Opportunity Knocks by guest author Dahila DeWinters

Gladiator's Pen welcomes author Dahlia DeWinters to the Ludis. She's here to tell us about an up coming marketing workshop hosted by Marketing for Romance Writers. The camp and group is for more than just the romance genre. There's something for all writers trying to get their books into readers hands.  So pour a cuppa and enjoy. Don't forget to leave a comment! 

Opportunity Knocks at Marketing For Romance Writers Summer Camp. Open the door to our MOTTO: SEEK, TEACH, LEARN, SHARE, SUCCEED

Marketing for Romance Writers Summer Camp is July 14th – July 15th. To receive updates for the camp or learn more about it and MFRW, please sign up here:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MarketingForRomanceWriters/

“I had to let it happen
I had to change
couldn’t stay all my life down at heel
Looking out of the window, staying out of the sun.” – Evita (Lyrics by Tim Rice)

I’m a musical person.  I firmly believe that there are two kinds of music, good and bad.  That’s it.  I’ll listen to anything if it catches my ear.  My collection extends from Sinatra to the Spice Girls, so that’s pretty clear, right?

So, Dahlia, you may ask, what does this have to do with your post?  I’ll tell you.  Marketing For Romance Writers (MFRW) is a group that I accidently stumbled upon while looking for groups for romance writers on Yahoo. And am I glad I did.

The group is filled with so much support and information that is useful for the beginner to the “advanced” romance writer.  Places to request reviews, places to guest blog, things to avoid:  the members are so open and ready to share their experiences.  Too shy to ask a question?  No problem, run a search and I am sure you will find the answer to your question, or at least find a resource. They’ll even help you with your email signature.

Here’s where Evita comes in.  Marketing your book is about change.  You must change.  Accept change.  Initiate change.  It is only through change that we can learn, share our knowledge and succeed in this business. We can’t do the same old things that were done even last year and expect them to work.  We, as writers, have to keep up with the ever changing environment of the Internet, keep ahead of the trends,  so that we are riding the wave instead of drowning in it.

So are you going to catch a wave with us this summer?  I’ll bring the tunes. Not just showtunes either, I promise.

MFRW is sponsoring a free summer camp on July 14^th to July 15^th.  Two days, full of information.  To receive updates for the camp or learn more about it and MFRW, please sign up here:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MarketingForRomanceWriters/

Dahila DeWinters writes romance off the beaten path.  Check out her blog at http://thesultryscribe.com.

Summer Camps for Writers

Camp NaNoWriMo

June is right around the corner, which means summer, fun and… camp! Campfires with ghost stories, smores, hot dogs on sticks and writing lots and lots of writing.

Camp NaNoWriMo starts on June 1^st.  Just like it’s big brother NaNoWriMo that takes place in November writers gather to make the mad dash of 50,000 words in 30 days.

At Camp NaNo you have a profile, novel page, a place to log your word count as often as you wish to update it. Instead of forums, writers get a cabin with four other campers to chat with and share all the adventures.

This is a great way to give that novel a summer push. If one month of Camp NaNo is this much fun, how about two months?  There is a second session of camp that takes place in August. Writers can chose to do June, August or both. Despite the pressure to make that 17667 daily word count, the atmosphere of camp is more relaxed.

Marketing for Romance Writers Summer Camp

If you’re looking for a little less pressure July 14^th -15^th Marketing for Romance Writers is holding a free summer conference of their own.

A workshop called Opportunity knocks. MFRW’s motto is Seek, teach, learn, share succeed. The conference will cover many aspects of marketing for writers. The group is mostly romance writers but this conference will provide tools and information that all genres can put to use.

Author Dahlia DeWinters will be stopping by the Ludis June 1^st to tell you more about the event and group. So be sure to drop back by.

This summer there are many great opportunities for learning, writing and fun. So grab your backpack and bear repellent and let’s go to camp! 

X Y Z The end or the beginning?

X, Y, and Z are the last three letters of the alphabet. The last three posts of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. I didn’t quite make it to those three letters before the timer ran out on the 2012 challenge, but I did make it further than last year.

On the 2011 challenge I made it to P for Patience. Something I exhibited a great deal during the month of April. I created a challenging theme for myself. The Saga of Ben Mason, his journey from a young fool about to lose everything he had in a card game, as a soldier in the civil war and as an outlaw seeking vengeance for his family’s deaths.

Ben’s story ended around the letter K with Killing Hammond… or so I thought. It felt like an end at the time but lately Ben has been yammerin in my ear. He keeps telling me that we need to go back and fill in the blanks we left between posts and there is more to his story to come. Don’t you love it when characters get bossy?

This April was both difficult and inspiring as I struggled to keep up with posting, having a flu bug twice and going back to school. Once Ben’s story ended (or so I thought) I managed to come close to catching up.

