery, and contemporary with a hook) commercial women’s fiction ( urban fantasy, romantic suspense and romance). Above all, she is looking for anything with an engaging voice, compelling narrative and authentic characters. She is unafraid of debut authors.

So head on over to OA bright and early Monday morning! The first 50 entries will be accepted :)

Books and Merchandising

On Friday over at Operation Awesome, Katrina put up an awesome post on merchandising and books. She talked about all the cool stuff you can get with some books (all the Harry Potter products, Arwen's necklace from LOTR, etc.).

I've bought a couple items from favorite books, among them:

The silver ring Jamie gives Claire in Diana Gabaldon's OUTLANDER

and a set of perfume from Jessica Verday's THE HOLLOW

I love stuff like this. It is so fun to have something real from a story you love. Even more fun when it's from one of your own stories. Like my gorgeous TREASURED LIES necklace :D (made by the awesomely talented Bonny Anderson - go check out her store HERE!)

And, the Team Zenn necklace I made for Elana Johnson's POSSESSION release giveaway (Team Jag has a "jag"ged lightning bolt pendant to go along with the "Vi"olet beads and silver butterflies.)

Having something tangible you can use to help market your book is both lucrative and just plain fun. Is this something you've ever thought of doing with your own books?

Mystery Agent Contest at Operation Awesome!

Coming up on Monday!!! Don't miss it. Our awesome mystery agent will be accepting 50 entries. You need to have a 25 word pitch ready :) While our MA does have a preference for adult fiction, YA is also accepted. All genres but especially mystery, thriller, paranormal, romance, and suspense. Only pitch FINISHED novels :) So don't forget to head to Operation Awesome bright and early Monday morning!! (May 2)

Mystery Agent Contest at Operation Awesome!

Operation Awesome is hosting our March Mystery Agent contest RIGHT NOW!!!! Go enter! The first 75 entries will be accepted, so hurry and enter your 140 Tweet pitch :) Head to Operation Awesome for full details.

What's Up Wednesday

Lot's of fun things going on!

Today is the last day to enter to win a signed copy of Leah Clifford's A Touch Mortal over at OA so hurry and enter if you haven't yet!

My awesome amazing friend Christine Fonseca has a sneak peek of her new book 101 Success Secrets for Gifted Kids posted! Here is the link if you'd like to read a chapter from this awesome book, and here is the post from her blog announcing it :D

We have another Mystery Agent contest coming up at Operation Awesome!!! We will start taking entries on March 1st. Here are the rules:

1) Entry limit: 75 entrants.

2) Pitch length: 140 characters. Think Tweet. Since we're talking 140 characters, Title and Genre don't have to be part of the pitch -- add them on to the comment somewhere.

3) Genres: YA (especially thriller, cyberpunk, horror, historical romance); MG; women's fiction; romance (especially with a strong, female heroine).

So get those Tweet Pitches ready to go!!

Hope everyone's Wednesday is going well. Does anyone know of any other cool happenings around the blogosphere? Post them in the comments!!

Tons of Wednesday Awesomeness!

All right....we've got some fun stuff going on this month!!!

First off, thank you all so much for all your support during my Blog Tour. It was a blast! And...I've got a bonus day for you :D Today I will be joining the lovely ladies at the QueryTracker Blog so head on over and say hi!

I will announce the winner of the super, huge Grand Prize Blog Tour Giveaway Basket TOMORROW!!

And over on the Operation Awesome Blog, we have a whole month of follower love planned to celebrate reaching 300 followers and because it's Valentine's and all :D We just had our Mystery Agent Contest, so stay tuned for the winner. And maybe for a little extra fun for all the participants.

We'll also be having awesome giveaways ALL MONTH LONG so keep an eye on the posts :D

Annnnd somewhere along my blog tour, I hit 500 followers :D So, I'm thinking we need to do something fun to celebrate. Stay tuned next week for a special treat :D

I hope everyone has an awesome Wednesday. I am once again stuck in my house with my children who are having a SECOND snow day in a row. They are thrilled....I am less so LOL So, because I need a little smile (and I need to get my butt in gear and get back to work on my novel) here's a little Jackson Pearce with a little tough love to make you smile today :)


How is everyone else doing out there today? Anyone else snowed or iced in? Anyone making progress on those projects?

