Nicole Zoltack's Blog, page 63

Gearing Up for Nano

It's almost November. I can't wait for Nano. In a way it's sad that I'm waiting until November 1st to get back to serious writing but I am always so inspired by Nano that November is always my most productive month by far.

Between Nano and PiBo, I am going to be really busy next month. As a result, I probably won't be visiting as many blogs as I normally do. I apologize in advance for that. I also will not promise long blog posts, although I will try to continue to blog every M-F. We'll see how that goes though, so I make no promises about that either.

I also want to make a writer's pledge. Starting November 1st, I am going to make writing and my writing career a higher priority in my life. I want to be an author, to have my books for sale at Barnes and Noble. I know I can make my dream a reality. It's about time that I do everything in my power to make it actually happen. So I am not going to make excuses. I'm not going to waste time playing fb games. I will work on furthering my career. That is my goal, my aim, my mission. Writing has been such a large part of my life, it's about time that I take the next step.

I will write/edit/polish Champion of Valor and finish it before the end of the year.

I will rewrite Alexia's Pen and start querying before the end of the year.

I will send out queries for Hidden in Shadows.

I will find an agent.

And I will get published with an NYC publisher.

Anyone else want to make a writer's pledge?

Contest Today on the QueryTracker Blog

Agent Joan Paquette from the Erin Murphy Literary Agency will judge the QT contest that opens today, Wednesday October 27th at 9:00am Eastern time and ends 24 hours later at 9:00am Eastern time on Thursday, October 28th. 
EMLA represents children's literature only, so no adult projects in this contest, please.
Ms. Paquette wants to see a one-line pitch and the FIRST 100 words (plus or minus 1/2 sentence--don't just cut it off mid sentence) of completed children's picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, or young adult novels. 
Because Ms. Paquette does not accept unsolicited queries, this is a great way to get your work in front of her.

Is anyone going to enter? I am! I'm going to enter my PB story. It's the first time I'm sending this story out into the big scary world of submissi9ons. *bites nails*

Author Interview with Lisa Rusczyk

Lisa was one of the winners from my 100 followers contest and here is her interview as her prize.

So, Lisa, could you please share with us your latest news.

My book, Chasing the Dark, has been released by Passionate Writer Publishing.

That's wonderful! When did you first consider yourself a writer?When I got a job at Demand Studios writing articles for eHow and earned my first paycheck from writing.

Ah, Demand Studios. I write for them too. Sadly I make more money from them than my fiction writing, which is my first true love. Hopefully that'll change soon. Anyhow, what inspired you to write Chasing the Dark?

I saw an ambulance pass one day and wondered if there were people who followed them to see the gore.

Oh, now that's interesting. Love the concept. Do you have a specific writing style?I change it up for each book I write. It depends on the genre and story.

How did you come up with the title, Chasing the Dark? I love the title!It had another name originally, but my editor said we should rename it. She gave some suggestions and I took the one I liked best.

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?Not really. I just hope people enjoy it.

That's all any writer can want. What books have most influenced your life most?Watership Down, John Steinbeck books, Stephen King books, Pillars of the Earth... I could go on and on.

Spoken like a true reader! lol I'm the same way. If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?My brother.

Aw, that's so sweet. What book are you reading now?A Bitch Named Karma. A fellow blogger wrote it and I am reading it to review on Raven and the Writing Desk, a blog I do with a couple of other writers, Cherie Reich and Aubrie Dionne.

Oh, I love Steph! She's awesome. (Steph Haefner is the author of A Bitch Named Karma) Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?There are a ton of new writers I'm being exposed to through my job. They are all really good and I love reading new things.

So many good books to read, so little time.... What are your current projects?I have three that I'm working on right now. One is middle grade, about cats. The second is a scifi. The third is a thriller.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?Motivation. I have a hard time sitting down to do it. Once I spend some time with writing, I get into the groove, but getting started is always hard.

Mine is finding the time, but motivation is up there too. Sometimes I just feel like there is so many other things I could do and writing gets shove aside. Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?That's too tough to nail down. The authors I like the most make everything exciting, even when I'm not reading the book.

What a great answer. What was the hardest part of writing your book?The first draft was really rough. It took a long time to fix my errors and make the book more cohesive. I wrote it in six days and that first draft showed it.

You wrote a book in 6 days?! Wow, that's incredible! Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?Check out Hazard Cat, the blog I edit for cat fiction, poetry and art. 

Does it normally only take you a week to write a book?

This one took a week, but usually it takes a year or more. The Blue Pen took five years.

