Carina Press is one and they're giving away presents!
Carina Press is ONE! And they're having a party. A year ago, when it all started, I wasn't a Carina Press author, but I am proud to say that I am now. Since last November whenI sold Boomerang Bride, I have only been impressed by what Angela James and her amazing team have achieved and the support they give their authors. I am really excited to host a blog today dedicated to celebrating those achievements.
Take it away, Angela!
In celebration of our one year anniversary, I asked as many of our Harlequin team members and Carina Press freelance editors as possible to write a short blog post, talking about what the past year or so has been like for them, working on Carina Press. I deliberately didn't provide any direction other than that, because I wanted to see what people came up with, in the spirit of Carina's 1st anniversary. I was so pleased when I saw what they'd all come up with, and had to say (and some of these posts made me just a little teary)! I hope you enjoy the post, and look for your opportunity to win a Carina Press book at the bottom of this post. ~Angela James
Stephanie Doig joined the Carina team in March 2011. She loves reading for both work and fun, and holds out hope that Carina will one day publish YA fiction so she can read even more of it. She hopes you enjoyed reading this bio as much as she enjoyed writing it. Over to Stephanie!
Happy Anniversary
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying about the Details and Love Acquisitions
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I am a fairly new addition to the Carina Press acquisitions team. While most of the people on the team also work in Harlequin's Internet & Digital department, a couple of us hail from Proofreading.
As you can probably guess, proofreading books for a living attracts a certain type of person. We tend to be detail oriented, to say the least. My job is to pay attention to the small things—did her hair color change? Was his name always spelled that way? Won't somebody please think of the semicolon?—and that kind of reading can be difficult to turn off.
The work I do for Carina is different. When a manuscript comes to the acquisitions team, it hasn't yet been through an in-house edit. We're looking for great ideas, compelling writing, originality. The details add to the story, but spelling, grammar and consistency take a backseat to larger issues, such as premise, plot and character.
Switching gears took some adjustment, but it's been a great learning process. The weekly acquisitions meetings—in addition to being a lot of fun—have allowed me to learn more about the editorial process, and how to spot a great concept. I've worked hard to think more about plots and ideas than punctuation, and the result is that I'm better at recognizing a good story before it is a completely polished story (though I'll admit that I still notice punctuation. I just don't let it influence my reports. I can't completely shut it off!). It's exciting to watch a manuscript go from submission to publication, and to watch Carina grow with each new author.
Being a Carina team member these past few months has taught me some new skills, sharpened my old ones and introduced me to a great group of people. I'm proud to be a part of it and can't wait to read the next submission!
Happy anniversary, Carina!
To celebrate Carina's one year anniversary of publishing books, we're giving away some prizes. Today, on each of the nineteen blogs our team members are featured on, we're giving away a download of a Carina Press book to one random winner (that's nineteen total winners!) All you need to do to be entered to win is comment on this post. You can enter to win on all nineteen posts. In addition, on the Carina Press blog, we're giving away a grand prize of a Kobo ereader and 12 Carina Press books of the winner's choice. Visit the Carina Press blog to enter to win, and to see links to all 19 of today's blog posts.
And a sincere thank you from all of us, to our readers and authors, for making Carina Press's first year a success!
