Feeding Flu...

I have been learning about RSS feeds and Google Reader.

Yeah I’m slow, but remember the purpose of this blog is learning about marketing and the web and what’s out there for authors. So I am learning in public as it were.

As I stumble around I find all sorts of interesting things. Sometimes I link to them in a blog post or put them in my cool websites list. Elizabeth Pulford is my latest add and what a cool little site this is...

Sometimes I overwhelm myself with new information...it could be delaying tactics on my part tho. (I am rewriting, Fleur... slowly.)

This week has been the Flu week.(excuses excuses)

Wellington has a third of the swine flu cases in NZ at the moment and schools are recording a lot of absentees. Middle child came down with the flu this week. The speed of it was alarming.

Treat the symptoms. Isolate. Also wash your hands after every thing... That’s all the ministry of health can tell you. So we don’t know if it is swine but you take no chances....as you can’t go anywhere to confirm it.

The baby is happy and healthy and sleeping in our room...that means we are grumpy and sleep deprived. The middle child has thrown up over three beds so far... missing the buckets, bowls and towels... The eldest has lurched from room to bathroom to room to fridge to room for the last two days, coughing...but had to go to school to sit an internal and go to work tonight...She just has a heavy cold...It’s not the flu as she doesn’t have all the other symptoms...(we hope) Meanwhile husband is working from home.(just in case)

So before it all went flu shaped I was finally investigating Google reader...a nifty invention by Google designed like your personal magazine with articles that you want to read because you have subscribed to the RSS feed of that site. Updates are collected in the Reader which looks like an inbox and you can just scroll down and have a look. If you have a gmail address just go to the top and click on Reader...

The two sites I have subscribed to this week are Kidlit.com...because I found their post ‘The pros and cons of going to writing conferences’ very good reading...( go and have a look if you are thinking about it in the future or you are coming to Spinning Gold.)

And Author Tech because it had a great post on a survey done about what readers want to see on an author website....

We have posted a question on the Spinning Gold website writers and illustrators pages about the best books on their craft that they would recommend to others. We have a chance to locate the books and arrange to have them for sale at the conference.

If you are coming to the conference jump on over to the website and add your favourite to the list. If you aren’t joining us but you think there is a must have, that should be there, feel free to jump on over to the website and add it.

maureen -staying healthy....

pic is fromhttp://openedweb.com/blog/tag/plugins/

Doing The Numbers By The Book...

This week I have been thinking about books...writing them... collecting them...reading them...re reading them...analysing them...stacking them...searching for them...paying library fines.

It started when I had to accept and face my fears as a writer of midgrade fiction.

Emotion.

I have a huge block when writing any scene which might get anywhere near a wallow in emotion. So having faced up to my fear, I have been reworking scenes in my Craic MS and trying to let myself go a bit....(thanks Fleur for the verbal beating around the head...honestly...apparently it’s because I’m a nine...we are the peacemakers.)

I talked to my brother a few days ago about wonderful childhood books that we both want to collect, (The Martin Falconer series By John Harris) but they are out of print...I found a link to abebooks and $60 later I have ordered four (only one in the series tho. Dang.) They are a treat for me which I won’t get until close to the conference (taking my mind off it as we go to the wire) but never mind....maybe I will have sold something by then to pay for them. (haha)

While I have been delving into the world of revision I came across this Susan Meier short version of what looks like a brilliant (online) writing revision course.

Susan Meier is a top notch Harlequin writer and Five Scribes Blog is a great reading resource. Here is a little taste of the interview with Susan....(yep My poor MS suffered from not enough No.2...however it is a great story...apparently.)

There are seven common reasons books get rejected:

1. Doesn’t fit our line/Isn’t right for the publisher to which it was submitted
2. Not enough emotion (too much emotion/romance if it’s going mainstream or single title)
3. Pacing off/bad
4. Tone wrong
5. Bad characters (FOR A MULTIPLICITY OF REASONS)
6. No conflict/weak conflict
7. Weak story

Unfortunately, those are only symptoms of what’s wrong with your book. Think of going to the doctor. You go in. You say, I have a fever, body aches and I’m throwing up. He doesn’t say, “Oh! You have fever, body-aches and puke disease.” He says, “You have a virus.”

That’s one of the most important things about figuring out what’s wrong with your book. Most of us deal in symptoms and forget the disease. So what does a book “disease” look like?

So jumping back from the seven reasons to rejection I came across an article by Jonathan Crossfield on the power of three (set up, repeat, payoff)...which I have always believed - fairytales are stuffed full of this. This article looks at rhythm in writing and although it’s familiar territory you can always reread it and get something out of it for your own work in progress...or even the revision...

Finally Maria Schnieder has a great post on painless self promotion...

Baaaaawwwwwwkkkk. Why Are Kiwis so self effacing...It’s not like it’s a bad thing... Maureen, slightly freaking out at the thought of it. So... I’m supposed to show people a sample of my writing...Ok....here goes....

New revised opening paragraph of Craic...

Tressa crumpled up the shrinks latest letter of positivity. La. La. Heard it all before. Tried it all before. Got the tee shirt....
Yeah, shrieked her inner voice, it has trouble magnet coward printed all over it.
Tressa pushed down the voice and counted to ten and then twenty slowly while thinking about books (not hard) beautiful colours (shades of happy red and yellow) and yummy food (peanut butter with cheese on toast.) She turned on the computer and looked at her in-box.
School.
School.
Sonnie. She opened that email first.
Her fantasy life with her overseas email pen friend was always better than school.

maureen

This post didn't start out about numbers but as I read through it I have only missed out two numbers...

pic is a set of funky numbers