Day: June 21, 2012

New Era Times Press 2012 & Beyond Essay Competition

New Era Times PressNew Era Times Press is now accepting submissions for its 2012 & Beyond Essay Competition. Essays must answer one of three questions found at the website which deal with spiritual & metaphysical concepts & your personal journey to 2012.

Winners will be featured in an anthology published as an ebook in the fall with hard copy available January 2013.

There is no fee to enter the competition. The deadline for entries is July 31, 2012. For more information, please visit their website.

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Indies Unlimited is pleased to provide this contest information for the convenience of our readers. We do not, however, endorse this or any contest/competition. Entrants should always research a competition prior to entering.

New Release: Music Speaks

Music SpeaksAuthor LB Clark is pleased to announce the release of Music Speaks, an anthology of short stories featuring authors Christopher T. Grace, Ann Cathey, David Antrobus, Pam Bainbridge-Cowan, Erin McGowan, James Clark, Laurie Sorensen, JD Mader, and LB Clark.

Music is everywhere, seeping into every corner of our lives, and it has a special kind of magic. It can spark a long-buried memory, bring people together, change a mind, or even save a life.

Within the pages of Music Speaks are eleven short stories from nine independent authors. These stories cover a wide range of genres—from romance to dystopia—but they are all unified by a single theme: the power of music.

100% of profits from the sale of this book will go to the MusiCares Foundation—a non-profit organization that helps musicians in times of need.

Music Speaks was published 6/17/2012 by Lone Star BookWorks. It’s available in ebook format through Smashwords, Amazon.com, and Barnes and Noble. It will soon be available in print as well.

 

Ripping Off Bob Dylan

On Tuesday, my post was about quick writing exercises. I taught writing workshops for years and our ‘go to’ exercise was something I called ‘circle writing’ (creative, no?). Everyone sits in a circle. Five minutes. No revision. Share. Usually, I provided a prompt. Sometimes it was something very vague like ‘sky’. Sometimes it was more complex: ‘You are an 80 year old blind man.’ The prompt quickly becomes unimportant because it is merely a jumping off point. So, that was Tuesday.

Continue reading “Ripping Off Bob Dylan”

Getting It Right: Stop the Presses: Writing News Copy into Your Fiction, Part 1

Author Lynne Cantwell
Author Lynne Cantwell

It happens sometimes: Your main character needs a vital piece of information that can only come from a third-party source. So you slip it into a newspaper story, or you put it into the mouth of a TV or radio reporter. There’s nothing wrong with that. But please note that writing credible journalistic prose means following some conventions – conventions that you would do well to follow, if you want to keep your journalist readers from howling, or sobbing brokenly, or reaching for the hooch. Or all three.

I worked as a broadcast journalist for 20 years, including a few years at the network level, before I quit the business and got a real job. I’ve distilled that experience into some pointers on how to make news stories in your novel more realistic.

Writing for broadcast is a little different from writing for print, but the principles behind both are the same. Let’s talk about those principles in the context of newspaper copy first. Continue reading “Getting It Right: Stop the Presses: Writing News Copy into Your Fiction, Part 1”