Would You Like to Meet Some Agents or Editors?

Quick! If you’ve got a short story tucked away in a drawer somewhere, pull it out now! Blow off the dust, smooth out the wrinkles, and slip it into an envelope. Writer’s Digest wants it.

Tomorrow is the deadline for the 77th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. The grand prize is $3,000 and a three-day, two-night trip to New York City, where a Writer’s Digest editor will introduce the winner to four editors or agents. The grand prize also includes a Diamond Publishing Package from Outskirts Press.

The categories this year are:

• Inspirational writing (spiritual/religious)
• Memoirs/personal essay
• Magazine feature article
• Genre short story (mystery, romance, etc.)
• Mainstream/literary short story
• Rhyming poetry
• Non-rhyming poetry
• Stage play
• Television/movie script
• Children’s/young adult fiction

The entry fees are reasonable: For poems, $10 for the first entry and $5 for each additional entry submitted at the same time. For manuscripts, $15 for the first entry and $10 for each additional entry submitted at the same time. All but stage play, television, and movie scripts can also be submitted online. Late entries will be accepted till June 2; just add $2 per entry.

For more information on the competition, including the prizes for the second- through hundredth-place winners, click here.

Two Sentence Tuesday

What did I read this week? Well, I read the comments on my Daphne submissions. Unfortunately, there's not much I can say about them except that in the spots where they were specific they almost always contradicted each other. Comments like "I really loved the description of the setting" contrasting with "there are too many details about the setting." It's enough to make your head explode!

But, that's the way it goes...every reader is different, and the same 15 pages got scores (out of a possible 128) ranging from 92 to 128. What did I learn? Well, I knew the manuscript needed work...it will take some time to figure out how useful the comments are. A couple of things that were pointed out are things I already knew were issues but I didn't know how to fix. I was hoping I'd get some suggestions, but I suppose it's useful enough to know that I am not the only one who sees the problems. And at least one person loved it!

What did I write?

You have more to worry about than perverts watching you pee, she reminded herself. But still she pulled the hem of her shirt as low as she could, and huddled over, shielding herself from the view of any potential cameras.

How about you all? What did you read? What did you write? If you're posting your work on your own blog, just leave a note in the comments and I'll add a link at the bottom of this post.

Two Sentence Tuesday Participants:

Travis Erwin has posted his sentences on his blog
Ilana Stephens has posted hers in the comment section
Miladysa has posted hers in the comment section
Britta Coleman, our resident non-conformists, posts hers on her blog on Thursdays

A Note on Networking at Malice

This is a tidbit on getting some publication momentum by scoring a review from a famous mystery writer. If I can do it, so can you!

I'm just back to earth from the Malice Domestic Conference in D.C. As an Agatha Award nominee for Best Short Story, I found myself for a brief moment in the company of Peter Lovesey, the Malice Domestic Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. This was planned on my part, devious gal that I am... We swapped email messages prior to Malice. Putting on my cheeky alter-ego persona, I had asked if he would care to read my short story. He was, as I suspected, a gentleman. Yes, came the answer. I sent him my story in a WORD attachment, post haste.

He replied with a comment that I'd like to tattoo on my chest - maybe my forearm for easier reading. At any rate, this is what he wrote:

"Delicious story, Nan. Sharp, witty dialogue, sparky characters and a neatly turned plot. In fairness I must see the others before casting my vote, but yours sets a high standard. Thanks for letting me have this preview. And good luck with it!
~ Peter"

Can you hear me dancing now? Tapping away! I am the proud owner of a credible endorsement of my ability to write. From his lips to an editor or agent's ears! Now to use it in my query letters. (Tee, hee, hee!)

My point? You can make connections for yourself. You don't have to be born under the right stars or happen to save some editor's cat from becoming road kill. Go to conferences. Do your homework and find a Significant Writer who will be at the conference - someone with whom you share some common ground. Have a short story or a few pages that you can offer to send via email, or establish a pitch that works in a crowded gathering. Just be polite. Accomplished writers can turn out to be very approachable. They remember the pain of finding a publisher and/or an agent. And, they can always say "Sorry" if they're not interested.

