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Showing posts from March, 2010

Interviewed at Claudsy's Blog

I was interviewed over at Claudsy's Blog today (and I think the second half will be posted on Thursday). Tuesday's Interview with Angelia Almos

Are Contests Worth It?

Just wanted to pass along a blog article on contests that a writer I know did. She submitted the same manuscript (which is now being published by Dorchester) to twenty contests to see what type of results she would get. Super interesting stuff. 12 Results from my RWA contests experiment!

Script Fenzy Starting Soon

I got an email yesterday reminding me that Script Frenzy is gearing up for April. For those of you that haven't heard of it, Script Frenzy is a challenge similar to NaNoWriMo where you write a 100 page script during the month of April. You can check the website for more information. Now on to why I'm talking about Script Frenzy. I got the email and a part of me went "I want to do it! Let's do it!". I've attempted Script Frenzy before and got about 40 pages in before I let life get in the way. It was fun while I was doing it. But another part of me said, "oh no, you're supposed to be in a new screenwriting course on April 14. Do you really want to try to work on two scripts at the same time? Not to mention HorseSchoolsOnline and my determination to have my young adult fantasy submitted by then." I have a pattern and habit of stacking on too much stuff at once and then becoming overwhelmed. One of my goals for writing this year was to not allo

Addicted to Classes

I'm the first person to admit that I am a total class junkie. I love the deadlines and the feedback. We won't even go into the learning part when you have a good teacher and classmates. Most of my courses are online. I have done the writing classes in person at community college and university and really didn't get much from either of them except how to pretend like you aren't going to throw up any moment. But the online ones from the schools that focus on teaching you the craft of writing so you can sell. Those are the best. I was going strong on getting a certificate in Feature Film Writing from UCLA until 2009 rolled around. Like many others we had to cut our expenses and classes were one of the first things to go for me. It also seemed to correspond with when I decided to put Horse Schools online and had decided that I needed to focus on my first draft novels. Horse Schools is now http://www.horseschoolsonline.com and I am well on track on my 2010 goals for my n

After the War Movie

Don't know how I've missed it for the last seven months, because I have looked. ARGH. But here is a proud mama moment of my little girl in her first short film. You Tube After the War She's the little girl in overalls in the beginning and very end of the movie. And here she is in her first commercial Northern Nevada Dairymen She is also on their home page as part of the banner/logo.

Choosing the Next Project

I'm getting ready to send my YA fantasy out to the publishers and I'm faced with the task of deciding what the heck I'm gonna work on next. My overall goal for 2010 is to have four manuscripts out on submission with publishers. This is a goal I can control (something I've been working on LOL). So, onto my decision. I had thought it would be easy, but I'm finding it isn't easy. I just can't decide which one to work on. I know intellectually that it doesn't really matter since I've decided what four manuscripts I would polish and get sent off this year so I'll be working on each of them at one point or another throughout the year. I'm currently debating between my paranormal novella and my romantic suspense novel. Both are pretty close to being finished. Need some scenes filled in here or there and have already been through a paper edit. So, I need to do a final polish on both of them. I've decided on possible publishers for them both tha

Humane Blogger Award

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  Kristi from Random Acts of Writing gave me the Humane Award. Though I did have to back track to who gave her the award to figure out what it was for. LOL. Keeping my kids alive for 10 years indeed Kristi. LOL  Okay, the award is supposed to be for bloggers that are kindhearted individuals. I'm supposed to pass it on to ten other bloggers that I feel meet that standard. I could say something really cheeky here, but I'll refrain. A Journey Illustrated   Claudsy's Blog Divorce Warriors Jarabi Safee: (v.) To love writing, addictively Yaya's Changing World Write What Your Heart Desires Write What Inspires You Tribal Writer Dean Wesley Smith (I think he'd find it very amusing to be nominated for a kindhearted award since he considers himself a realist and very blunt, but the fact that he spends the time educating newbies is why I've listed him) Kristine Kathryn Rusch (same as above though she isn't quite as blunt :-))

HorseSchoolsOnline.com

**This is a duplicate post from my Horse Schools blog. ** I'm happy to announce that HorseSchoolsOnline.com is now up and running. I've been working on this site for several months (I think it might almost be a year, wow!). As with any large project a lot of that time was spent in trying to decide and testing different platforms to see what ones would best showcase the information this site has and then came the long journey of data entry. All of the information that was in the book version of Horse Schools had to be put into the website. Thankfully I had the assistance of a computer programmer and another volunteer who offered to assist with me all the data entry (it was a lot). If I'd done it all on my own I think it would probably be another year until I was making this announcement. Due to the nature of the site I will always be updating and adding more information, but we were able to set it up so schools can update and add their own information which is great f