One Hundred Followers And Counting

Last week, I hit one hundred followers. I will be the first to admit, I haven’t done a great job in reaching out in 2010, so I appreciate each and every one of you all the more!

That’s why I’ve planned for months on throwing a party when I reached 100 followers. Party hats, party trivia, and gifts. ;D

I’ve got LOTS of different giveaways, but there are some rules for winning.

1. You need to be a follower. Yup, since this is a “Thanks for Following Me” party, you need to be a follower. It’s only fair. That said, if you’ve been a follower before today, you’ll receive 5 points. If you start following me now, you’ll receive 2 points.

2. Commenting will get you an extra point for EACH COMMENT during the course of the contest because lets be honest, blogging just isn’t much fun if no one’s listening. Also, it’s the method you’ll need to use to officially enter the contest.

3. If you choose to FB, Tweet or blog about this, that’s awesome and I’ll give you an extra two points for each effort. I’m going to count on your honesty, though, so just let me know you’ve given this post a shout out; no links are necessary.

4. This contest will continue until Midnight on the Ides of February. (I’ve always wanted to use ‘Ides’ in a sentence! Woo hoo!) The Ides of February is the 13th, in case you wondered. I will announce my winners on the following day.

5. First prize will go to the person with the most number of points and so on:

A. First Fifty Pages Critique
B. Query Letter or Synopsis Critique
C. The wooden box to the right, carved by East Indian artists.
D. A Barnes & Noble Notepad with this beautiful Chinese-style illustration and magnetic closure. (See the picture at the top of this post for the cover and inside illustrations.)
E. Wonton Bath Fizzers. Fill your bathrub with warm water and dissolve the wonton – err, fizzer in it. Kinda cool, huh? (For all those interested, they contain Sodium Bicarbonate, Citric Acid, Pentasodium Triphosphate, Cellulose Gum, Talc, Sodium Sulfate, Isopropyl Palmitate, Parfume, FD&C Blue #1 Cl42090.)

Now, if a prize winner would like one of the other prizes, (say, my first prize winner does not want a fifty page critique,) I will shuffle the prizes accordingly, but the next person in line will always be offered the biggest kahuna available. LOL

Good luck and many thanks to you all!

Contests for Writing and Books, Oh My!

It’s contest season, folks. Let’s see what’s cooking:

At Margo Berendson’s “Writing at High Altitudes” you’ve got an awesome contest to help push yourself and a fellow author. Margo is offering a commenter a $30 Amazon giftcard for their comment regarding her New Year’s resolution word count  goal. Read her post, get inspired.

Many of you know I entered and won second place for fantasy in the 2010 Sandy Writer’s Competition last year. It’s time to send in your chapters for 2011 and I can’t recommend doing this enough. Seriously. For $30, you get constructive criticism from three published authors AND if you place in the top three positions, your ms goes before an agent. Ginger Clark was my agent-judge last year and she requested my first 50 pages. Pretty darn cool. Check out the competition’s guidelines and get your work in. The deadline is February 13th.

Unless you’re dead or uninterested in writing, you’re aware the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition opens on January 24th and closes to entries on February 6th OR when they receive 5,000 entries in a given age range (adult or YA). This competition is FREE and as I posted a few days ago, there are communities at the site who will critique your opening chapters for you while you await the judges’ decisions. Two years ago they helped me polish my opening and made winning second place in the Sandy possible. This contest is well worth your time and you have nothing to lose.

The annual Chase the Dream contest (for you Romance authors) will be rescheduled this year. Make sure you check their website periodically for more information, but if I hear when it will be, I’ll try to post the dates here, too.

Addendum! Maria Zannini was so kind as to let me know about her critique contest! Be sure to go there next for a chance to win a free critique!

Good luck and God bless you all!

Chinese New Year Celebration in Kansas City

2011 KC Chinese New Year Celebration

New Wuxia Market!

This notice comes straight from Rob, the owner of Kung Fu Action Theatre:


Who are we? 

Kung Fu Action Theatre is a monthly podcast running since 2006 which has built an audience on telling action-adventure stories. We’ve been focused on Audio Drama (radioplays), but are now looking to showcase short fiction instead. 


What do we want? 

Historical adventure stories set in Asia or with an Asian element. Prose only, no scripts or poetry. 

What will we do with them? 

Read them into a microphone to turn them into audio fiction, and then stick them up in our podcast feed for our audience to enjoy. 

Why should you submit your story to us? 

We have an average of 7000 people downloading our podcast feed each month, do you want 7000 people to hear your story read and presented in a professional manner and showcased? Plus, we only want one-time audio rights (not print), the story is still yours, and you can do whatever you want with it. And on top of that, you get a Creative Commons licensed mp3 of your story you can do anything with except sell for money, like pass to publishers as a piece of promotional material to help get your work published elsewhere. 

What do we get from this? 

We like entertaining people and telling stories. It’s that simple. KFAT is non-profit, contains no advertising, and actually runs at a loss with only donations from listeners to help cover the costs. (Which by the way, they don’t. So feel free to donate!) We also want to promote the Asian adventure genres, because that’s what we love to read! 

More details here.

New Markets, Residencies and Other Opportunities