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Thursday, September 23, 2010

New Contest for Fiction Writers--Listen Up!

If you know a fiction writer, pass this on. Big contest. Straight from the mouth of Guide to Literary Agents' Blog.

It's a recurring online contest called, "Dear Lucky Agent" with agent judges and super-cool prizes, including having your first 10 pages critiqued by an agent who represents your genre. How cool is that? So much better than receiving, "Sorry, this doesn't fit with our line," or "I didn't fall in love with this."

This contest is for writers of paranormal romance or urban fantasy..hot ticket items these days. So many people love vampires, werewolves, zombies, fairies, and who knows what else?

Is this an attempt to get away from the stress and boredom of daily life? Who knows? Readers of this genre flip for it. I mean, the Twilight book series was so hot, it spawned a couple of movies. Who would have believed a werewolf and a snotty vampire would vie for the love of a boring teenage girl in the northwest? Go figure...I think it has something to do with sex and living forever, but what do I know?

Oh, but if you write "high fantasy" (dragons, elves, or other planets), you're out of luck for this contest

More about the contest at www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog

Am I entering? Of course. Tony and I are sending 200 words of our humorous vampire novel in. Oh, and 190 words of our teen urban fantasy, and whatever else we can find that's teen and paranormal. See, that's the cool thing about this. Enter as many times as you like.

Let's see what happens...

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

BUY BOOKS LOCALLY

Here I go on my soapbox. Tony says I should take a break, but hey, I'm a writer...I can't.

The thing is, bookstores are closing--even big ones. Yes, I know, everybody says e-books are the future. Buy your Kindle now. But, in my opinion, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, like opening the pages of a book, settling back and traveling around the pages with a bunch of highly interesting people.

Kindle? Never!

I know, I know, never say never, but I have to put my four cents in about this.

I know, I know, save a tree and buy a kindle. But to use a Kindle, you first have to buy the Kindle. Then you have to pay for each and every book besides. Seems like less of an environmental action than a profit motive, but that's just my opinion.

Stay on message...Okay, okay...The best way to make sure there are any hard copy books left on the planet is to buy your books at a local bookstore. Keep that bookstore going or we all know who's going to own every kindle and e-book around. Clue: starts with Am and ends with azon.

So, buy books from your local bookstore. For yourself. For others as gifts. Donate them to the library if you run out of people to give them to. They're suffering too with reduced budgets to buy books.

Okay, that's it, I'm off my podium and back to my chair, ready to write a new chapter in my latest work in progress.

Stay Well,

Carolyn

P.S. Please tell your friends, colleagues, family, and anyone else you care to about my blog. Thanks so much!
P.P.S. Enter my raffle. All you have to do is comment on this or any other post I've written and I'll put you in the running to win one of my health-related books (your choice as long as copies remain).

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

How Impatient Can My Sixteen-Year-Old Self Get?

I remember waiting for my boyfriend to make the trek home from the state university and how I'd take a bath, do my nails and hair, pace the house, pull back the curtain and stare at the driveway, willing him to appear. And this was all before lunch. When he had 300 miles to travel.

Yes, I was born impatient, and through the years, I've struggled with trying to be more patient, more relaxed, more calm, more....why doesn't it happen!?!

So, what is it this time, oh teenager forever?

Well, it's those full manuscripts I've sent out.

Just how does it work? Does Agent X put my m.s. at the bottom of the pile to be read sometime in the next century, or does she start to read it, only to be interrupted by meetings with editors, phone calls, hungry kids and pets, all the while salivating to get back to my tome?

Probably neither, and why don't I just get back to business...to writing my next novel?

Because, maybe it was just an hallucination I had and no one requested my manuscript at all.

Boo hoo. It couldn't be that. Could it?

Who knows these days? Ever since I was out cutting branches off that snarky pepper tree that grows a foot a day (well, maybe only six inches) and stood back up after hauling a huge limb away, the branch reached out and bonked me. Okay, the branch didn't do that, I just wasn't watching what I was doing, and hit my head on the remaining tuber. (Or are tubers only underground?)

Anyway...bonk. I saw lights, I heard buzzing, and I had no idea what just happened. As my head cleared...sort of...I realized...another closed head injury. Those are the worst, because nobody can see it, but you sure can feel it. Intense pain and throbbing in the left side of my forehead, followed by the need to sit down on a stump before I fell down.

