Are you a writer?  Do you blog?  If you answered yes, then it’s time to step right up and join the carnival!  …a Blog Carnival, that is!

What’s a blog carnival?

A blog carnival is a regular publication hosted at rotating locations online.  Each publication for a blog carnival celebrates a specific topic with a cache of links to blog posts, articles, photographs, podcasts, and other creative media which relate to the blog carnival topic.

What’s the benefit to writers?

If you are a writer, the blog carnival is a fantastic opportunity to capture a broad swath of the world wide audience online.  Popular blog carnivals attract hundreds if not thousands of readers.  The location of the publication changes with each issue which attracts new readers every month.

How do you participate?

Participation is simple: create a blog post related to the blog carnival topic.  Publish your creation at your blog or website.  Submit the link to your creation to the blog carnival host / coordinator.  Once the blog carnival is published, create an announcement at your blog with a link to the issue.

Why the excitement about blog carnivals?

Blog carnivals give writers the opportunity to network with other creative professionals and attract new readership.  I am one of three coordinators for The Festival of the Trees, a monthly blog carnival which has been celebrating trees and forests since 2006 with over 40 issues online.

This month The Festival of the Trees is hosted by one of the original founders, Dave Bonta of Plummer’s Hollow, Pennsylvania.  If you are new to blog carnivals, The Festival of the Trees is a great place to get started.

SUBMIT TO THE FESTIVAL OF THE TREES:

Create a tree-related blog entry, post it online, and send us the link. It’s that simple!

Deadline (Festival #42): November 29, 2009

Email links to: bontasaurus [at] yahoo [dot] com with “Festival of the Trees” in the subject line, or use the Contact Form.

Details: (http://festivalofthetrees.wordpress.com)

Host blog: Via Negativa (http://www.vianegativa.us)

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Questions?  Contact Jade Blackwater at trees [at] brainripples [dot] com.

Join Pennwriters member Lisa Spahr of Pittsburgh, PA for a book signing this Saturday, November 14, 2009 from 1pm-3pm at the Moravian Book Shop in Bethlehem, PA.  Lisa Spahr will be there to share her latest work, WWII Radio Heroes: Letters of Compassion.

WWII Radio Heroes: Letters of Compassion is a story about strangers helping each other during a time of war. The book features more than 30 letters and postcards sent to the author’s family in 1943, alerting them of her grandfather’s capture and status as a prisoner of war. Upon discovering these letters, Ms. Spahr began researching the people who did this, and why, and reached out to find them or their next of kin, more than 60 years after the fact. Her journey is detailed in WWII Radio Heroes.

Everyone that learns about this effort – absolute strangers listening to enemy radio each night in hopes of delivering good news to an awaiting family – is moved. Few people know it occurred- but the author hopes that will change with this publication.

WWII Radio Heroes has been featured in Pittsburgh Magazine, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, America in WWII, ARRL’s QST Magazines, and York Sunday News as well as on The American Entrepreneur Radio Show and KDKA Dave Crawley’s KD Country. Some of the postcards from the book are now featured in Soldier’s and Sailor’s new exhibit called “Thinking of You”.

To learn more about Lisa Spahr and WWII Radio Heroes, visit her online at www.powletters.com, or follow Lisa Spahr on FaceBook.

Look for Lisa Spahr on KDKA’s Pittsburgh Today Live on November 11th at 9 AM.

A little encouragement can go a long way.  National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is upon us for November 2009, and many writers are settling in for a healthy 30 days of Butt In Chair, Fingers On Keyboard (BICFOK).

If you’re a writer in need of a little inspiration, here are two easy places to stop in for a (quick) fresh, hot cup of time-to-get-writing:

~ Words from Wednesday ~

Writer, editor, and home cook Luisa Weiss of The Wednesday Chef serves up encouragement and inspiration alongside autumn recipes.

Head over to Luisa Weiss’ blog and enjoy a slice from her post: “Leap and the Net Will Appear.”  While you’re there, you may want to grab a knife and fork – this is one savory blog!

