Mindy Hardwick's Blog, page 31

Markets, Workshops and Blogging–Opportunities for Writers

It’s the first week of the New Year and bloggers and agents are seeking writers! Plus, Highlights has a whole new listing of 2014 workshops.

Here are a few leads for this week.

Beth Phelan at the Bent Agency has posted her manuscript wish list. Although she’s not seeking, middle grade, she IS seeking young adult and new adult. You can read her wish list blog post here.

Guys Lit Wire is seeking a writer to join their blogging crew. The blogger would be responsible for one blog post a month about a book boys would be interested in. This is a great opportunity to have an excuse to read books for boys and blog on a well-known blog. You can find the details here.

Highlights Magazine has listed their current needs here.

If you are interested in writing for Highlights Magazine, writers guidelines for Highlights Magazine can be found here.

Highlights also has a few book imprints including Boyds Mill Press which is their fiction imprint. They are seeking submissions (unagented) and those can be found here.

And if you want to experience a Highlights Workshop, check out their 2014 listing here. Lots of good workshops!

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes the Magic Works

Happy New Year! I like to start January by reading an inspirational book about writing. There is not a lot that is easy about writing. Whether it’s the process of writing the book, the submission process, or the what happens after the book is published process– writing is just hard work. So, in January, I like to build up my writing warrior by reading a book about writing.

The year, I read, Sometimes the Magic Works, by Terry Brooks. 

I heard Terry Brooks speak at the Get Lit at the Beach Readers Weekend in Cannon Beach last spring. Terry Brooks is the founder of the Get Lit at the Beach Readers Weekend which takes place the second weekend in April and is sponsored by the Tolovona Arts Colony. I haven’t read any of his fantasy books, but I enjoyed hearing Terry Brooks talk at the Get Lit at the Beach Readers Weekend.

Sometimes the Magic Works begins with a story about Brooks’ path into writing and publishing in the fantasy genre. He tells the reader how his manuscript landed on the desk of an editor who was just starting a fantasy line. Later, he tells us that his popular Shannara series, came out the same year as STAR WARS.

Brooks is not an author who achieved instant fame. He wrote book after book for years and years and years before he took the leap to quit his full time lawyer job and write full time.  One of Brooks’ series, The Landover series, which begins with the book, Magic Kingdom For Sale-Sold, is written during that time when he is taking that leap to be a full time writer. All of which Brooks talks about in his writing book, Sometimes the Magic Works.

Over the New Year holiday, I was in Cannon Beach and took a walk on Chapman Point Beach. I walked down the beach and realized a section of the beach which was usually inaccessible was now accessible due to a low tide. I jumped down and over a pile of sand and onto a section of the beach I had never walked on. As I stood there, looking out at the sea, I was reminded how this section of the beach is always there, but it wasn’t open until the tide receded low enough to clear the path through the rocks. The opening only lasted as long as the tide was out, but, over the next few days, every beach walk I took in the evening, that section of the beach was accessible due to the low tide. Every time, I walked through the large rocks where the water usually runs, I felt as if I was an explorer who had just landed in a whole new world.

In his book, SOMETIMES THE MAGIC WORKS, Brooks says in order to be a writer, you must have three things: Passion, Determination, and Instinct. Each has a place in a writer’s life; each acts as a balance for the others.

I believe that it is these three things which allows the writer to be at that moment when the magic works. It is the moment when we pitch just the story the agent was looking for, the moment when our story hits just the right blogger or reader who buzzes it to other readers, or the moment when the story’s final plot point clicks into place and we finish that final draft.

And just like that beach, I think these parts of our writing life that are always there, but they don’t open until the time is exactly right, and then the tide goes out, and we walk onto that whole new beach.

Happy New Year!

NEW YEAR HEART SONG is Free for the New Year

NEW YEAR HEART SONG is free on Amazon for December 31 and January 1st. The link to download the sweet, contemporary romance novella is here.

Happy New Year!

NEW YEAR HEART SONG now available

NEW YEAR HEART SONG is now available for purchase here.

Story Blurb: Successful concert pianist, Angie is happy to return home for the holiday where she can forget her career troubles and enjoy the opening season of the Elmheart Hotel. The only thing she didn’t plan is running into Caleb who is working as the hotel handyman and doing his best to raise his seven-year old son, Jesse.  When a snowstorm throws Angie and Caleb together as hosts of the hotel’s New Year Eve party, will an old song ignite a New Year love?  NEW YEAR HEART SONG is the third story in the Elmheart Hotel sweet, contemporary novella series.

NEW YEAR HEART SONG can be purchased as an ebook at Amazon here.

You can find VINTAGE VALENTINE (Elmheart Series #1) here.

And HALLOWEEN LOVE FORTUNE (Elmheart Series #2) here.

NEW YEAR HEART SONG cover reveal

I’m so excited to reveal the cover for my third story in the Elmheart Hotel sweet, contemporary, romance series, NEW YEAR HEART SONG. The story will be available by New Years for all of those new holiday tablets. I will post the links to purchase as soon as they become available.