I made it all the way to W for Warned before the gong rang and found some wonderful new blogs to follow. So I am calling A to Z 2012 a success here on Gladiator’s Pen, and like the Ben Mason story, it doesn’t end here.

There are more challenges to come and more stories to tell. I look forward to each and every one.

If you would like to read Ben Mason's story start here with Aces and Eights and enjoy the ride. 

Plan A. Plan Be. Plan See. by guest Jon Jefferson

Plan A. Plan Be. Plan See.

  

Guest blog by Jon Jefferson – the “Jefferson” half of the crime-fiction duo Jefferson Bass. Working in collaboration with Dr. Bill Bass, the forensic anthropologist who founded the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee, Jon writes the bestselling series of Body Farm novels. The latest—The Inquisitor’s Key—comes out May 8.

I have writer friends whose workspaces are immaculate. I have friends who write every day, including one who gets up at 5:30 a.m. and writes for two hours before heading to his day job as a lawyer. I have friends who make detailed outlines. I have friends who start at the beginning and write their way forward, in perfect linearity, to the end. That is to say, I have friends who are neater, more disciplined, better organized, and generally much smarter than I am! But a beautiful thing about being a writer is that there are a zillion different paths up the mountain. Doesn’t matter which path you take, long as you’re climbing.

Three tricks to keep climbing: Change course. Be your inner TV writer. And see what’s in your headlights.

Change course: When I was a kid, I had one of those windup toy cars that, when it ran into a wall or a chairleg or the dog’s dish, would back up an inch or so, change directions slightly, and tear off again. Not, perhaps, the most efficient way to go from Point A to Point Z, but I couldn’t help but admire the little car’s persistence and energy. In practice, what that looks like for me (messy, nonlinear writer that I am) is jumping to a different place in the story when I’m stuck, and writing a scene that comes more easily than the one that brought me to a screeching halt. I end up doing a fair amount of joinery eventually, fitting all those pieces together, but I’ll take joinery over a blank screen any day of the week.

Be your inner TV writer: Back in my twenties, I had vague aspirations to write a novel—actually, the embarrassing truth is, I had vague aspirations to “be a writer”—but nothing came of them, because (a) I didn’t have a story I was burning to tell, and (b) I was too damned intimidated by my inner critic (my straight-A English-major critic) to write stuff I knew would be far inferior to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dickens, and a legion of other great writers. Then I spent half a dozen years making cable-television documentaries, and I got over myself. Writing for television taught me to write fast and to write “good enough.” The liberating thing about it was that nobody cared if a script was Faulknerian or Hemingwayesque; what counted was that it got done, and that it was good enough. Since then, I’ve written nine books. My inner critic still winces at some of what I write … but at least I’m writing.

See what’s in the headlights: Somewhere, taped to one of my computer screens or walls (underneath a few other strata of index cards offering words of wisdom), I have this wonderfully reassuring line from novelist E.L. Doctorow: “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Another analogy, which I offer from my experience as a pilot of small airplanes in the humid summers of the South: When you’re a mile or two up, on a hazy August afternoon, it’s often impossible to see the ground more than a couple miles ahead. The world seems to coalesce, to materialize, just ahead of the plane, just in time to fly above it. Sometimes when I’m writing, the world of the novel materializes one paragraph, or even one sentence, ahead of me. What a relief, and what a privilege, to see—to catalyze—that world’s creation!

For more on Jefferson Bass, LIKE them on Facebook, find them at their blog, and follow along on Twitter.

Pre-order The Inquisitor’s Key:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Books-A-Million

Warned: One Word/60 Seconds

Part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge for the letter W

She pulled at her bonds, but the rope would not give. Her heart raced as she watched the door he would be back at any moment. She should have listened to her friends. The door opened, she struggled harder, until the flash of steel in the dim light stilled her with fear. Her last thought… she had been warned.

Vision

Part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge 2012 for the letter V

The following was written as for The 55 Word Challenge held every Wednesday at Jezri's Nightmares. 

Vision

I wove my way through the crowd. As I walked, I watched the sidewalk age, crumble, grass and weeds sprouted between the cracks. A glance at a car let me watch paint fade and metal turn rust. No longer a sexy red corvette. People were the worst, flesh withered and rotted. My vision, my curse.

      

Ukulele

Part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge 2012 for the letter U

A Ukulele is a string instrument similar to a guitar only with a higher pitch, and, happens to be one of the coolest instruments around. For most the first image when mentioning one of these  is a sunny Hawaiian beach with a man in a loud shirt and lei strumming Aloha Oe under the palms. 

Actually the ukulele is more popular than one would imagine. Great Britain has a wonderful group. The Ukulele Orchestra who preforms tunes such as Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones, Born This Way by Lady GaGa, Enter Sandman by Metalica. 

Okay enough talk let's give a listen and see how cool a Uke can be.