Product Placement

--Blog Tour kicks off tomorrow! Getting a jump start over at the fabulous Christine Fonseca's blog with an interview. Go check it out! :) And the awesome Amparo over at the OA is having a contest to win a copy of my book and some fun swag....winner announced tomorrow! Go enter!

I've been answering a lot of questions lately about promotion...what I'm doing to help promote my book specifically. Now, my book is a non-fiction book about writing, so when it comes to promotional items I did writing type stuff: bookmarks, pens, that kind of thing. But it got me thinking about the fun promo stuff fiction authors get to do.

- Jessica Verday has perfumes that go along with the characters in her Hollow books (her MC makes perfumes)
- Beth Revis has some awesome Godspeed swag for Across the Universe
- You can get jewelry with the Mockingjay design from the Hunger Games series
- You can get jewelry depicting the different years for the House of Night series
- You can get everything under the sun Twilight and Harry Potter

So I'm curious....when writing your books, do you ever do "product placement"? Do you have your MC wear a favorite necklace that you know would be a cool promo item if your book ever hits the shelves? Do you design a special logo for your MCs rebel alliance that you know would look on awesome on everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs?

It's not something I used to think about when writing, but with the growing necessity for authors to promote their own books, and especially over the past year or so as I've been focused on promoting my own book, it has become more present in my mind as I write.


Does it ever cross your minds?

Exciting Events This Week!

Coming up on Thursday, the release of my book Homework Helpers: Essays and Term Papers!! (unless you want to order from Amazon...they are already shipping :D (clink link on sidebar if you'd like to check it out))

It's going to be a fun couple of weeks coming up. On Thursday, to coincide with the release of my book, my blog tour will be launching with a little help from some awesome friends. The first stops on the tour will be at the amazing Elana Johnson's, the fabulous Christine Fonseca's, the wonderful Lisa Amowitz's, and a little something will be going on over at the Operation Awesome blog.

If yo look up above, there is a tab set up for the Blog Tour. For a complete list of all the stops along the tour, check out that page. As the posts for each stop go live, I'll set up the links so you can follow the tour. There will be several giveaways (books and fun swag) and I'll have a list of those with links under the Blog Tour Giveaways tab.

Also! We'll be doing a Grand Prize Giveaway at the end of the tour. One commenter from the whole tour will be chosen to win a huge basket of books and swag! To enter, all you have to do is comment....the more stops along the tour you comment on, the more entries you get :) More details to follow!

So stay tuned!! The fun starts Thursday!

Leah Clifford on the OA

Come to the OA today!!! We have the fabulous Leah Clifford stopping by to answer all your questions! Don't miss her!

Mystery Agent Contest at Operation Awesome!

Welcome to December!!!

To kick off this lovely month right, we've got a brand new Mystery Agent Contest over at Operation Awesome. Here are the details:

All YA and adult subgenres except for Christian fiction, erotica, MG, and picture books.

Please include title/genre in the comments.

The first 50 one-line pitches posted will be considered. Mystery Agent will choose one winner.

The winner will have Mystery Agent's full attention when they send their full MS. Yep, you heard me right -- YOUR FULL MS! So don’t forget, please have your manuscript ready to send before you pitch.

We will post when the 50 slots have been filled, so even if there are 50 comments, go ahead and leave yours unless you hear otherwise from us. We'll have actual comments or questions in there as well, so not all of those 50 comments will be entries.

Good luck to everyone!!!!

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Blogging :)

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! My house is destroyed...and my kids are home for another two days before heading back to school....at this point it would be easier to move :D Though we did get our Christmas tree up this weekend. Since we were in the middle of moving last Christmas, we didn't get to do the big tree with all the trimmings, so I am enjoying getting everything all Christmased up :)

But, vacationing children and their destructive tendencies or no, tomorrow the routine must begin again...or I'll never get back into gear LOL

OOooo how did everyone do on NaNo!!? 

I'm over on the OA today - stop by and say hi! :)

On the OA Today

I'm posting over on the OA today about the Occupational Hazards of being a writer :) Come say hi!!

NaNo stats for the day: (it's getting harder! Only 1660...but close enough and still ahead over all so iz all good)