Nicole Zoltack's Blog, page 65

Shelley Munro Guest Blog - Hope in The Mail

Once upon a time there was a young girl (that would be me) who loved to read. She started out reading Doctor Dolittle adventures and graduated to Famous Five and Secret Seven mysteries. Next came Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys plus lots of other books in between. One day she went on holiday to the beach. It rained and it rained and she ran out of books to read. In desperation, her mother handed over her Mills & Boon paperbacks. The girl, now in her teens, devoured the medical romances her mother gave her, and thus began her love affair with the romance genre.

On another day, a few years later, she decided that maybe she could write her own book. She made a few starts and discovered this book writing business might be a little harder than what she'd thought. Oh, well. Never fear. She put her writing attempts aside and started dating boys. She found a boy she really liked and married him. They decided they'd like to travel so they set off on an overseas experience, exploring quite a bit of the world. Six years later, they finally returned home to New Zealand. The girl found a job and they lived happily.

One day the girl woke up with an overriding thought on her mind. If she didn't make a serious attempt to write soon, she'd run out of time.

That day was a turning point.

The same week, she discovered a course on writing romance at Auckland University. She enrolled. One of her favorite magazines ran an article on Susan Napier, a New Zealand writer, and gave details of an organization called Romance Writers of New Zealand. Fate, she decided. A sign that she was meant to write romance.

She attended the course and started writing. She completed her story and sent it off to Harlequin Mills & Boon in England. Then, she sat back and waited for a contract to arrive in the mail.

A rejection arrived one month later.

This was her first experience with rejection. Undeterred, she set about writing another book. Another rejection. This process repeated for the next five years…

She found this rejection business very irritating and disappointing and frustrating. Each one was a blow requiring many chocolate bars, the odd glass of wine and many consoling hugs from her husband. She grew tired of rejection and decided to employ a strategy that she calls "Hope in the Mail".

With several manuscripts under her belt, she resolved to make sure she had several submissions out at once. She also started to enter contests and she entered more than one at a time. This meant she had several coals in the fire. If a rejection came back, she could tell herself she still had hope in the mail. One of those submissions might just be the one. If she received a rejection, she'd evaluate and either submit it to another publisher or rework it, ready to send out yet again.

During her sixth year of writing, she and one of her writer friends had a competition. The one who had the most rejections by the end of the year would win a lunch out, paid for by the loser. The girl ended up receiving quite a few rejections and won a free lunch. On the second of January the next year, she received an email from a publisher wanting to publish her book. It was a good year because she sold to several other publishers too.

My name is Shelley Munro. I currently write for Ellora's Cave, Samhain Publishing and Carina Press. I write contemporary, paranormal, sci-fi and historical romance.

One thing you mightn't realize is that published writers still receive rejections. I hate rejections. Most people do! I try to keep my hope in the mail strategy working for me to cushion my disappointment. At present, I have only one submission out, but I'm working hard to complete another manuscript. I need more hope in the mail!

CONTEST: Win a download of Shelley's recent release, The Spurned Viscountess. All you need to do to enter the draw is answer one of the following questions.

What is your favorite way to cope with rejection? Do you wallow? Eat chocolate? Drink a glass of wine? Do some retail therapy? Or, if you have any questions for me about writing, that will put you in the draw as well.


Shelley Munro lives in New Zealand and loves to write romance. She also loves to travel and explore the world. Her latest release is a historical romance called The Spurned Viscountess, currently available from Carina Press. You can visit Shelley and learn more about her books at her website 

 The Spurned Viscountess purchase link

He Loves me, He Loves Me Not

My son loves me, there's no question about that.
One day, I crouched down and held out my arms. "Come give Mommy a hug."
His face broke out into a huge smile, and he started to run toward me… but stopped in his tracks when the basketball game that my husband was watching switched to a car commercial. My son raced back to the TV and watched the entire commercial. Only then, without further prompting, did he run to me and give me my hug.
Yes, my son loves me. But he loves cars just a little bit more.

I'm a guest blogger and "Dear Lucky Agent" Contest Details

Head on over to Dawn's blog to read an excerpt from Book II in my Kingdom of Arnhem series, Knight of Glory.


[image error]http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/Sixth+Dear+Lucky+Agent+Contest+Paranormal+Romance+Urban+Fantasy.aspx
HOW TO SUBMIT
E-mail entries to sixthagentcontest@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments. 
WHAT TO SUBMIT
The first 150-200 words of your unpublished, book-length work of urban fantasy or paranormal (adult fiction and/or YA fiction are both accepted; no "high fantasy" with dragons, elves or other planets please). 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 Sept. 22 through the end of Wednesday, Oct. 6, 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 urban fantasy and paranormal romance (both YA and adult novels are accepted).
      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]Marisa A. Corvisiero is a literary agent
at the L. Perkins Agency in NYC.

"Dear Lucky Agent" Contest Details

[image error]http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/Sixth+Dear+Lucky+Agent+Contest+Paranormal+Romance+Urban+Fantasy.aspx
HOW TO SUBMIT
E-mail entries to sixthagentcontest@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments. 
WHAT TO SUBMIT
The first 150-200 words of your unpublished, book-length work of urban fantasy or paranormal (adult fiction and/or YA fiction are both accepted; no "high fantasy" with dragons, elves or other planets please). 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 Sept. 22 through the end of Wednesday, Oct. 6, 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 urban fantasy and paranormal romance (both YA and adult novels are accepted).
      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]Marisa A. Corvisiero is a literary agent
at the L. Perkins Agency in NYC.

To Reap the Harvest Newest Column

I write a monthly column for The Medieval Chronicle and the latest edition is out. Now TMC is free for everyone to enjoy so I hope you'll read my column! This time, I talk about a family as they celebrate Michaelmas Day.

Carie Lawson - Guest Blog about Inspiration

Carie Lawson is a talented author from Desert Breeze. She home schools her four kids, drives the soccer van --- complete with dirty socks and McDonalds bags scattered throughout --- and tries to sneak away to her computer whenever possible to write. She is an active member of a local writer's group, Middle Tennessee Christian Writers, and received third place in the North Texas Romance Writer's Great Expectations contest in the Inspirational Romance category. She's here todat to talk about...

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This blog is a part of The Great Blogging Experiment, the brain child of awesome blogger, Elana Johnson.

As writers, we all strive to make our characters compelling. After all, who wants to read a story about a boring character? Not me. I'd rather catch up on sleep. ZZZZzzzz.....

Where was I? Right, compelling characters. So what makes a character compelling?

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So an internet tag has been going around where the blogger answers eight questions, and then tags eight people to answer the same. I was tagged reading the NCliterary blog. I'm going to follow suit. Instead of picking 8 people, if you're reading this, tag!

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The Bookshelf Muse - Contest Opportunity

Angela Ackerman of the Bookshelf Muse has a major reason to celebrate - she has over 1000 followers and is holding a terrific contest. The details and how to enter:

Here at The Bookshelf Muse, it's all about becoming stronger writers together. So, in that spirit, check out these scrumptious prizes:

General Drawing:

5-First Page critiques
2-First Chapter critiques

Special Drawing Challenge

It's simple: SPREAD THE WORD about this contest! If you do, I will include you in a special drawing for a thre...