So, like I said, it could be due to my closed head injury. The second one. That I remember. The first came after I took up tap dancing and fell on a tile floor trying to do pullbacks, which I had no business doing at my level of tap. Not that my teacher was any help. She kept urging me to let go of the bar and try it.  The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back on the floor, looking up at the ceiling through the blood dripping down from above my eye. I had to have hit my face, but how did I get turned onto my back? Some kind of magic?
I never found out and only have the tiniest scar to remind me not to do pullbacks again.

Enough about closed head injuries.

The larger question is, when will I gain the patience I've been struggling to find lo these many years...

Monday, September 20, 2010

HURRAH!

Okay, it's finger-crossing time and pants wetting time, and...

Yup, two agents asked for the full manuscript of FORENSICS BY THE NUMBERS...and within four hours of getting the query. Either the query is fantastic, or they loved the premise. Time will tell. Meanwhile, another agent asked for the first chapter, so on it goes.

Millions of sugar plums dancing in my head...and my fingers...something inside me says "You've been here before..."

Yes, I have and it never resulted in getting an agent...so let's not get TOOOOO excited!

Okay, but Tony and I disco danced at 6 a.m. this morning. That oughta tell you...

Bye for now.

Carolyn

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Where have I been?

I woke up this morning and it was September.

Where have I been?

No, I wasn't in an alien spaceship, although that might have been neat. Oh, excuse me, cool. Neat went out in the 1950s, whereas cool, has been, well, cool since the 1920s.

Instead of being carefree in an alien spaceship, I was a prisoner to my household appliances. First the washer started doing weird dances across the laundry room floor and making ungodly (almost possessed) sounds even our neighbors could hear. Not only that, but on the rinse and spin cycles my husband or I had to hold the machine down so it didn't smash into the dryer or bang into the wall and take chunks of wall out.

Days of bugging my friends and family for ideas for a new washer, checking out the internet for sales and a list of the most dependable and inexpensive washers, tramping through mega stores and listening to sales pitches, and asking the same questions over and over...We bought a front loader. It's quiet, doesn't walk or bang across the floor and is energy efficient. We may even get a governmental rebate or whatever it's called for being energy conscious. (I think that's better than being energy unconscious, but I'm not sure).

I sit down at my computer, ready to compose another GONE WITH THE WIND when the air conditioning starts making weird cracking, crackling, and banging sounds at night. Great for late night blogging or sleeping if you're deaf. By then, I'm beginning to think: The house is possessed by a household appliance demon. But not only noises filled the evening air, weird wet deposits appeared on the bedroom floor. "It's your outside handler. You need a new one, but you'll have to get both inside and outside machines because of new governmental rules. No more freon. Only SEER ratings of 14 and above and yada, yada, yup, $4,000 later...Magic, we have an air conditioner that doesn't make a sound. It darn well better not at those prices. And get this...we have two air handlers; one for each side of our house. I can hardly wait for that outside handler to go...Yes, I can. And no more nightmare dreams about the air handler from hell, please.

Then the lawn mower goes, right when my husband's about to cut down all that tall grass in the front we've been letting go because of the air conditioning and washing machine encounters. Yup, it dies, rolls over, and won't even yap. Off to the lawn mower repair place, because everyone knows it's cheaper to repair than purchase a whole new one. Yes, but when you have to return the darn thing three times after the initial repair because they stripped the screws, forgot to put in a gas filter, yada, yada, you are pulling out your hair and screaming, "Not us! Why us!"

But okay, summer is over and we don't need air conditioning as much ( so even if it does go, who cares?), and the lawn is growing more slowly because the summer monsoons have shut down, and yes, we still have to do wash, but that machine is guaranteed for 10 years, or so they say, but I couldn't read the tiny print at the bottom that probably says, "Ha, ha, April fool!"

So that, in a nutshell, is what I've been doing since my last entry. I swear on my Girl Scout badges that I will faithfully report to this blog and share my fiction writing experiences now and forever forward from this day.

Signed in blood...or at least a dab or strawberry jam...

Fiction Writer

Carolyn Chambers Clark