In the spirit of fair play, I said I would keep Peter's appraisal secret until after the Malice voting. I didn't want to turn the competition into a political-style campaign. Had no desire to sway any votes, except by the merits of my story. I hoped to hear if the story worked for him. And, boy were his comments ever welcomed!

Hope this helps you make some connections and leads to some quotable gold!

While the Kittens are at Malice...

Sproing! If all's gone according to plan, two of our WoM, Nan and Elaine, will soon be arriving in the D.C. metro area. There, they'll be feted with malice aforethought for three days, and we expect succulent morsels of still-steaming dish served promptly upon their return. We also wish them a wonderful time, and to Nan, fingers crossed for the Agatha award! Since our ranks have been thinner as of late, I've been taking the mouse's chance to post, boing, post. It can't last.

All the recent conference activity (mystery, comic-sff, romantic) in turn spins off lots of spirited blogtalk about the states of the industry from various angles. Combine that with recent kerfuffles, first spawned online, re: plagiarism and reviews, and lots of questions have been raised recently about civility and collegiality across genres and cyberspace itself. I don't claim to have the answers, but there are more raw and funny opinions you may enjoy reading while coming to your own conclusions.

Nancy Martin of The Lipstick Chronicles enjoyed the recently-held Romantic Times in Pittsburgh, but behavior from attendees and exhibitors got beyond some folks's comfort range. As a prime example, some of the gentlemen models promoting an erotica line seem to have become 'handsy' in old parlance, creating consternation and issues of accountability. Where's the line between appreciating playful, edgy marketing and needing to get yourself steam-cleaned? Aside from her notes about hand sanitizer, Nancy makes fascinating observations about the different ways she saw readers connecting with books (the news ain't all bad!) and the way romance is growing its new generation of fans. Interesting stuff with wider application, I think.

Richard K. Morgan wrote a commissioned piece about the vitriol in the speculative fiction community that was so negative, he says, the man paying didn't want to run it. So he posted "Sound and Fury, Signifying...?" on his blog. If you don't know or care about the difference between mundane scifi and space opera, for example, feel free to insert any other warring sub-genres of your choice as you read. Now, I think Morgan would disagree with this last suggestion, as he claims that the world of mystery is eminently more civil than sff. Well maybe, and maybe it is the average age of the writers and readership at work. However, I think he grants the crime fiction crowd too many laurels when he writes:

...you don't get this gnawing, mutilative thread of self-hatred, this bulemic purging of whole sub-genres or readership sub-sections as somehow unworthy. A quick trawl through a couple of dozen crime writer websites and messageboards reveals no agendas or dogme-style utterances, no towering rages or griping about how the genre's going to shit these days, how there's all this generic pap being published, how this strain of crime writing is so much more valid than this other strain...

I quickly found this interview with legendary publisher/agent/bookseller Otto Penzler on Evil E, where he does take shots, as is his wont, at the so-called cat mysteries. He's known for it, but he's not alone. The books involving animals centrally, especially as crimefighters their furry selves, are extremely beloved and also widely mocked and reviled. Noir versus Meow- you can easily locate that snarking once your own antenna's hoisted. Perhaps this dispute is milder than ones in sff, but there are plenty of writers of "gritty, dark" fiction (and I've written some myself) who hold what's "cozy" in contempt. Lots of the cozy readers and writers feel disaffected and unwanted, and resent being pushed into ever darker stories as if it weren't okay to like what they like.

I'm a jukebox that plays all the songs from time to time, and believe more graphic violence and less-redeeming characters do not necessarily equate to elevated quality in the writing or storytelling. Careless writers toss in expletives and savagery without humanity, assuming their blue-streaked dialogue sings like Leonard's can and that readers intrinsically care for any thug or thugette they meet. Well, no. Even other thugs cross the street from certain crazies and death-bound baddies. Fans of the grimmest stuff are mostly quite nice, but getting readers over instinctive urges to cut bait with these losers is part of what makes the great writers of bleakness so satisfying to read. When they're not as good, repulsion and fatigue win for me. But, aside from that aside, I think this kind of internecine fragmentation happens any time someone likes mild versus hot salsa, for example, and doesn't much feel like they need improving simply because of their preferences.

