Mindy Hardwick's Blog, page 34
October 8, 2013
Happy Anniversary Musa Publishing!
Happy 2nd Anniversary Musa Publishing! Musa Publishing is the home of my upper middle grade, STAINED GLASS SUMMER.
STAINED GLASS SUMMER was my first published book and a part of Musa’s YA imprint (Euterpe Books) early line of YA books. It is an EPIC ebook award finalist in the children’s category. And…the best thing…you can still purchase STAINED GLASS SUMMER for your ereader or tablet just as easily as you could on the day it released! That’s pretty good for a first time author’s first book! (All the buy links are on my website here.)
STAINED GLASS SUMMER published in December 2011 (ebook) and in June 2012 with limited edition print copies which I sell at book signings and events. Last Christmas, there was a spin-off story, ELF SHOES, which is still available for free here.
I‘ve been thrilled to be a Musa author over the last two years. Not only is it fun to see a book I worked on for ten years finally in print and making it’s way to readers, it’s also been great to be part of the team at Musa. I’ve learned so much about blog tours, social media, book signings, and most of all I’ve really enjoyed getting to know other Musa writers both on-line and in person at conferences such as the 2012 Spring Fling in Chicago where I met romance authors, Sara Daniel and Susan Rae, and Tracie Ingersoll Loy and the EPIC Ebook Award Conference in Vancouver where I met Liese Sherwood-Fabre. .
As a part of the 2nd Anniversary, Musa Publishing is having a 30 percent sale on books bought from their store. Here is the line up of sales for each week in October.
Week 1: Aurora Regency & Clio (Regency and Historical Romance)
Week 2: Calliope/FEA/Wiccan Haus (These are the romance lines at Musa)
Week 3: Erato (GLBT)
Week 4: Euterpe & Pan (YA) (Young Adult–Line for STAINED GLASS SUMMER)
Week 5: Melpomene/Thalia/Urania (Horror/Paranormal/Speculative Fiction)
I hope you’ll try out one of the other Musa authors during this anniversary month! Or, if you’re an author, perhaps you’ll consider submitting in January 2014! (Musa is closed to submissions during the upcoming holidays) You can find the submission guidelines here.
Happy 2nd Anniversary Musa Publishing!
October 4, 2013
Writing with Girls in Dentention
A few weeks ago, I was asked to write a post for the blog, Family Guiding. This month, Family Guiding, is focusing on Girls in Juvenile Detention.
My article, “Orange: Writing Poetry with Girls in Juvenile Detention” can be read here.
Be sure to check out the other articles including this one about the benefits of yoga in the justice system.
I spent last winter and spring working in a post-graduate semester at Vermont College. The focus of the semester was to work on a memoir entitled, “Kids in Orange: Voices from Juvenile Detention Poetry Workshop.”
The memoir is the story of finding and empowering voice during grief and loss. It’s told in short vignettes and chapters and integrates the teen’s poetry which has been published in four chapbooks as well as on their blog.
The day I turned in my last packet to my adviser, my Dad passed away. A few weeks later three boxes of Dad’s writing arrived on my doorstep. Dad was a life-long writer and journalist. As I sat down and read through the files of Dad’s writing, I realized that just as the teen’s poetry had always been able to express who they were and how they moved through grief and loss, the box I held in my hands of my Dad’s writing also expressed who he was and how he expressed grief and loss, and it was then that I realized the story I had been telling, and was living through, is how writing through grief will heal us.
In the spring, I’ll be teaching an on-line class for teens through the Loft Literary Center. The class is based on what I learned writing my memoir about short and real writing. Here is a bit about the class:
Writing It Short and Real
Narrative flash is short, fast and fun. It’s easy to share with others, and most of all, narrative flash is the perfect way to express our voices and capture our real life experiences in a short snapshot. In this class, we will look at how to write short narrative through craft lessons including: structure, character, and brevity. The class includes writing on topics based on our real life experiences such as: truth and lies, first and lasts, and matters of the heart. We will share our writing with each other in order to discover how powerful our voices can be when writing about real life.
The class will run from March 3, 2014-March 3, 2014. I will post the registration when it becomes available.
October 1, 2013
Agents, Editing Anthologies, and Creative Ideas
I often find interesting tidbits on other blogs. Here are a few bits and bobs from the last couple of days….
Editing Anthologies: YA author, Melissa Marr outlines her process for working on an anthology as an editor. This blog post is chock full of details about editing anthologies and a good one to bookmark if you’ve ever wanted to edit an anthology. You can read her blog post here.
Agent Seeking YA Romance: Agent, Jill Corcoran has recently started her own agency. During the week of October 1-5, she is hosting a Pitch Fest for YA Romance. You can find all the submission information here. You can read Jill’s submission wish list here.
Martin Literary Agency Adds Children’s Agent: Martin Literary Agency has added a children’s agent, Clelia Gore. Clelia is very interested in New Adult books as well as having a special spot in her heart for picture books. She especially loves ones that are funny or quirky, ones that feature minority and multi-cultural characters, and ones parents won’t mind reading over and over again to their children.Find out how to submit to Clelia Gore here.
101 Art Therapy Activities: Looking for a little creative pick-me-up? This is a great list of art therapy ideas for energizing your creative spirit!
Sunset on Summer Fun Blog Hop Winner
Congratulations to Daniel M who is the winner at my blog for the Sunset on Summer Fun Blog Hop! Daniel M. has won a copy of my latest ebook, WINDS OF LOVE: A Short Story Anthology.
Happy End of Summer Reading!
September 25, 2013
Charging for School Visits
Do you charge for school visits? How much?
This is a question I am often asked by other writers and discussed in writer’s groups.
My answer….Yes! I have always charged for school visits–even before I had my books published and I was publishing short stories and articles. Children’s writers have always made supplemental income from their school visits. Now, in the days of cheap ebooks, that supplemental income is more like regular income!
So, I thought I would break down some of the things I charge for, and what I don’t charge for, and what can be negotiated. I am not listing my fees for the visits because I think each author should check with your local area for how much other authors are charging. I live in the Seattle area, and often, I need to charge for travel time in the fee.
If you want to learn more about school visits, a good blog to follow is School Visit Expert.
So here, we go…
FREE:
Study Guides: Each of my books (STAINED GLASS SUMMER and WEAVING MAGIC) has a free study guide on my website which can be downloaded, printed and used for a small group discussion, individual reading, or a whole class. I am a certified Washington State Teacher in grades 4th-12th for Language Arts (including writing, reading, and literature). So, the study guide is a really good deal because it’s written by an educator as well as a writer.
SKYPE Q and A: I will do a twenty-minute SKYPE visit to any school or small group who has read one of my books or is going to read one of my books.
Mentoring: I do not charge to mentor young writers and this is taken on a case by case basis depending on the writer, their needs, and my time commitments.
Book Signings at libraries, bookstores, conferences, etc. I never charge for book signings. Never.
Most of the Time FREE:
A One-hour Q and A author sessions to groups of local students who are in career classes who are learning about being a writer. This might include a panel I speak on or a session where I speak to small groups of students about the career of an author. By local, I mean the communities which surround me, do not take more than ten minutes to get to, and where I go on a regular basis. These include: Everett, Snohomish, Arlington, and Lake Stevens. This area can also include Cannon Beach, Manzanita, and Seaside if I am out on the coast. These visits are no more than one hour, I bring some of my writing things (contracts, edits, first publications), and we talk about the career of being an author. This is not a workshop. It is not a part of other workshops I might be giving. It is a one-time, Q and A one-hour session and I do these on a case by case basis.
Book Groups: If a group of local (see above for the communities which are local to me) have read one of my books and want to have me speak to them for an hour, most of the time, these are free. I say most of the time because sometimes these include a 90- minute workshop and those are not free. If the community is not local, I can do a free SKYPE visit with the group for a Q & A.
Visits with Charges:
School, library one time visit workshops. Usually these are 90-minutes, take place in one day, and involve three parts. I talk about being a writer and show a Power Point for the first fifteen minutes or so, I present a workshop on some element of the craft of writing (you can see all my workshop topics here, but I also work with teachers on their specific needs), and then the last part of the workshop is the kids write and we share our writing. Most of these I speak to two or three groups of students. These visits involve a contract, and usually I set them up about four to six months ahead of time–this is due to scheduling and the paperwork with the districts.
On-Going Local Workshops: These are usually after school clubs, or in the summer where I am teaching a series of six workshops to the same group of kids. There is most often a theme or a focus to the session and I always take home the kid’s writing to review and comment on during the six week session.
Grant Based Local Workshops: These most often are the workshops I do with the teens in detention. They run for a period of time, we obtain grants for the workshop, and they are scheduled four to six months ahead of time.
Conference Workshops: Some conference workshops are paid, the majority are not, although there is a discount on the registration. Conference workshop terms are most often set by the conference.
Mentoring Adult Writers: Most of the time, when I receive a request from someone who wants to write for kids, I refer them to a local SCBWI Meeting where they can get more information, or I refer them to a few books I have found helpful or the Institute of Children’s Literature on-line class. I usually do not offer consultations to adult writers although I do offer paid manuscript critiques.
Manuscript Critiques: I critique manuscripts as the following: Picture Books and Short Stories for Kids are $75. Middle Grade and YA up to 50K words are $250 a manuscript. Romance novellas up to 30K words are $150 and a 50K word romance category book (sweet, contemporary or inspirational only), I charge $250. I do need to see the manuscript and the writing before I take on any manuscript critique. My manuscript critiques are developmental critiques only (I focus on the plot, character, and theme.)
Selling Books:
I always bring books to sell and sign. My books are published with small publishers, so I buy the print copy, at cost, from the publisher and sell them myself. Sometimes I sell one or two copies, sometimes a handful, sometimes I sell none. I also bring copies of either bookmarks or postcards and emphasis that my books are published with digital first publishers and ebooks are great to buy!
September 23, 2013
Agent and Editor Wishlist
If you are looking for an agent or editor for your manuscript, then be sure to check out the Agent and Editor Wishlist Twitter event on September 24.