~ Art Appreciation ~

Canadian artist Linda Lovisa of Natural Transitions Art Studio offers her perspective as a visual artist inspired by the natural world.

Visit the Brainripples blog for an exclusive Feature Artist Interview with Linda Lovisa offering the unique insights of a self-taught artist.

~ Writing with Results ~

Remember not to linger too long!  This month I encourage everyone with a writing goal to push aside the distractions and achieve tangible results.  It doesn’t have to be a novel:

Write and finish a short story.  Polish up your poetry and submit to your favorite literary journals.  Query some concepts with your favorite magazines and write the articles.  Bid for new freelance projects.  Review your journals for those strokes of brilliance which were never realized, and create something complete.

Whatever you choose, set a goal and plan to embrace it.  We invite you to share your goals and/or links to your creations here in the comments!

This November Pennwriters, Inc. online writing workshops presents…

CAUSE & EFFECT SEQUENCES: INTENSIVE ONLINE WRITING COURSE

INSTRUCTOR: Catherine E. McLean
DATE: November 2-23, 2009 (4 weeks, 1 session per week)
COST: $30 Pennwriters members ($35 non-members)

REGISTER: (http://tinyurl.com/PennwritersCourse200911)

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Interesting stories that grab a reader’s attention and keep them turning pages don’t happen by accident. Those stories employ techniques and devices of Cause & Effect Sequences that you can learn. This intensive online course will teach you how to use Cause & Effect Sequences to:

* Add urgency, suspense, conflict, and drama to your scenes and plots
* Seamlessly enter or depart flashbacks or remembrances
* Enhance the flow of your story with ease
* Suspend reader disbelief
* Validate motivations for character’s behavior, thinking, reactions, and decisions
* Develop characters & validate motivations for their behavior, thinking, reactions, and decisions
* Produce cleaner, more marketable copy

Participants will be required to submit the first 500 words from the opening of one of their stories. Excerpts from your story will be privately critiqued by the instructor for use of Cause & Effect Sequences; however, with your permission, some may be used as examples for the group. There will be weekly assignments.

(NOTE: This course is for writers familiar with story structure, writing and story terms, and who have completed fictional short stories and novels.)

FREE bonus with this course: “Bloopers & Blunders”–a list of 46 common mistakes made in writing fiction.

TESTIMONIALS:
“Catherine is the person to call if you want a professional read. Her attention to detail is excellent. I have also attended many of Catherine’s workshops. They are informative, fun and always knowledgeable on the basics of writing.”
- N.S., Cincinnati, OH

“She knows the mechanics of writing and the structure of story inside and out.”
- J.E., Pittsburgh, PA

Discover how to write engaging stories readers and publishers love.

Enroll Now.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Catherine McLean is a published author and longtime Pennwriters member who has given more than 30 workshops and has had two dozen articles published on the devices and techniques of writing fiction. For more information, visit her Writer’s Cheat Sheets website.

PENNWRITERS: Subscribe to our Online Courses announcement list for email on our latest workshops.

To learn more about Pennwriters, Inc. visit the official Pennwriters website at (www.pennwriters.com).

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From the desk of Sue Lange:

Jonathan Maberry and Sue Lange will be reading at The Speckled Hen tonight October 27, 2009, as part of the Reading Reads literary festival.

Doors open at 5 for dinner, readings start at 6. Three other writers (Mickey Getty, Patrick Klimcho, and Marilyn Klimcho) will be joining us on stage.

Reservations are not required, but might be a good idea: (610) 685-8511

See you there.

Sue Lange

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The Speckled Hen is located at 30 S 4th Street in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Reading Reads is the Berks County Annual Literary Festival which takes place throughout the month of October each year.

To learn more about their work, visit Sue Lange and Jonathan Maberry online.

When my first book showed promise in various competitions, I became firmly entrenched in my decision to make the switch from writer to author, even if it meant I’d be forever ruined for reading for innocent enjoyment.