Books to Go Now, the publisher for all my romances, will also be remaking the first two covers in the Elmheart Series to be similiar to this one. Look for those new covers in 2014 as well as a PRINT anthology of all my sweet, contemporary romance series called LOVE FOR ALL SEASONS.  The PRINT anthology will be coming in January.

Happy New Year! May you find your heart’s desire this year! (Whether that is romance or following your passion and dream).

 

 

 

 

Holiday Blog Hop Winners

The winners of the Middle Grade and Young Adult Book Blog Hop are:

1. Amazon Gift Card for $10–Rita M.

2. Cooking with Musa PDF Cookbook–Lisa O.

Congratulations!

Collage Poetry Workshop

This afternoon, I’m teaching a Collage Poetry Workshop for tweens and teens at the Muckleshoot Library in Auburn.  I’ve gathered boxes and bags of fun collage materials including puzzle pieces, vintage scrap paper, and origami paper.  We’re going to be assembling our collages and poetry on cards which can make great presents.

Collage Poetry Workshop is a hands-on workshop. In the workshop, we’ll look at some artistic collages and read poetry written by other young writers found in poetry books such as Paint Me Like I Am and Tell the World. Then, we’ll write our own poems inspired by quick and easy collages that we create.

Bring your creative ideas and let’s have a great afternoon of making poetry and art!

Craft Book Giveaway Winner

The winner of GO TEEN WRITERS: HOW TO TURN YOUR FIRST DRAFT INTO A PUBLISHED BOOK by Stephanie Morrill and Jill Williamson is Karen T.

Congratulations!

Writing Craft Book Giveaway

Okay all you NaNoWriMo writers….this giveaway is for you!

This week, I’m giving away one ebook copy (Kindle, Nook, or Kobo) of Stephanie Morrill’s book, Go Teen Writers: How to Turn Your First Draft Into a Published Book).

Stephanie Morrill is the founder of the blog, Go Teen Writers: Contests, Encouragement and Community for Young Writers. This is a great resource for young writers!

Now, I can hear you..but I am not a teen writer! No. But this book is fabulous for writers of any age. It includes everything you need to know for how to take that NaNoWriMo messy first draft and shape it up to submit to publishers. And if you do know a teen writer, this book would make a fabulous gift for them!

But, I didn’t participate in NaNoWriMo, and I still want to enter. That’s fine! I won’t tell! At some point, we all have to write that messy first draft! This book will help you whenever you write that draft.

To enter to win Go Teen Writers: How to Turn Your First Draft Into a Published Book, leave me a comment with your email address and tell me what you struggled with the most in the drafting process. I will select the winner on Friday, December 13. The giveaway is open to International and U.S. entries. Only one comment per person please.

Also, if you are editing your story, here is a great little editing and critiquing check list to help you.

Good luck!

Holiday Blog Hop

Happy Holidays! I’m participating in the Middle Grade and Young Adult Book Blog Hop hosted by I Love Middle Grade Books. 

Holidays are filled with traditions, from cooking that favorite cookie recipe to buying a gift for a child who really needs it, everyone has their favorite traditions. One of my favorite childhood traditions was the reading of Father Christmas by Raymond Briggs.

Every Christmas Eve, Dad would tell us the story of the grumpy old Father Christmas and his trek around the world to deliver presents. Father Christmas is an illustrated story–we might call it a graphic novel now. And you can see many of the pictures here.

Last Christmas, that old and worn copy of Father Christmas appeared under my tree. It had a large stain in the right corner of the cover and smelled a little musty. Dad wrote in the card, “I thought it was time you had this story.” I never knew Dad still had the family story. I didn’t know it had survived all these years, although I did remember Dad saying he read it every Christmas. Dad passed away in May and Father Christmas was Dad’s last Christmas gift to me.

Now that I’m a writer, I have my own holiday stories and one of those is ELF SHOES.

Blurb: Fourteen-year-old Alexa loves to volunteer as an elf at the Island Santa Workshop but this year her costume elf shoes feel a little too tight. When childhood playmate, sixteen-year-old Samson, turns up to play Santa, Alexa finds herself trying to convince Samson to see her as more than just one of the “boys.” Can first love be found this holiday season at Santa’s Workshop?

If you want to read one of my holiday stories, you can download ELF SHOES. This is a free download and a companion story to my middle grade, STAINED GLASS SUMMER.

STAINED GLASS SUMMER is available in all ebook formats as well as audio book.

Now…for that holiday blog giveaway. There are two opportunities to win at my blog.

First, I’m giving away one $10 gift card to Amazon. In order to be entered in the drawing, all you have to do is leave you name with an email address and a brief comment about one of your holiday traditions.

I am also giving away one copy of COOKING WITH MUSA.  This is a wonderful cookbook which has all the recipes posted on the Musa Publishing blog over the last two years. The cookbook will come to you as a PDF. I have printed my copy and filed it in a binder with my cookbooks.

I will draw two winners (one for the gift card and one for the cookbook) and announce them on December 16, 2013. International and US entries. Please, only one comment per person.

Be sure to visit the other blogs on the Middle Grade and Young Adult Book Blog Hop here.

Happy Holidays!