Class of 2k10 Multi-Title Giveaway

Five book clubs across the US can win a prize pack of three to six sets of books written by the authors from the Class of 2K10. Each pack includes TEN copies of each book, and in some packs one of the books will be signed by the author. The contest is open to all book clubs associated with a nonprofit institution, a school, or a library. To enter, just comment on this entry, specifying which of the prize packs you are interested in and which nonprofit you are affiliated with. The giveaway will end on November 11, 2010.

MID_GRADE FANTASY PACK:

The Carnival of Lost Souls by Laura Quimby
Under the Green Hill by Laura L. Sullivan
The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams by Rhonda Hayter

MID-GRADE CONTEMPORARY PACK:

Fairview Felines: A Newspaper Mystery by Michele Corriel
Island Sting by Bonnie J. Doerr
Leaving Gee's Bend by Irene Latham
The Reinvention of Edison Thomas by Jacqueline Houtman
Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai

YA FANTASY/PARANORMAL PACK

13 To Life by Shannon Delany
Freaksville by Kitty Keswick
Mistwood by Leah Cypess
Past Midnight by Mara Purnhagen
Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready
Under My Skin by Judith Graves

YA CONTEMPORARY PACK 1

Change of Heart by Shari Maurer
Faithful by Janet Fox
Losing Faith by Denise Jaden
The Tension of Opposites by Kristina McBride

YA CONTEMPORARY PACK 2

Of All the Stupid Things by Alexandra Diaz
Party by Tom Leveen
Three Rivers Rising by Jame Richards
The Secret Year by Jennifer R. Hubbard
Split by Swati Avasthi

Rules:
You must be a book club affiliated with a nonprofit, school, or library, and located in the continental United States.

To enter, leave a comment to this entry: (http://community.livejournal.com/classof2k10/27411.html).

Specify which of the prize packs you are interested in – you may choose from only one, to all five, as we will be holding 5 separate drawings. (However, no club will win more than one prize pack.)

Leave an email address where you can be reached should you win.

If the email address is a not an institution address, please specify which nonprofit, school, or library you are affiliated with.

If you are not sure whether you qualify, just leave the relevant information in the comment.
If there are any additional questions, please contact Leah Cypess at LCypess@gmail.com.

Week 1 of NaNoWrimo (or the first 4 days)

Can you believe that the first 4 (or 5 depending what time you're reading this) days have completed for NaNoWrimo 2010? I can't! The time is flying by, and I'm keeping up...barely.

This is the first year I've sat down in hopes of writing something good. Okay, maybe that's not true, but this year I'm not putting words down just for the word count and thinking I'll edit when I get to it. I'm choosing my words wisely and trying to get something down worthwhile. It will be still be a rough 1st draft, but I hope to have more substance than my last NaNoWrimo years. That's not to say that my last ones were all crap. I did turn my last two NaNoWrimo books into a completed manuscript that I'm proud of and queried with some success (though no agent). The one from last year is still in the works, going through edit after edit and have high hopes for it. I just wish it had been a little cleaner after November 30th.

That is my plan for this year. To have something that is readable without cringing (too much), but to still hit the goal of 50,000. I will say, this is also the year that I'd like to hit the goal, but won't kick myself if I don't. I participated in NaNo this year, not to have 50,000 words of a new book (well, that's partly it), but to get myself out of the editing funk.

The book I spoke of above, the one in edits, has got me down. I stopped working on it consistently and felt like I didn't know where to turn. Instead of fighting through it like I should have, I let other things distract me in my life. I shouldn't have, but I needed something like NaNo to get the juices flowing again. I think I needed to step back and start on something fresh, to get a new perspective on my writing and my creativity. I'm hoping NaNo does that for me, and so far it has. I forgot how fun it is to create a new world and spend time with new friends (err, characters).

Each day, it has taken most of the day (at least 5 hours) to hit my daily word count, and I'm okay with that. I don't need to bang out 1,666 words (or more) in an hour just to say that I can. I want to choose each word, each letter wisely. That being said, I hope I can speed up a little more once I know my word and characters better. I guess we'll find out once I wrap up week one and start on week two.

How are you doing with your word count?

Tami's word count at the end of day 4: 7,287

It's all about NANO, baby!

