Weekly Writer's Round-Up + DARKSPELL Release

*For my Coffin Hop post, click HERE.

*For my Halloween Hop post, click HERE.

Yee-haw! Welcome to the Weekly Writer's Round-up, where I lasso up the week's latest news and rootin'-tootin' writers' articles on the Net!

[image error]

(click for picture source)

Happy Halloween! Before I move on to the news haunting the online world this week, I'm thrilled to have hit 500 blog followers! Yippieee…!! I know it's just a fraction of the followers on really popular blogs, but I'm grateful for small achievements.

So thank you, thank you, thank you, guys! This calls for a celebratory giveaway, in conjunction with a milestone birthday I have coming up in November. Watch this space. I'll be scheming…

Darkspell

First and foremost, Darkspell, by the awesome Elizabeth Mueller, launches TODAY! Pop by her blog, where she has a celebration planned with lots of giveaways!

Blurb:

Winter Sky believes she is everything ordinary . . . until she is kissed by Alex Stormhold. As seer of Stormhold Coven, Alex is sworn to be Winter's protector against the darkness that hunts her. Violently thrust into a magical realm she always thought impossible, she stumbles upon a disturbing secret of her own.

Will love prove thicker than magick?

Purchase link: Get your copy from Amazon HERE

An interesting article from FutureBook: should publishers sell their own e-readers? Some pros and cons are discussed.

Also on FutureBook, a book on how the new Kindle Fire could aid cross-platform publishing.

More from FutureBook: how lucrative is free-mium fiction? This first in a series of blog posts on publishing in China looks at the popularity of serialised online fiction.

Book trailers: are they fun or function? Publishing Perspectives discusses.

Here's a writing contest some of you may be interested in entering: organised the East India Press, the contest is open to stories of no more than 2,500 words. There are no submission fees, and the winner gets $1,000, the opportunity to have their story featured as the opener to a novel by David Farland, and it will be published as a standalone e-book. Click HERE for more details, as well as tips on writing prize-winning fiction. Contest deadline: March 1st, 2012.

Today's the last day of the Coffin Hop and the Halloween Hop. Go there now to meet some new and talented fellow writers! Competitions-wise, I'm holding a giveaway in conjunction with Coffin Hop. Find it HERE. It ends tonight, with winners announced tomorrow.

I'm also running a Facebook contest: 'Like' my FB author page for the chance to win an e-book copy of The Doll. Also ends today.

Finally, there's one day to enter the Trick or Treat Spooktacular! I do appreciate everyone's support so far, so this is the final push to send The Doll's sales, and the prize pot value, up!