Oddly enough, the aspect of this business that most confounded me was genre. I couldn’t decide what niche the book fell into. At one point, I actually yelled at myself for not knowing what I wrote and for not writing a story that fit neatly into a genre. (That was before I learned how wonderful cross-genre stories can be, and how unique my story was because it wasn’t cookie-cutter genre fiction.)

So I followed some advice I read on the internet (always a wise thing to do, right?) and I walked into the bookstore, decided where my book would fit in, and even pushed a space between the books on the shelf to make room for mine. It would be right there with the books I enjoyed as a reader and thusly I narrowed it down to two genres: paranormal romance and urban fantasy.

What’s the difference between the two genres? In the beginning, I had absolutely no idea because the books I enjoyed were found in the same section of the book store. While I gradually learned there are rules for each genre—and like every other rule, there are exceptions, loopholes, and trapdoors—back then, I used a more practical approach: it came down to my choice of footwear that day. If I was wearing leather boots, I called my story urban fantasy.

The term urban fantasy was coined to characterize fantasy stories taking place in modern times (that is, not the country-bumpkined, unurbanized, and undeveloped good ole days before dragons became extinct.) Most I’ve read are city-based. So is my story, but that’s only because I live in a rural location. Instead of dragons, I have corn fields and wild turkeys and a pack of biker frogs that take over my frog pond every March for their egg-laying orgies. How cool is that?

Not very.

I get stuck behind tractors when the dirty jerks won’t pull over. I have near-death experiences with tri-axle coal trucks that lumber like oily mammoths on the charge. I get mad when a neighbor is noisy. Shut up! This is the country! Don’t junk it up with your I-used-to-live-in-town-and-I-can-talk-loud-at-ten-o’clock-at-night-if-I-want-to attitude!

And nobody—I mean nobody—in their right mind will write a story about this place. Considering you can’t pick up a wi-fi signal anywhere, there are no good coffee shops around, and I’ve never seen a single sidewalk in this twenty-three tractor town, there’s really nothing to do.

Then again, there’s no stop lights, either. The only bonus.

I mean, come on. What could happen here? A few years ago at the beginning of my research and subsequent enlightenment, I wrote a sarcastic piece and used this blurb as an example:

Internet-surfing heroine Martha Underfelderkoch discovers a sinister plot while illegally trespassing on coal breaker grounds. While speeding on her ATV through a stripping pit, she notices a strange residue. It’s not coal dirt. It’s much more evil than that.

I promiised myself the day I read a country-based urban fantasy would be the day I accidentally-on-purpose stepped on my reading glasses. We read to escape, and some of us read more than others.

Thank goodness for writerly interventions.

I’d be irresponsible if I didn’t listen to Jade Blackwater, fellow Pennwriter and Philly expatriate, who recently pointed out the existence of popular rural-urban fantasy. Her first example was “Twilight.” Forks is no Manhattan or Chicago or St. Louis. It is (or, she says, at least was before the “literary tourism” kicked in*) a teeny, tiny, twenty-five-mph pass-through-in-a-blink logger town. All that existed prior to Twilight were some old original saw mills, a couple of greasy spoons, and some small rural homes.

Definitely not urban.

Another great example, she added, is M. Night Shyamalan, one of our own Philly hometown heroes, who did his share to keep Southeast PA at the top of the list of apparently creepy places to visit. Remember the film “Signs” and the yucky alien leg in the cornfield that you just had to pause and replay on quarter speed?

That’s right. Corn. Not urban.

Kind of made me feel a little bad, she did, for making fun of rural urbans. And to top it all off, a reader who saw the Martha Underfelder Koch book blurb didn’t realize it had been complete sarcasm and commented: hey! That sounds like a cool story! Has it been published yet?

Maybe it’s time to drop that pesky urban label, however kick-ass-admirable it may be. I don’t want to be the one to coin a new phase. (Jade can—she’s a lot braver than I.) Regardless, urban fantasy doesn’t have to be as urban as it implies. Darn those slippery shelves we call genres.