Well. NANO Eve is behind us. This is the day - the beginning. Let's get'er done. ;) November is going to be a quite month for me, a few author visits, the day job, and NANO. That's it. I'm not going to Twitter/blog/Facebook - I'm NOT! (Well, maybe a bit to promo said author visits. Oh, and my weekly blog post here...but that's all.)

I'm "going dark" - hitting the writer's cave and won't come up for air until December. I think it will be liberating. I've been tied to the Net for most of October due to blog tours, etc - while they've been a blast - they are a major time suck. It will be wonderful to just WRITE.

Lord knows what my house will look like after a month, but who cares, right? This is NANO, baby! If you're participating this year, find me - I'm there as JudithG.

Good luck!

Happy Halloween and Beginning of NaNoWrimo

First off, I wanted to say happy Halloween to everyone who celebrates. It's one of my favorite holidays, though the past few years we haven't done much. This year, we hope to find a party or two and have a little fun. Please be safe if you plan to go out on the town! Some weird crap can happen on Halloween (I was actually in a car accident on Halloween several years ago).

Be sure not to get too crazy come October 31st. The next day is a special one...the first day of NaNoWrimo. What's the best way to get through the first week? Eat the left over Halloween candy, and if you don't have any left, be sure to stop by your local store to buy the crazy discounted candy they have to get rid of!

Speaking of NaNoWrimo, are you ready? Our critique group shared our ideas for plots and decided just last night which to work on. I had two ideas that are very different and wasn't sure which to pick. Both had potential, but with the girls' help, I was able to decide.

Right now, I have a basic idea of my story, and a very very very (did I mentioned very?) rough synopsis. I'm at the point where I wonder if I have enough to write 50,000 words in the 30 days ahead, but each year I go through self-doubt. Don't let it swallow you up, or you will never get past the first 5,000 words, let alone 50,000. I hope I can use my own advice.

I've been in a writing funk lately, so I hope that writing the first draft of a new book snaps me out of it so I can get back to editing my current WIP, Parlor. I'm stuck on the editing part, prodding along but just don't know where to take some of the chapters. By cranking out a lot of crappy words in the month of November, maybe I'll have them out of my system and only the good ones will be left to finish editing my book!

Here's to hoping! Next week, I'll give an update on how my first 5 days of NaNo has gone. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I have around 9,000-10,000 words. I'd love to write most of my week's wordcount during the week so that I have the weekend free to not stress over it and plot/research for the next week.

What do you hope to accomplish the first week of NaNo? Do you have a schedule planned out?

Pure Speculation Festival

My hubbie, my 2 crazy labs and I were on one hell of Joy READ this week. We travelled 7 hours to Grimshaw, Alberta for a few author visits to grade 7 and 8 students (well, just me, the rest of my crew hung out at the hotel room). From Grimshaw we drove another 6 hours to Edmonton to attend the 6th Annual Pure Speculation Festival - a small (but growing!) sci-fi / fantasy con where I sat on a few panels.

As we drove around the Radisson Hotel, desperately trying to find a place to park (I swear every nerd worth his/her weight in gold was at Pure Spec), we spied a green-skinned gentleman getting out of his vehicle. "We're in YOUR world now," my hubbie announced. Yes, we were. I was in nerd heaven the entire day. Walking amongst the costumed, the gamers, the keeners taking notes and the Geek Calendar Girls was quite the adventure. I presented a session on the SKINNED Series, gave an overview of the beasties in the SKINNED world and showed a sneak peek of the trailer for SECOND SKIN. But the best part - the cool people I met during my panels.

Tanya Huff (creator of the Blood series of books, turned into Blood Ties - a 2 season TV show) is so damn smart and well read and passionate. She kicked the snot out of any point she made and yet had time to chat with the newbie (that'd be me) and enjoyed hanging with fans.

Dan Brodribb is a nifty guy - a self-professed shy comic - a wrestling referee - and all around fantasy fan. His self-effacing humour is endearing.

Then there's Mike Perschon, an English prof / Steampunk Scholar who makes the classics come alive - ALIVE! Plus, he's up on his YA fiction and even shared some steampunk titles my high school History teacher hubbie could use in class.