The online world of free opinion sometimes seems less like a great party and more like an arena. There are times you want to change conversations or even grab your coat, preferably of rhinoceros hide. How you respond isn't really anyone else's purview, and depends on how you yourself are wired. You may decide finally to walk away, concentrate on your writing as best you can, and stay out of the scrum. Fair enough. You might also decide to join in with gusto and glee, irony as your Kevlar. For myself, I still find it all more exciting and amusing than awful, and as long as I do, I'm glad to have a front-row seat for whatever's Next.
Boing!

Join the Frenzy

Publishing is changing, have you heard? Every month, it seems, Publishers Lunch or Publishers Weekly or even just the New York Post has a story about some new twist that some publisher somewhere is implementing or some old method that’s being modernized or killed. We writers seem to just roll with the punches.

One thing more and more writers seem to be doing as part of their rolling is testing out new writing forms, genres, and markets. Short story writers are trying their hands at novels, mystery novelists are dipping their pens into fantasy, screenwriters are pounding out e-zine flash fiction. Because of this, I’ve been getting a bit of positive feedback on the contest information I’ve been passing along lately. Since I like positive feedback (I’m the mother of two sons, so it’s not something I’m used to), I'll continue posting about contests I hear about, as well as opportunities such as anthologies and new book, magazine, and e-zine publishers I come across that are looking for submissions.

So, without further delay, as they say . . .

Have you ever played with the idea of writing a script? Whether it’s for a stage play, movie, or TV show doesn’t matter. If you have, hike on over to Script Frenzy. Brought to you by the NaNoWriMo gang, Script Frenzy is being held through the month of April. Yes, it’s already the 9th today, but there’s still a whole three weeks left. And the rules don’t say anything about not being allowed to finish your script after April 30; you just won’t “win” the “competition.”

What are the rules? Well, they’re very simple. According to the Script Frenzy website, there are just five:

1. To be crowned an official Script Frenzy winner, you must write a script (or multiple scripts) of at least 100 total pages and verify this tally on ScriptFrenzy.org.
2. You may write individually or in teams of two. Writer teams will have a 100-page total goal for their co-written script or scripts.
3. Script writing may begin no earlier than 12:00:01 AM on April 1 and must cease no later than 11:59:59 PM on April 30, local time.
   
4. You may write screenplays, stage plays, TV shows, short films, comic book and graphic novel scripts, adaptations of novels, or any other type of script your heart desires.
5. You must, at some point, have ridiculous amounts of fun.

To join in the fun and get started on your way to a Tony, Oscar, or Emmy, just register at the Script Frenzy website.

Once More, with Time

Last week I told you about the Deadly Ink Short Story Contest. Its deadline had been extended, but it was still just 10 days or so away by the time I wrote about it. This week I’ve got another contest to tell you about, but this time I’m giving you more reasonable notice.

The Writer Short-Story Contest every year features a different genre, and this year it’s mystery. You can enter as many stories as you’d like, as long as you get them there by the end of June. The entries can be up to 2,000 words long, but they shouldn’t contain any graphic language, sex, or violence. This is probably because the first-place entry will be published in The Writer magazine, and the top three will be posted on the publication’s website. Other prizes include $1,000 to the first-place winner, $300 to the second-place winner, and $200 to the third-place winner.

Judging the final entries will be William G. Tapply, author of the Brady Coyne, Stoney Calhoun, and Brady Coyne/J. W. Jackson mystery series. Each entry must be accompanied by a completed entry form, available at the website, and a $10 nonrefundable entry fee. The stories cannot have been previously published in a book, nationally distributed periodical, or Web-based magazine, and simultaneous submissions are not allowed. The entries must be postmarked by June 30, 2008, and the winners will be notified by September 30, 2008.

For more information on The Writer 2008 Short-Story Contest, including how to format the manuscript and where to send it, see the contest's Web page.

Good luck!

Malice Domestic is Changing my LIFE

It happens in an instant. The world changes and you have to adapt. This is true for good changes and bad. It only takes an instant.

Like becoming an author. I'm an accidental author. At least it feels that way. And, baffling though it may be, I'm a nominee for an Agatha at Malice Domestic, in the Best Short Story competition! How do you like them apples!?! How did it happen? Why did it happen to me while so many other great writers are still unpublished, or are published and not nominated for an award? I haven't got a clue. I think it has something to do with all those years of trying to get it right, but I also think magic happens, sometimes, and this was one of those times.

