NaNoWriMo & Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards

Happy NaNoWriMo!!!

Everyone, celebrate this month by either spending it writing or by encouraging your favorite authors to keep plugging away on their own books. Know someone who wants to write & is doing NaNoWriMo? Feel free to mention them in the comments!





When you (or someone you know) is finished with the next big book, why not prepare it for submission to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards? This is a wonderful contest where an unpublished author can submit his or her book in the hopes of getting it published by Penguin or by one of the other companies out there! Many people have gotten published after being in this contest & getting lots of praise from their peers & reviewers rating their books, so this can be a wonderful opportunity for potential authors!


The #1 requirement is that your manuscript not be previously published. If it is a self-published book, you can still submit it- just make sure to stop offering it for sale during the time of the contest. (Here's the wiki entry for ABNA, which contains info about all of the steps to the contest.)

Down in the ABNA forums you'll find tons of people who will be more than happy to help you with your writing & with the pitch you'll have to write for the contest. The next contest isn't until next year, but the earlier you start with this stuff the better.

I hope to see you in the next ABNA contest!

Read this book: Nickel Plated by Aric Davis

Hi everyone!

I want to tell all of you about an author that competed in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novelist Awards. His name is Aric Davis & he wrote one of the best excerpts in the forum, but unfortunately he didn't progress in the contest due to a technicality, but thankfully Amazon had the good sense to snap his book up to be released through their AmazonEncore line.

Here's the book synopsis:

Nickel is a survivor. He has to be. For as long as he can remember, his life has hinged on the flip of a coin. Or, rather, the scribble of a social worker’s pen. He’s been through the system, even had a good dad for a few years, until he was gone, too. But Nickel remembers everything he taught him, and since the day he escaped from foster-care hell, he’s put that knowledge to good use. Just twelve years old, he makes a steady living by selling marijuana to high schoolers, blackmailing pedophiles he ferrets out online, and working as a private investigator.

When a beautiful girl named Arrow hires him to find her little sister Shelby, Nickel figures at best the kid’s a runaway; at worst, some perv’s gotten a hold of her. He scours the internet and the streets of Arrow’s suburban neighborhood, and what he finds there is as ugly a truth as he’s ever seen. For beyond the manicured lawns, Nickel discovers children for sale, and adults with souls black as the devil. And people like that aren’t about to let some kid ruin their game. This edgy thriller introduces a canny, precocious anti-hero, the likes of which young-adult readers have never seen.

I'm really excited to see this in print & even more excited to announce this to everyone! If you want to order a copy from amazon, feel free to pre-purchase it here. It doesn't release until March of 2011, but from what I read of it the book is well worth the wait.

If you want to show the author a little love, you can always visit his website & contact him through there! Davis also has another book out that he self-published, which is unfortunately not in print anymore but hopefully now that Nickel Plated has been picked up we'll see that come back into print!

I want to trick or treat here: Couple hands out books instead of candy

Happy Halloween everyone! Go hug your favorite ghoul or vampire & make merry!

Speaking of making merry, I think I've found one of the coolest places to trick or treat. In Kennewick, Washington there's a couple who have decided to forget the candy & give kids a treat that they can enjoy for far longer than they would a tootsie roll or snickers bar.

The Reeves are handing out books to the children that come through have their choice of books such as Captain Snap and the Children of Vinegar Lane as well as books for various other age groups & interests. They said that this is their second year doing it & that last year not a single kid (or parent) went away unhappy.

Isn't that just the coolest? Makes me wish I both lived in Washington & was young enough to trick or treat in their neighborhood.

Nook Color & children's books, Kindle lending

I was surfing the net a while ago & came across an interesting new Nook that is supposed to be coming out: Nook Color. The image below was originally posted on the B&N site as a way of showing off screen protectors, but as soon as people started realizing that this was a glimpse of the new Nook it was quickly removed. "Accidentally" leaked? Who knows?
Supposedly this Nook will be in vibrant color & rather than stay true to the e-ink technology that is so prevalent in the majority of ebook devices out there, this is going to be something along the lines of the iPad. It's going to be touchscreen, which will have its pluses & minuses. (For me I always worry about fingerprints getting on the screen when I try to read!) There's no news as to whether or not it'll support apps like the iPad does. I do know that it will have android software & will be sold for about $250, though.

There's also news that this new ereader will also carry children's books (ages 3-8), something that might either delight or horrify some readers. (Delight them to know that they can have hundreds of books at hand to let children read or horrify them to imagine such an expensive piece of equipment in the hands of the very young.) Supposedly there's going to be about 12,000 books & 15 publishers, so parents can expect a wide variety for their children.

I imagine that this awesome piece of literary electronics will be available just in time for the Christmas season for your purchasing pleasure. Supposedly B&N did purchase a Nook Color themed website name, so be on the lookout for a site by the name of nookcolor.com or something similar.

In other news, Amazon announced that they'd start lending out books- a concept that just about everyone can agree was long overdue. Just like with the Nook, you can lend out a book that you've purchased to another Kindle user but can't read the book while it's being lent. Hopefully Amazon will improve on the Nook lending policy & allow a user to lend out a book more than once. It's annoying to think that you can only lend out your ebook once, making you wonder which Nook buddy is more deserving of the title. It's still better than not lending at all, but just a little irritating in my opinion.

RIP, