Annette Lyon's Blog, page 36

The Link! The Link!

As promised, I'm posting the link to the annual Funds for Writers essay contest, which I won. (Yippee!)
HERE IS THE LINK. CLICK HERE TO READ MY ESSAY!
I recommend subscribing to the Funds for Writers newsletter and blog. (You can do that from the link above as well.) Both are great resources for writers.
Now I have to decide how to spend the prize money. Hmm . . .
© 2009 Annette Lyon, all rights reserved

A Wee Bit Sidetracked

I had an entire Word Nerd Wednesday post already written about metonymy (because I like funky literary gems like that, and they're so much fun to talk about).
But then something happened, and now I'm sidetracked, so metonymy will just have to wait until next week.
Instead of a regular WNW post, here are 5 pieces of information I want you to know:
1) First, last week's Nerdiversary book winner:
Congratulations to Countess Laurie, who Random.org selected as the winner of a copy of There, Their...

Happy Birthday, LMM

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135 years ago today, a little girl was born in a small town called Clifton. She would one day become a world-famous author.
Her mother died when she was only 22 months old. The little girl's only memory of her mother is at the funeral, of her mother lying in her casket, looking asleep, and the girl wondering why everyone was crying and giving her sympathetic looks. That memory would one day show up in a book called Emily of New Moon.
Her father remarried and moved out west, so she was raised...

Word Nerdiversary!

Image courtesy Daily Clip Art
It's been a YEAR since I started doing Word Nerd Wednesday!
So far I have personally had a ball talking about some of my personal favorite topics, whether it's been pet peeves on holiday gift cards, Grimm's Law, or when to use parentheses versus brackets and italics versus quote marks. (Those last two posts are ones Googlers regularly land on. Never expected that.)
Technically, Word Nerd Wednesday's anniversary is November 26th, so tomorrow is the anniversary, but...

Acceptable Stereotypes? Since When?

I can remember one time I have admitted my high school and not gotten a reaction along the lines of how I must be a rich, snotty brat. It was about ten years ago when a woman in the city we lived in at the time was researching Utah schools because she knew that the secondary education in our area wasn't stellar. She wanted to move where her kids would have a good high school.
We went walking on a track one morning, and she asked where I'd gone to high school. I hesitantly admitted it. Her...

Writing Journey: Audio Double Hockey Sticks

I entered the publishing world at a rather odd period: right as cassette tapes were making their exit and CDs were making their debut.
As a result, my first novel's audio was put on cassette. My second was available on both cassette and CD, and my third was only on CD. I was right at the transition period.
This was also a period where nearly every Covenant novel was available in both print and on audio. Slight problem, however: audio sells less, but has new costs like paying an actor to...

WNW: 2009 Word of the Year

Each year, The New Oxford American Dictionary picks a new word that has become a part of the lexicon and declares it the word of the year.
Past popular words of the year you might recognize include:
2005: truthiness (a word invented and popularized by Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report)
2003: metrosexual (my husband's not, thank goodness)
2000: chad (memories of that election are enough to make us all have horrid flashbacks, right?)
1999: Y2K (if you're too young to remember this one, be...

Winner, Winner!

Quick announcement for the footrest winner, and then I have to get back to judging a contest for my local library. (Something I've been doing annually for six years now. Quite fun, I must say.)
I kept a clear list of every single entry on an Excel spreadsheet to make sure every single entry was accounted for (every comment, tweet, FB mention, blog post).
I used Random.org to pick the winner.
It picked: Entry #19: Mandy!
Yea, Mandy!
(I'm half tempted to go, "Oh, Mandy . . ." and start crooning...

Writing Journey & Randomness

I began chronicling my writing journey something like a year ago (wowzers), and we're basically up to present day. I've talked about submitting the chocolate cookbook. About a week ago (not on the Journey series) I announced it had been officially accepted but that we don't haven an official release date.
So that's just about as current as you get.
I'll continue to give updates and talk about what I'm working on and how things are going.
As I've written the series, I've collected a list of...

Giveaway! Giveaway!

Almost exactly a month ago, I promised a fun giveaway, and I'm not about to disappoint.
Accent Furniture approached me with the chance to review one of their products and give one away to one of my readers.
Knowing that the vast majority of my blog readers spend a lot of time at their computers (being avid bloggers, writers, and readers themselves), I decided immediately that I'd pick something in the home office section of their website.
As I browsed, I landed on something that made me grin...