Oh, ok. At first I thought you were a crazy superspeedy writer. What is your work schedule like when you're writing?I try to write 2000 words in every sitting, so usually 2000 words a day when I'm at it.

That's not shabby at all! What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?I usually read everything I've written on a story before starting each time I write, unless I'm pretty far into it. Then I will read about 20 pages back to the starting point for the day.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Lisa, and wishing you many sales!

Inspiring Mondays

A Halloween-type picture.

"Dear Lucky Agent" Contest Details

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HOW TO SUBMIT
E-mail entries to seventhagentcontest@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments. 
WHAT TO SUBMIT
The first 150-200 words of your unpublished, book-length work of young adult fiction. You must include a contact e-mail address with your entry and use your real name. Also, submit the title of the work and a logline (one-sentence description of the work) with your entry.
Please note : To be eligible to submit, I ask that you do one of two things: 1) Mention and link to this contest twice through your social media—blogs, Twitter, Facebook; or 2) just mention this contest once and also add Guide to Literary Agents Blog (www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog) to your blogroll. Please provide link(s) so the judge and I can verify eligibility. Some previous entrants could not be considered because they skipped this step!
CONTEST DETAILS
      1. This contest will be live for approximately fourteen days—from Oct. 21 through the end of Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2010, EST. Winners notified by e-mail within three weeks of end of contest. Winners announced on the blog thereafter.
      2. To enter, submit the first 150-200 words of your book. Shorter or longer entries will not be considered. Keep it within word count range please.
      3. This contest is solely for completed book-length works of young adult fiction.
      4. You can submit as many times as you wish. You can submit even if you submitted to other contests in the past, but please note that past winners cannot win again.
      5. The contest is open to everyone of all ages, save those employees, officers and directors of GLA's publisher, F+W Media.
      6. By e-mailing your entry, you are submitting an entry for consideration in this contest and thereby agreeing to the terms written here as well as any terms possibly added by me in the "Comments" section of this blog post. (If you have questions or concerns, write me personally at literaryagent@fwmedia.com. The Gmail account above is for submissions, not questions.)
PRIZES!!!
Top 3 winners all get: 1) A critique of the first 10 pages of your work, by your agent judge. 2) A free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com.
MEET YOUR (AWESOME) JUDGE!

[image error]Tamar Rydzinski is a literary agent
at the Laura Dail Literary Agency in NYC.

Friendly Friday

I wasn't sure what to talk about today so I thought I would talk a little about myself. If you enjoy this, I might make it a weekly thing.

I always wanted to be a writer. I used to make up stories in my head all the time. My mom used to give my sister and me paper and pencils and told us to write. It's no surprise that we both want to be authors.

Anyhow, my mom, ever practical, told us that we would have to do something else in order to support ourselves until our writing careers took off. After first, I didn't want to hear it, but she did have a point. So I started to brainstorm.

Credit for picture
Shortly thereafter, I watched Jurassic Park and decided that I would be a paleontologist to support my writing career. Getting paid to dig up bones, how cool is that? Sign me up! My aunt even bought me paleontologist Barbie (which I still have, btw)

When I informed my mom, she sighed. Apparently paleontologists are also poor and have to beg for grants in order to dig.

That was disappointing.


I still read up a lot on dinosaurs. Even back then I enjoyed doing research.If you like dinosaurs, you have to read the book Raptor Red. It's fantastic. I've read it countless times. It's told from the POV of a raptor!

Credit for pictureI still read up on dinosaurs when I get the chance. Earlier this week, there was an article on cnn about Tyrannosaurus Rex. Appareantely there is evidence that T-Rexes were such scavengers that they would eat any dead dino, even dead T-Rexes! Those cannibals!

A couple of months ago, I watched a show about dinosaurs and theories about their extinction. (If you haven't already guessed, I'm a huge nerd, lol) I never knew what to think of the whole meteorite/extinction theory prior to watching the show and now I'm more certain that the meteorite may have killed some dinosaurs, but that they were already dying out before the large rock hit.
Credit for pictureThere were many reasons why they became extinct. First, on Pangaea, there were a lot more volcanoes than there are now. And there were huge eruptions that would kill most of the vegatation in the region. This would weaken the dinosaurs in the area. Gradually, the eruptions grew closer together so that the earth didn't have a chance to regrow all of the vegetation and reset itself before another one hit. This contributed to the dinosaurs dying.

Also, there is evidence that the water level greatly receded before the dinosaurs died out. This revealed new land bridges. Dinosaurs began to migrate to new parts of pangaea and brought with them germs and diseases that other dinosaurs weren't immune to. This also greatly reduced the number of dinosaurs.