As panelists, we engaged in heated discussions - the sparkling vampire debate, paranormal fiction as the modern fairytale, which sci-fi title should "stay on the island", the morphing of paranormal fiction into genres like steampunk and what was next for the genre in general. I left the fest with my inner nerd fully charged.

I hope I'm invited back next year. I'm going to get me a kickass costume. I wish I had taken pictures of the wicked cool costumes, but alas - epic fail on my part. (Many thanks to my brother, Blaise, who kindly took pics of the SKINNED session for me - and my sister, Brenda - who helped me setup!) Until next year, Pure Spec.....

Fighting Distraction

There are so many distractions in life--books, tv, and other hobbies. Mix in family and friends and sometimes it's hard to get anything done and by anything, I mean writing. Times are about to get worse, with the holiday season approaching upon us faster than I can type this. Before we know it, it will be Halloween, Thanksgiving (for our US readers) and then the December holidays (whatever you may celebrate). Not only is it hard to get everything done, it's even harder to make sure you sit down and concentrate on your story. I know for me, when I'm in the zone on one of my books, my mind tends to constantly think about it, working out issues that I'm having or just living in the world I created. During the holidays it's different, I'm thinking about turkeys, vacation, presents and hot chocolate (okay, maybe a buttered rum or two as well. I'm not going to lie). Add in NaNoWrimo, and you've got a mess on your hands.

As I've mentioned here before, I got into crochet about a year ago. It helps me relax, concentrate on something theraputic and fun. I love it because I can take it anywhere, I've met amazing people and it gives me something to do when my husband wants to watch really terrible movies. I even started a crochet blog, Tami's Amis and Other Crochet. It started as a hobby, but now it has crept into my thinking of writing time and even my actual writing time. I hope that NaNo helps me set my priorities back to where they should be. I'm not saying that it has taken over my time writing, but it has slowly moved into that space. It will be a huge test for me come November. I will be working on a new book for NaNoWrimo (I have two stories brewing and I'm not sure which I'd like to write yet), the holidays and on top of all that, I've decided to make many of my gifts this year. I'm excited about that, but to be honest, it's a lot easier to go out to the mall and purchase something. I hope to accomplish so much during November, more than just writing a first draft of a new YA novel.

What do you hope to accomplish with NaNoWrimo, other than 50,000 words?

NANO Attack!

With NANO a few weeks away, participants like Tami and I are busy jotting plot notes, character traits, researching settings or time periods and seeing inspiration shining around every corner of life. I call it the hunter / gatherer stage, we're like bears getting ready to den for the winter - gorging ourselves for the ordeal ahead. Prepping for the inevitable dry spell (which should strike at about Day 19, just beyond the half way mark) when NANO seems like a freakish experiment in self-mutilation and the next word is the equivalent of the next drop on your forehead a la water torture.

Let's revisit that bear analogy. It resonates with me at the moment, since my yard was recently invaded. I took the dogs out early one morning, it was pitch black and they FREAKED out, barking, snarling - and frankly, scaring the crap out of me. I managed to get them inside the house, though they fought against their leashes the whole way. When the sun came up, I found out why. A bear had busted down a section of our fence to access our overripe crab apples and ripped down several branches for easy munching. Here's a pic of the damage:

The bear came back a few nights later, so we eliminated the problem - shook all the apples down and got rid of them. We've since fixed the fence and all's well. But, being a paranormal fiction author, I had to question - since we never really saw the bear - what if this incident didn't have an easy, natural explanation? What if something paranormal was at work? What if, instead of a bear, our house (which backs onto miles of woods) was encroaching on the territory of some other creature? Something old, something evil? A starving thing, desperate and hungry?

Like I said, me and that bear have a lot in common. We're both hoarding up all the nutrients we can - only in my situation - it's writerly goodness. And from the bear came the the geniuses of my NANO project. A busted fence, branches down from a tree - with huge claw marks carving up the trunk - black oozy liquid on the frosted lawn, leaving a trail to the woods, and a frazled single parent who poopoos her imaginative teen-aged daughter's foreboding feeling away.

Then things get worse....much, much worse.

Good luck to all NANO participants - here's to hunting down a wicked plot and characters to DIE for!