From the monthly archives:

January 2008

The Internet’s Broken!

31 January 2008

For us, at any rate.
It started yesterday morning when we suddenly lost the ability to access sites like Google, Amazon, and so very many more. We had no problem accessing sites on servers within Sri Lanka, but North American sites were more than problematic.
[...]

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Basement of the Universe, the first 500 words

31 January 2008

Nathan Bransford, an agent for Curtis Brown Ltd., is insanely running a contest for writers. Submit your first 500 words and he’ll… Well, his blog entry doesn’t exactly spell out whether he’ll critique each one or what, but the finalists win some pretty nifty – for writers – prizes, including a [...]

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Chocolate Cheers Up Writer

24 January 2008

The kindness and generosity of Internet strangers continues to astound me. The victim of the kindness and generosity? Me. The method used? Chocolate.
We can get chocolate here, and even some somewhat decent chocolate, if you include Mars Bars and its ilk.
In [...]

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Self-Published Author Signs 7-Figure Book Deal

24 January 2008

Auria Cortes mentioned a news story about an author who initially self-published a book and then went on to sign a two book deal for more than $2 million.
In the publishing world, this is not a common sight. While it’s true that some self-published authors later get [...]

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Arts Festival in India

23 January 2008

I recently learned about an arts festival taking place in India from the 2nd – 10th February 2008 called the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. It’s been taking place since 1999 and is named after the area in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) where it’s taking place.
Sadly, I can’t find [...]

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The Writer’s Path

22 January 2008

Jenn Hollowell talks about her writers path and asks the question, "Did your career take a turn, or have you been following the path originally anticipated?" I can honestly say "What path?" I didn’t anticipate a path. I kind of fell into writing.
In my previous life, as [...]

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Critiquing a Blog Contest

20 January 2008

Rebecca Laffar-Smith of Writer’s Round About is running a contest (WRA’s New Design Launch Contest!!! – and here’s the RSS feed) (with actual prizes, of course – Amazon gift certificates) involving a critique of her newly unveiled redesigned site. Because I like doing this sort of thing, I’m in. If it [...]

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Bulwer-Lytton 2007 winners are in!

19 January 2008

For the uninitiated, the Bulwer-Lytton contest is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of that infamous novel:
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept [...]

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Editing Basement of the Universe and synopsis and back-cover blurbs

18 January 2008

As I mentioned in a previous post, Fahim and I are tandem-editing my novel, Basement of the Universe.
I’m not fond of editing, so Fahim helping me out with this is a huge benefit to me. I’ll be following in his footsteps, editing today the scenes he’s just [...]

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Do you write a short first draft?

17 January 2008

Meaning, is your first draft consistently 10 or 20 thousand or more words shorter than it should be?
I know there are writers who consistently write long drafts – 150,000 or 200,000 words or more, for example – and then have to go through and chop the stuff [...]

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