It happened while I wasn't looking. I submitted a short story to the anthology now known as MURDER NEW YORK STYLE. It was a juried anthology based out of the Sisters In Crime New York/Tri State Chapter, and I miraculously won a spot in the book. Lots of other writers in the anthology are great writers. Well published. Well known. I figured my story making the cut was a fluke - that, or they needed all the stories that were submitted, otherwise they'd have a very short short mystery anthology.

So, one minute I was sitting in my cozy den, laptop on lap, peering over the screen to yell out "Who is Janet Evanovich!" at Alex Trebeck, and it hit me: I was no longer a hopeful, wannabe author. My short story got accepted to a juried anthology! I was going to be a published mystery writer!!! I almost choked on my popcorn!

For years I'd slogged along in the wake of great writers. Sure, I'd been published here and there in magazines and newspapers. Did a lot of critiquing. Stockpiled manuscripts, decimating vast forests in the process. But nothing changed my perspective as much as getting published in MURDER NEW YORK STYLE. Nothing, that is, until I got nominated for an Agatha in the Best Short Story category.

BEST Short Story? WOW! Thank heavens the notice of my nomination came via email - I had to print it out and see it in black and white before I could believe the message! I carried my print-out to my hubby - I couldn't read it aloud lest my throat would close and I'd self-destruct along with the nomination. He read it aloud and I got all choked up. Malice Domestic! A conference for READERS! READERS would be determining who wrote the BEST Short Story - best of those nominated by anyone Malice bound, from anywhere in the country! I LOVE READERS! It's enough to drive a girl to her hidden cache of the darkest of dark chocolates, with not an ounce of remorse!

The reality is totally impossible: The Best Short Story category has me in league with Liz Zelvin (my clever writing pal, and soon-to-be-published novelist!), Donna Andrews and Rhys Bowen (mystery mega-stars!). Holy crap! How did I ever get nominated in that rank? Holy, holy crap!

It has to be magic. How else did I ever get to this point? I didn't do anything remarkably different. These wonderful accidents can stop here and now, before I hyperventilate. Getting my name listed on the Agatha nominee posting was more than I could comprehend for the longest time. Now that the news has settled in and I'm picking out what to wear at the conference, I'm getting giddy. I've been known to bust out laughing at my good fortune. I feel like I already won the greatest prize! Nomination is a joyous state!

My mom tried so hard for so many years to become a children's book author that I think she's somehow pushing me from beyond the grave. So much for my latest plan to quit writing except for my own personal pleasure - and to keep from driving my hubby nuts. Heck, I'm told that Malice will kick off with all "us" nominees being introduced to the conference's early birds. The next day I'll be on a panel and maybe even signing books! AND I'll be on the ballot!!! My name up there with all those high-fliers!

I'm making my own business cards just in case business cards are doled out at Malice like souvenirs.

I could use some advice - what will make me look less clearly out of my league?

Yowza. I'm light-headed already! My hubby's convinced I'll win. He gets extra points for that! Life is good.

And let this be a lesson to you: If it can happen to me, it can happen to YOU! Just keep writing!

Are You Quick?

Are your fingers itching to write something, but you don’t know what? Are you good at whipping up short stories in less than two weeks? If your answer is yes to these questions, you’re in luck. The deadline for the 2008 Deadly Ink Short Story Contest has been extended to March 30.

According to the contest organizers, fewer stories than in previous years were submitted to the contest by the original deadline of March 15. Because of this, every story that’s entered has a better chance than usual of not only winning the contest, but making it into the 2008 Deadly Ink anthology. The anthology will be available for sale at the Deadly Ink Conference, June 20
through 22 in Parsippany, New Jersey, and at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.

All stories submitted to the contest must have no more than 3,500 words, be set in New Jersey, and include clues relating to a pen or ink, as well as a “deadly incident.” More than one story can be submitted, and the entry fee for each is $7, waived for people attending the conference. The prizes are:

First prize―$50 and Deadly Ink goodie bag
Second prize―$25 and Deadly Ink goodie bag
Third prize―$10 and Deadly Ink goodie bag

For more information on the contest, click here.

For information on the conference, click here.

It's In The Mail

We've been getting a lot of visits lately from people who Google looking for information on the Daphne du Maurier contest, sponsored by RWA's Kiss of Death chapter, so I thought I'd take this time to say...