And, as it turns out, I may not have to settle for a rural-urban label anytime soon. I had pitched my agent with the genre paranormal chick lit—a genre I feel wonderful about because chick lit is one of the loopholey exceptions to the romance rules—and he is confident that it can sell as paranormal romance, after all. To top it off, if it’s any indicator of future success, I recently finaled in the paranormal category of a popular RWA contest. Looks like I’ve got a whole new genre to investigate now.

Sigh. There’s that bittersweet thing again.

*Jade provided some excellent links to info on the Twilight surge of literary tourism. See how a popular book can affect a dying town and give it a taste of immortality (bad puns intended):

Youth Looks Elsewhere — Logging Classes Are Given The Ax — Forks High School Teen-Agers Give Up On Declining Industry
September 3, 1990
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19900903&slug=1091142

Federal Aid To Help Lift Forks Out Of Economic Slump
January 12, 1994
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19940112&slug=1889254

Fans of “Twilight” vampire series pump new blood into Forks
July 27, 2008
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2008075490_twilight270.html

Vampire tourism going strong in Forks
August 7, 2009
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2009618933_webvampiretourism07.html

Maybe I *do* need to write about Schuylkill County, after all. It might do wonders for my property values. =)

Join local writers and the award-winning author Jonathan Maberry for an afternoon of fun, writing, and networking at the monthly Writers’ Coffeehouse.

Meetings are held on the last Sunday of every month from 12pm – 3pm at the Willow Grove Barnes and Noble, 102 Park Avenue, Willow Grove, PA 19090.  The current meeting takes place today, October 25, 2009.

From Jonathan Maberry:

It’s a bunch of writers sitting around talking about writing…with coffee.  No agenda…just chat about the latest trends in the industry, about markets, about pitching and selling, about frustration, about keeping the inner fires alight, about dealing with our families, about how damn tough it is to make it as a writer at the best of times and what writers can do to stay afloat in these troubled economic waters.  No previous publishing experience necessary…the Writers’ Coffeehouse attracts everyone from absolute beginner to award-winners and bestsellers.  We’re all writers.  Grab a cup of coffee and join us!

For more information contact the Pennwriters Area 6 Representative, or visit Jonathan Maberry online.

Join Pennwriters’ own Walt Honsinger for a book signing this Friday, October 23, 2009 from 7pm-9pm at the Lancaster Barnes and Noble in the Red Rose Commons.  Walt Honsinger will be there to share his latest work, The Blue Ocean’s Peace.

Walt Honsinger is a dedicated volunteer supporting Pennwriters members throughout the south central region of Pennsylvania and beyond.  Walt’s novels draw upon his diverse travels and adventures, his love of the great outdoors, and his keen writer’s imagination.

Join Walt, shake his hand, buy his book, and of course — get it signed!

Visit Walt Honsinger’s website to learn more about his novels and upcoming events.

CALLING ALL PENNWRITERS:

Do you have skills in web design, image manipulation, or content management?

Are you experienced with Joomla! and other open source web design tools?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, then we want to hear from you!  Our Website Committee Chair Jamie Saloff is seeking volunteers to support small tasks for maintaining and improving our website at Pennwriters.com.

To volunteer please contact us via email at car[at]pennwriters[dot]com.

Thank you,

The Pennwriters Board of Directors

When I picked up a stack of loose leaf and a Bic gel pen a few years ago, I didn’t suspect that a complete novel would actually leak its way out. I didn’t suspect that I’d keep at it long enough to complete anything I’d be genuinely proud enough to show anyone. And I certainly didn’t suspect I’d spend the next few years actually researching the business side of writing.

Back then, I was still a reader. For me, writing and business only collided when I bought someone’s writing at someone else’s business. I never thought past the big categories of MYSTERY, ROMANCE and SCI-FI/ FANTASY when it came to genre.

Writing a book drastically changes a reader’s perspective. You stop browsing in bookstores; you become part spy, part hunter, and sometimes part stalker. I used to pick books to read based on their cover art. No kidding. If it had a Michael Whelan cover, I read it. (It’s probably one of the reasons why Melanie Rawn’s books are so near and dear to my heart. And that painting of the Crimson King gives me warm fuzzy shivers, which undoubtedly is the polar opposite of the feeling Stephen King originally intended.) Such is the power of cover art.