Finally, the meteorite hit and killed what few remaining dinosaurs there were. If an asteroid alone had killed the dinosaurs, there would be a massive amount of dinosaur bones in that rock layer in the soil. There are very few dinosaur bones to be found in the ashes though.

So even though I never did become a paleontologist, I still developed a love for the giant lizards. And I still would love to go out on a dig . Anyone want to join me?

Oh, and if you get the chance, visit the Author Hotspot. I'm talking about Mertales. I would love it if you stopped by!

Character Names

Normally when I get a new story idea, I don't know the characters' names right away. I'll write down the idea with girl or guy in leui of names. Before I sit down to actually start typing the story, I'll pick a name then. If the story is historical, I'llmake sure the names are time period approiate. Other times, I'll pick a name because of its meaning. Or just because I like the sound of the name. Baby name sites are awesome.


For my fantasy YA story, I've been thinking of changing the male MC's name. The main character is Alexia. Right now, the MMC is Artex. I started this story in the 6th grade (literally, wrote parts of it during class) and The Neverending Story was my favorite story (still is up there). When I started the story, I had loaned my copy to a friend. I had wanted to name my MMC after the horse, but misspelled it. The horse's name is spelled Artax. When I realized that, I never bothered to correct the spelling.

Now, however, I don't want to name this character after the horse. So I need a new name for him. One that is unusual, unique. I had thought of Alastair. Someone on twitter suggested Arthus. I'm partial to that name. But remember, the FMC is Alexia. It's probably not the best of ideas to have both characters names start with 'A'. Can I get away with it though, since the story is told in 1st person? Or is two 'A' names too confusing?

Hmmm... maybe Ruthus? Any suggestions? Thoughts? I would really appreciate your insight!

Anthologies and Writing Update

If you look under my list of short stories, it's slowly growing. I sold another flash piece for Pill Hill Press' Daily Bites of Flesh anthology called Deadly Flat Tire. I also sold Dead Roses to Gone with the Dirt: Undead Dixie. This anthology contains stories about the south, during the Civil War, about zombies. I adore Gone with the Wind, so I really wanted to be included in this anthology. Don't you just love the cover? I love all of PHP's covers.

I also sold a short Christmas sweet romance story to Night Wolf Publications called My Christmas Luck in A Yuletide Wish anthology.

I use duotrope.com to find most of the anthologies. Duotrope is such a wonderful resource. You should check it out, if you haven't already.

I love writing short stories for anthologies. However, I'm going to stop writing them for the time being so I can clear my plate and gear up for Nano. November is almost here! I'm getting excited (while hubby is groaning, lol)

Do you write short stories? Have you ever tried to get into an anthology?

CassaStar by Alex J. Cavanaugh

CassaStar by Alex J. Cavanaugh
October 19, 2010 Science fiction/adventure/space opera
ISBN 9780981621067 Dancing Lemur Press LLC

To pilot the fleet's finest ship…

Few options remain for Byron. A talented but stubborn young man with a troubled past and rebellious attitude, his cockpit skills are his only hope. Slated to train as a Cosbolt fighter pilot, Byron is determined to prove his worth and begin a new life as he sets off for the moon base of Guaard.

Much to Byron's chagrin, the toughest instructor in the fleet takes notice of the young pilot. Haunted by a past tragedy, Bassa eventually sees through Byron's tough exterior and insolence. When a secret talent is revealed during training, Bassa feels compelled to help Byron achieve his full potential.

As war brews on the edge of space, time is running short. Byron requires a navigator of exceptional quality to survive, and Bassa must make a decision that could well decide the fate of both men. Will their skills be enough as they embark on a mission that may stretch their abilities to the limit?

"…calls to mind the youthful focus of Robert Heinlein's early military sf, as well as the excitement of space opera epitomized by the many Star Wars novels. Fast-paced military action and a youthful protagonist make this a good choice for both young adult and adult fans of space wars." - Library Journal


Trailer


Links to purchase:

AMAZON 

BARNES & NOBLE 

BAM 

POWELLS

ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK – KINDLE, IBOOKSTORE, NOOK, AND OTHERS

Bio:

Alex J. Cavanaugh has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and works in web design and graphics. He's experienced in technical editing and worked with an adult literacy program for several years. A fan of all things science fiction, his interests range from books and movies to music and games. Currently he lives in the Carolinas with his wife.

Inspiring Mondays

I'm thinking evil villain's fortress of doom.