GET THAT ENTRY IN THE MAIL!

It has to arrive at the appropriate contest coordinator's address by 3/15, which is Saturday. That doesn't leave you a lot of time. So if you're planning on entering, it's time to print out all the pertinent stuff and shove it in an envelope.

By the by, for the SASE, you should probably use a Priority Mail flat rate envelope, which requires $4.60 in postage. (We should be getting the entries back before the rates go up on May 12.)

My entry went in the mail this morning...keep your fingers crossed for me. Or, actually, keep your toes crossed. It's too hard to type with crossed fingers.

Get Your Murder Here!

Due to some Blogger issues, I can't put this in the sidebar at the moment. I hope once Blogger gets working again, I will be able to. But in honor of her Agatha nomination, Nan Higginson's story, Casino Gamble can be downloaded for free by clicking this link: Casino Gamble.pdf.

Agatha Inspirations - Sharing the Joy!

Hope this doesn't count as the sin of Blatant Self Promotion, but I've got to share the great news: my story, "Casino Gamble" is an official nominee for an Agatha in the Best Short Story Category!!! The winner will be chosen by attendees at Malice Domestic. I'll be introduced with the other award nominees during the Friday Opening Ceremony and will be on a panel discussion as well.

Yahoooey!

Please join my happy dance. I've already danced on the sofa and all through the house. If your door bell rings in the next few days it might be me, spreading my dance nationwide.

This cheer is for all the frustrated, hard-working writers out there, struggling toward becoming a published writer. If I can do it, so can you!

Write On!
Nan

Daphne du Maurier Contest Announcement

The Daphne du Maurier Award is sponsored by the Romance Writers of America's "Kiss of Death" chapter, the online chapter devoted to writers of romantic suspense. It is, however, open to writers of all genres. (If your book has no romance, you should enter it into the "mainstream" category.)

Basics:
• There are separate categories for published and unpublished authors (the "published" category is for those who have published book-length fiction).
• You'll need to have the first fifteen pages and a one page single-spaced synopsis (oy, just try condensing your entire opus into a page, it's harder than writing the thing!) by March 15. If you're a finalist, you'll need a five page (or shorter) double-spaced synopsis and the first 25 pages shortly thereafter.
• You do not need to be a member of RWA to enter the contest.
• Fee for entry: $15 KOD members, $25 non-members

Details:
• Available on the Kiss of Death website

One of the things that makes the DDM Award so interesting is its complete transparency. RWA/KOD posts score sheets (blank, not filled out!) on their website, so you can see exactly what the judges will be looking for and how you go about accumulating points.

I am planning on entering this contest, myself. Since I don't (can't) outline, I'm using the entry date as a spur to prompt me to write every day; if I don't, I won't know what happens in time to write a synopsis!

Worst Short Story Evah?

Author J.A. Konrath is judging a short story contest, and he's written a sample entry collecting the most common errors he's seeing. I found it a scream, if only because the funniest things are also true. I know lots of the Great Unwashed and Unpublished class of writers like me who are working hard at becoming better craftspeople and storytellers. I've also met plenty in our class who swear their work is flawless and that it's the industry conspiring to stifle their greatness. Most of the latter artistry reads like this, and they all want introductions to my agent:

It was a very sunny day in the spring of 2004 in fact it was so sunny, that even the sun had to wear sunglasses! It was on this very sunny day that I first met my wife. Her name was Rhoda, and she loved life. She lived in a house at 8786 Cranberry road, with her mother and three dogs named Sharpie, Bull, and Doxie, who are a Sharpei, a bulldog, and a doxhund. Boy were those dogs trouble! Yes they were! Trouble spelled T-R-O-U-B-L-E with a capitol T! But Rhonda loved those dogs, so much, that I never would have guessed, how it all ended up. And, boy, did it end up, bad! On a very cloudy day in the fall of 2006, Rhonda took the dogs out for a walk, but you can actually say that they walked her. Those were some frisky dogs! As they all walk to my house, Sharpie sniffe d out a skunk and got squirted, which smelled even worse. Sharpe thought it was a cat, but he sure was surprised! When Rhonda brought the dogs into my house, boy was I ever really very upset.

