Judge not, lest ye be rendered into incoherent babbling. And a really bad headache.
Novel Ideas for Novel Contests – or…what NOT to do when entering your manuscript in a novel-writing contest.
I’ve been a first-tier level judge for a prestigious novel-writing contest for about five years now. First-tier? Yeah, that means I’m important. Okay, maybe not. What it’s supposed to mean is that at least one someone else has already read through the entries and has sent me the very best of those. Now I get the final word. Or something like that. Sounds important, anyway. Continue reading “Novel Ideas for Novel Contests”
The time has arrived for Indies Unlimited readers to begin voting in this week’s Flash Fiction Competition.
On behalf of the IU staff, we want to thank the entrants for doing such a great job with the writing prompt and the merciless constraints of the exercise.
You may review the entries here. Please spread the word and encourage your friends to vote by using the share buttons at the bottom of the post!
The poll will be open until 5:00 PM (Pacific Daylight Time) Thursday
Which author wrote the best entry for this week's flash fiction challenge?
“Catching up on all the stuff I didn’t do last week,” I replied, compiling the list in my head. “Uploading clones of the website I’ve just had approved, putting up a blog post, editing a podcast and writing a load of advance pieces for Indies to send in before I leave.” I was preparing to take off on another book research jaunt and attempting to get ahead of myself.
Enough with the social media already.
“Cool, do they pay well?”
“We do this one for love,” is what I said. I should of course have said that we also do it for kudos, backlinks and kickass exposure but if I had, I wouldn’t have had the conversation that followed.
We spent a while ruminating on the point of free writing. I kept on using that word ‘branding’ and the eyebrow raisings began to look like the sort of facial exercises you see in ads for fabulous secret alternatives to cosmetic surgery. Now we’ve had a good few articles on the subject here at Indies and the consensus seems to be that, um, you should get your little self out there and make sure the interwebs know who you are and also that marketing is a time sink and everybody hates you for doing it anyway. They put it kinda better than that (here and here for example) but we mostly seem to conclude that the writing is your brand, if only you can get it out there. Continue reading “Back to Branding”
RomCon has awarded Gnome on the Range, the contemporary romance novel by Jennifer Zane, two honors: 2012 Readers’ Crown Winner for Best Contemporary Romance, and Best First Book.
Jane West has everything a woman could want. A job in a small Montana town’s only adult store, two busy young boys and one dead husband. Everything except a little excitement–a little zing. But that changes one summer morning at a garage sale when her kids buy some garden gnomes.
Now someone wants those gnomes and will let nothing get in their way. Including Jane. This new excitement for Jane spells trouble for a relationship with new neighbor–and hot fireman–Ty Strickland. Can Jane and Ty handle a relationship meddling mother-in-law, crazy kids, and stay alive while trying to solve the mystery of the garden gnomes?
You can read a Sneak Peek of Gnome on the Rangehere.
Gnome on the Range is available in paperback and electronic editions from Amazon.com. You can see the awards announcement on the RomCon website here.
The time has arrived for Indies Unlimited readers to begin voting in this week’s Flash Fiction Competition.
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