Thursday, November 3, 2011

THE BIG SEVEN-ZERO!!!! and gory murder... but no blood... how does that work? ;)

You read that right people!!!  The P&P has officially reached 70 followers!!! *does a little happy jig*

And as I promised, it's time to set up a giveaway in celebration. :)  I think what I'm going to do is set up a poll, and see what YOU GUYS would like to see given away as the prize.  Your options are at this moment:

1) a book (haven't decided which one yet... that decision will come later, if you guys decide you would like a book giveaway rather than anything else. ;D)
2) 1 black and white pencil drawing (finished) of one of your characters or favorite book characters...
3) an author page set up on the P&P for 1 month, and congratulations and links given over at SOTD's facebook page as advertisement.

There's a possible fourth prize, but I haven't decided on it yet.  It would be one song composed by Jonathan Miaco.  However, I have neither purchased this song yet, nor decided on which song exactly to choose (or whether to let you guys choose), nor have I talked to the composer.  So we will have to wait and see on that one.  ;)

Now... what does this have to do with gory murder without blood?  How is that even accomplished?!?!

It's quite simple really. ^_^  I'm going to set up the poll a little later today, but in the meantime, you, my faithful followers, are charged to KILL THIS THREAD!!!  No blood involved. No knives.  But death... yes, death! lol!

That's right, people.  Last person to post a comment on this thread for 24 consecutive hours is the winner of the prize that the P&P followers will choose by poll.  Choose wisely, my friends... you may end up the receiver of whatever prize is chosen! :)

This very game has been done on several other blogs before.  The one I remember the most was on author Wayne Thomas Batson's blog, "Enter the Door Within" and it lasted almost a year before Mr. Batson had to close the thread himself.  lol!  I doubt my version of the game will last nearly as long, but you never know. ;D

Comment away!!!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Nanowrimo 2011 and Publishing News

Well, it's that time of year again!  Nanowrimo 2011 officially started yesterday at 12:00am, and I'm stoked. :)

 Am I working on something for Nano?  Why yes... yes I am.  But it's not anything new.  Not yet.  I know the rules of Nano technically say that I'm not allowed to work on older pieces, but they are just going to have to make an exception for me.  Because my plan is not to start a completely new story -- it is to MOVE FORWARD on SOTD.

That's right people.  This is my Nanowrimo resolution! The rewrite of SOTD will FINALLY move forward again.  No more going back and going over the chapters that I've already worked through: I've perfected them enough! Now it's time to move on.  Chapter 4 is calling (and yes, that's right; I'm still stuck on "perfecting" the first three rewritten chapters.  But I give up.  They are good enough now; I have to move on!)  I may not get the rewrite of the book completely done, but I will MOVE FORWARD.  And right now, that's the most important part.

So, the idea is that I will try to post the moving word count at least once a week, and perhaps post excerpts.  Maybe.  I just may go back over some of the newer parts and edit as I go, but that's just part of my writing process.  If I don't go back and reread some of what I had before, for some reason I just can't move forward.  So who knows. :D

In other news, I've been doing more and more research into the publishing business and the ins and outs of starting a small press.  I'm hoping to get some interviews done within the next couple of months.  Last night I read an article that was absolutely horrifying, about a small press that completely imploded.  Believe me when I say, it was quite the scary deal.

Besides that, however, I've found a miniature library of advice given via the interwebz for people interested in starting small presses.  I'm through as much of it as I can retain, and trying to put together a marketing strategy that will best benefit the authors of the company.  I'm also considering changing the name.  I LOVE the name "Magpie Publications" or "Magpie Eclectic Press", but just recently I discovered that there's quite a bit of folklore surrounding the magpie, and a lot of it isn't exactly positive... though it's not necessarily negative either.  So I might be considering a new name for this venture I'm preparing to undertake.  We'll have to wait and see.

Well, that's all the news I have for right now.  I perhaps I'll have something more to post about tomorrow.  I know this is a really short post, but I haven't had a whole lot of time lately.  I hope to get up more soon.

Bye for now! :D

Nichole