What you were supposed to be reading today was my entry for the second campaigner challenge but as I have to find a dictionary to work out what I'm supposed to be writing about, I'll think I'll devote a bit more time to this one. Tomorrow is Musical Stories, so you'll see my entry next week sometime.
In the meantime, I've got a few things to mention. First is two competitions that I've been meaning to tell you about for a couple of week s now.
Are you a fan of Dean Koontz, Stephen King or Laurell K Hamilton? Would you like to win a book autographed by one of these three? Roland Yeomans of Writing in the Crosshairs is running a competition to win just that. All you have to do is write a review of one of his books for Amazon. This competition is running until October 1st and is open internationally. I'm particularly excited about this as Stephen King was my first 'grown up' author and Dean Koontz was my second.
The other competition I want to tell you about also has an awesome prize. On 1st December, D. J. Kirkby is giving away a kindle. Go here to find out how to gain additional entries. Follow the blog for future posts on how to gain even more entries.
While we're on the subject of competitions, I have some good news to share. Although I didn't place in the first campaigner challenge, (see here for the winners) I was lucky enough to win a random prize which turned out to be a critique of a full ms of up to 85,000 words by the lovely 1000th Monkey. I've been in touch with her, and I'm very proud to say I have my first deadline. Admittedly, it's a loose deadline, but it's still great. I work so much better under external pressure!
Still on the first campaigner challenge, I'd like to thank all the judges for their time and effort and, in particular, Michael Offutt who had the huge task of delegating and organising the judging. Not a task I would have relished.
One more thing to mention before I go. CherylAnne Ham wrote a guest post at Bird's-Eye View earlier this week extolling the virtues of a blog tool called IntenseDebate. Red more about it there, but the two things about it that really excited me were the fact that you can respond individually to each commenter and, when you respond to a comment by email, it automatically posts the comment on the post. At the moment I'm doing that separately, so I'm going to try this. Let me know if there's anything you don't like about the new comment system (assuming I've installed it correctly, of course). I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
Finally, here is something special. I'm afraid I can't remember whose blog I got this from, I've had it a while, but I often look at it when I need reminding that it's okay to do what I do. Don't peek at the end before you've looked at it all, but I have the last line stuck up next to me on a post it. I hope you love it.