Read the rest of the brief jewel-like tale here at Joe's blog. The more you read, the more trouble you'll find. And if you have any of these occasional uh-ohs lurking in your own work, well, be very ashamed and get to editing. That's what I'm doing.

On Being A Good Citizen/Member

I submitted my mystery, A Snake In The Glass, to the MWA/St. Martin's First Crime Novel contest (making the deadline by the skin of my teeth) and today received a note from my assigned judge saying he had received it.

I don't have much hope that Snake will win the contest (like its author, it doesn't fit comfortably in any genre), but I appreciate the fact that my judge--let's call him "Bob"--took the time to drop me an email. More than that, I appreciate that he's willing to read who-knows-how-many manuscripts from writers like me.

I always wonder what motivates people to do things like this. "Bob" gets no reward for reading however many manuscripts he has to read. He's not an editor at St. Martin's, he's part of MWA--an author--so reading manuscripts by unpublished writers is not his job. And it's not as if the manuscripts he gets are guaranteed to be good. (Although I suppose he can say "next" after a couple pages if they are really awful, since he isn't critiquing them, just judging.)

If I wrote a book about a man who was murdered because he volunteered to judge a contest, I'd have to know why he had decided to give up his time to do so. I'd have to be able to explain his actions in a way that would sound logical to my readers. But all too often, motive in life is less clear than it is in fiction. People act in ways that are counter-intuitive. Fact, as they say, is stranger than fiction.

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you do something? Something difficult? Something that gives you no obvious reward? Did you come up with an answer, or did you just settle for "I guess that's just who I am," the way I seem to all too often?

Great Bathsheba's Bra, Are We Suddenly Cool?

Whether or not we misanthropic, ink-stained wretches are actually cool, HCC's covers always are. Someday...

If you haven't been following along, the board of Mystery Writers of America has officially tightened its ranks of accepted publishers, and MWA has followed through similarly in the nomination guidelines for the Edgar awards. As a result, editor Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime is not eligible to win for his own novel Songs of Innocence (excerpt at link if you're curious) published by Hard Case under his alias, um, Richard Aleas.

The issue becomes heated precisely because Charles is a very good writer as well as editor, not one of the craptastic dreckmeisters that MWA is trying to shake loose. Mystery fans, a category including most mystery authors, are grateful for the development of Hard Case Crime as a wonderful new venue for hard-boiled fiction. Through it, Ardai's been involved with not only his own work, but reprinting older, forgotten titles and putting out great yet-unseen grimness from masters (some Grand) of the field. To have someone so well-respected shut out of Edgar consideration in the process of ostensibly raising the quality and the legitimacy of the award process is the definition of unintended consequences, but here we are.

If you'd like the essential details, I'd recommend Sarah Weinman's blog post including substantive comments and counterpoints by MWA board member Lee Goldberg and Charles Ardai himself. They stake out their positions clearly, so you may decide where your philosophy leads.

However, this simmering situation reached an entirely new level when I, in my vapid fashion, turned to Page Six, the famous gossip column of the New York Post and found their lengthy blurb on the subject (look for The Case of the Conflicted Imprint) with all the writerly names in customary bold-face and Charles Ardai's picture. Are mystery writers fascinatingly cool now? Can't be. At least I hope not. I can't keep up.

NaNoWriMo Congrats

The Women of Mystery would like to congratulate everyone who participated in this year's NaNo, including our own Clare, Laura, and Terrie. Special congrats to Clare, who crossed that 50,000-word mark with a couple of hours to spare and her mind still intact.

Remember, you needn't have written 50,000 words to be a winner. If you wrote just 50, or prepared an outline or character sketches, or came up with a new idea, you're also a winner.

But whether you wrote the whole 50,000 or just got your idea down on paper, the next step is to complete that manuscript, and then to send it out. Good luck to all!

The Bad Sex Award

His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety.

These words won Norman Mailer the prize for the most crude and tasteless depiction of a sexual act in a literary work. The Bad Sex Award, given by the UK's Literary Review, is possibly my favorite of all literary awards because it's the one that allows me to look at works for which people have been paid enormous sums of money and say, with great confidence, "I can do better than that."

The award comes at a particularly interesting time for me this year as I am at the point where I have to write a sex scene for the romantic suspense novel I'm working on, which is proving to be the challenge I knew it would be.