Agents and editors will be tweeting their wish lists and you can find this by using the hashtag #MSWL on Twitter on September 24.
For more information and to see some of the recent manuscripts wished for on Twitter by editors and agents go here.
Good luck!
September 21, 2013
WEAVING MAGIC is on-sale
The ebook of WEAVING MAGIC is currently on-sale for 2.99!
BLURB: He loves magic. She loves romance. But the biggest illusion is the one Shantel and Christopher perform together. Sixteen- year- old Christopher fights to stay sober while fifteen-year-old Shantel struggles in the aftermath of her mother’s death and seeks refuge in a fantasy world. But the unacknowledged roots of their problems refuse to stay buried and soon, the two are headed toward a deadly magic trick. Can Shantel and Christopher move beyond magical illusions to find love?
You can buy WEAVING MAGIC (ebook) at:
(When you buy at MuseItUp Publishing, you will have access to all formats of ebooks. (ePub, PRC, PDF, Mobi). So if you read on an iPad and your high school daughter reads on a Kindle, you can get two copies of the ebook for the price of one.
There is also a free study guide available here.
September 19, 2013
Picture Book Sold
I’m very excited to announce that my first picture book story has sold!
FINDERS KEEPERS sold to MeeGenius and will be a storybook app for kids.
Here is the story blurb:
Jesse is excited to go to the beach with his family. He wants to find one of the glass floats hidden along the grassy shore line of the Oregon Coast. But when both Dad and sister find a glass float, and Jesse turns up empty handed, he begins to wonder, will he find his glass float? It will take a fall wind storm for Jesse to find the best float of all!
The story is based on Finders Keepers, an event which takes place every fall and winter in Lincoln, City Oregon.
In the past, visitors searching Oregon’s beaches often found treasures from the east: blown glass floats, in intriguing shades of green and blue. Used by Japanese fishing crews to float their nets, these spheres were as small as two inches (5 cm) or as large as two feet (.6 m). Now, fishing vessels around the world use buoyant plastic, a blown glass float is a rare find – except on the beaches of Lincoln City, where more than 2,000 glass floats are found each winter, a few placed on the beach each day the ocean permits it. The number of glass floats which are hidden reflect the year – so 2001 in 2001, 2002 in 2002, etc….
Each glass float is signed by the glass artist and numbered.
In the picture book story, there is a storm which happens. My favorite part of the text is this:
The ocean looked like it was very angry. The water moved in large swells and white foam covered the beach. Jesse touched the white foam. It wiggled like a big moving monster. The wind blew pieces of foam down the beach like tumbleweed.
I have been out on the Oregon Coast during fall and winter storms and it is an amazing sight–both during the storm and after.
Here are a few pictures of that wiggling foamy monster…These pictures were taken from Ecola State Park in Cannon Beach on the Northern Coast during a Stormy Arts Weekend.
September 16, 2013
Sunset on Summer Fun Blog Hop
This week, I’m participating in the SUNSET ON SUMMER FUN blog hop–sponsored by Decadent Publishing and BTS eMag.
It’s a great hop with lots of prizes…including a grand prize of a Nook or Kindle Fire (winner’s choice) loaded with ebooks! How great is that!
On my blog, I’m very excited to give away a copy of my newest book, WINDS OF LOVE. Will the wind blow in love for these sailors in this sweet, contemporary anthology of three linked novellas? The giveaway copy is either for an Amazon copy or PDF.
In order to win a copy of WINDS OF LOVE, leave me a comment with your email address telling me your favorite summer romance story. This can be your own summer romance or the romance of a character in a book or movie. I will choose one winner and notify them 48-hours after the Sunset on Summer Fun Blog hop ends. (US and International)
The winner for the Kindle Fire or Nook will be selected from all comments left on participating blogs during the hop. Please, no more than one comment per person per blog.
You can find all the participating blogs in the Summer Fun Blog Hop by clicking on the button below. Good Luck!
September 12, 2013
WINDS OF LOVE is now available
I’m very pleased to announce that WINDS OF LOVE is now available on Kindle and is only $1.99! You can buy WINDS OF LOVE here.
Will the wind blow in love for these sailors? Together for the first time, WINDS OF LOVE, is an anthology with three, sweet contemporary short stories.
Love’s Storm: Surrendering to love is not easy, will it take a storm to show Sabrina and Damon that some things are worth holding onto?
Love’s Bid: Cassie Richardson enjoys serving as President of the Sailing Club Foundation Board and overseeing the smooth running of operations. But, when former boyfriend, Eric Atkins, steps in to fill the role of Board Treasurer, things begin spiraling out of control. Will a bidding war be
enough to overcome the past?
Love’s Christmas Gift: Skipper Bill and Elizabeth have been friends forever. But, when Elizabeth is offered a job interview across the country, these two friends are going to need the help of a little mistletoe to find their holiday romance.
You can buy WINDS OF LOVE here.
Also, I have signed the contract for the second story in the Elmheart Hotel series, HALLOWEEN LOVE FORTUNE, a sweet, contemporary romance novella. Look for this story soon!