However, once BLEEDING HEARTS was complete and began to find success on the contest scene, my thoughts turned to publication. I remember an entire day spent looking at websites and blogs, searching for the magic bullet that would get me from writer to published author in no time flat before realizing: there is no magic bullet.

Marketing takes serious research, tons of know-how, and all the right connections. Getting published would take more than a morning of Googling.

I dug in. I Amazoned myself a massive library of books on the subject. I printed reams of references from the internet and every time I found the answer to one question, I found a dozen links leading to a dozen more topics I hadn’t even dreamed about. Genre. Word counts. Queries. Agents. Editors. Imprints. And before I knew it, I’d become a Secret Book Spy.

It felt so dirty.

Bookstores became secret ops training grounds. Instead of reading the jacket blurbs, I read acknowledgements. I ignored cover art and went straight for the imprint logo. Instead of peeking inside to get an idea of how smooth a read it would be, I scanned the covers for reviews and awards and author blurbs.

Forget the story; I wanted to know about the book.

How depressing is that? I’m still a reader, for crying out loud. I have more friends in books than I do walking and breathing on the planet. I daydream about books I read in my youth, ones I lost as I grew older, ones I forgot the title or the author and have no hopes of finding again. Writing my book has tarnished my youthful book-reading innocence.

I proofread books when I read now. I try not to. It’s not just rude—it’s blatant ingratitude. My favorite authors slave away at their stories, and all of a sudden I’m a big know-it-all who could actually have the nerve to point out opportunities for improvement. I should be horse-whipped.

Luckily, I recognize when I get that way and I usually stop myself. I should start wearing a rubber band on my wrist and give it a snap to stop my undesirable behavior. Or a shock collar like my dog wears. That would work, too. But, I digress. . .

Months of spying lead me to a piece of intelligence that changed my life forever—I needed a partner, a go-to guy, a man on the inside. In short—I needed an agent. An agent would have the connections I needed to get my book published. An agent would have the links, the insight, the expertise on positioning my work and getting it to the market. And an agent would only be found by querying.

During my Quest of the Query, I realized that months of spying had failed in providing me the single-most necessary piece of intel: what genre did I write? BLEEDING HEARTS is fantasy with a love story, but can I sum that up in a single genre?

I’d soon find out the answer was anything but simple.

For me, the easiest-to-define distinction between genres was the broadest: literary verses commercial, although my initial reasoning was, in itself, flawed—I figured that literary meant “summer reading list” material. That, of course, isn’t true anymore, considering that Harry Potter now appears on the list of Books Children Must be Threatened Into Reading.

Genres don’t stop at mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, and romance, as I had assumed back when I was a reader. Oh, no. Genres split into categories and sub-types. (I remember reading over a list of category romance types for the first time and thinking: whew! Thank God I don’t write that. Oh, the bliss of ignorance…) Romance just didn’t fit well with a bittersweet ending, which, as a part of a three-book series, my first book has.

And fantasy didn’t simplify things, either. Once I began to research genres, I knew I couldn’t just slap a HELLO MY GENRE IS FANTASY label on the cover and send it off into the world because fantasy wasn’t quite specific enough for the manuscript. I quickly eliminated sub-genres like epic and high fantasy and took a breather at contemporary before deciding urban fantasy was a nice place to be.

Although paranormal covered the “weird” elements, I never saw the term paranormal fantasy—paranormal has a BFF named romance and early on I didn’t really let my book hang out with either of them (never mind that the love story is central to the plot.) To complicate matters, the urban fantasies I read all had kick-ass heroines and gritty action scenes. My main character admits she’s no Lara Croft—she craves safety and security over risky and dangerous (just turns out the world has different plans for her.)

And so it was that the Secret Book Spy came up against her greatest nemesis: the best-fit genre for a book that best fits neither. (Too bad there wasn’t a super-cool gadget to get me out of this jam.) Deciding which genre to query under would take a lot more research.

The mission continues…Watch for my next article “Who Put the ‘Urban’ in Urban Fantasy?”