But even at my worst, I don't imagine I even come close to any of the short-listed passages, all of which you can find on the Manchester Guardian's site. If you haven't read the short-listed passages in previous years (the Literary Review has been doing this for fourteen years), be prepared: before clicking the link, do not sip anything you don't wish to choke on, spew, or snort through your nose.

A Different Kind of NaNo Win

This year’s NaNoWriMo is almost over and I haven’t yet written the first word of my 50,000. Pretty much the same thing happened last year and the year before. Two years ago, I got sick just days into November and was down for the count for two very long weeks. Last year, during the final week of October, I agreed to take on a rush editing job that had me working long hours on a daily basis well into November.

This year? My computer crashed. I was late getting started as it was, still working on my character sketches and outline during the first week, when the unthinkable happened: my C drive became corrupted. After ten days of waiting for my trusty little laptop to come home from the shop and then four days of reinstalling all my software, settings, and documents, I found my newly reloaded email program bringing me messages from my fellow NaNoWriMos about how great it felt to have made it to the halfway point. The halfway point! Oh well.

It took a few days, but it slowly dawned on me that I didn’t fail this year. Last year I did, and the year before, too. But this year I definitely succeeded.

How can I say that? For one thing, I’ve got a great new book almost totally planned out and ready to be written. For a second, I figured out what’s been bothering me about another book.

The other book I started several years ago. I completed the first draft, didn’t get to the second draft right away because a new job got in the way, and then didn’t rewrite when I did have the time because something was bothering me about the story but I didn’t know what. I loved the basic premise and the characters, however, so I hung on to that first draft, refusing to banish it to The Cabinet. When this year’s NaNo was approaching, I decided I would take that original premise and characters, and write a new story. And that’s when I realized that the new book was book one of the series and the original book was really book two. So I’ve actually come out of this year’s NaNo with two books! That’s a win, I’d say.

Another reason this year is a success is that I’ve reconnected with my local NaNo group. I joined the Long Island NaNo group, called LinoTypo (a whimsical name—YahooGroups said all the logical ones had been taken), two years ago. After NaNo was over that year, the group continued to meet sporadically and I sometimes attended. Now the group has decided to become a more formal writing group, meeting monthly to outline goals and report on accomplishments, help each other with writing problems and editing, and enjoy dinner out with like-minded people. If I hadn’t decided to get myself in gear for this year’s NaNo, I probably wouldn’t have attended the October meeting, and I’d be missing out on a whole lot of valuable face-to-face help, moral support, and encouragement.

A final reason is the Women of Mystery. After Laura was kind enough to get this blog up and running back in April, I posted five times and then drifted away. But the WOM are so wonderful, they never gave up on me. They continued to include me on their roster and in their email exchanges, wrote to me privately to make sure I was OK, and told me numerous times that when I was ready to blog again to just go ahead and do it. So here I am, back again. And to once again be an active member of this friendly, skilled, creative, and very accomplished group is definitely a win!

For What It's Worth...

...which may not be much, I post a link to this contest.

America's Next Top Novel - A Nationwie [sic] Novel Contest

Unlike some contest sponsors, these guys have actually been in business a while, and the prize isn't something outrageous like a contract. The post says that "the grand prize winner will win a complete manuscript evaluation and line-editing package...." At $25, the entry fee doesn't seem ridiculous, though it goes against the grain to pay to enter a contest at all. (For your $25, you get free copies of their e-book series, which retails from their website for $17.95, so if those are something that interests you, the contest becomes more worthwhile.)

There are a couple things about this contest that amuse me, though. First, there are the typos/grammatical errors in a post from an editing company. Of course, that's just a data-entry thing that was done by some poor shlub, but it's still funny. The second thing is that to win this contest you have to have a manuscript that is, presumably, in need of very little editing. After all, if you really needed their services, you wouldn't have a better book than everyone else who enters, right?

But there it is. If anyone does decide to enter, drop a line and let us know how it goes!

First Crime Novel Competition

Mystery Writers of America just announced their "First Crime Novel Competition" for 2008.

Deadline is December 31, 2007.

For more information, go to minotaurbooks.com/contests.html

Thought you might like to know.

Write ON!
Nan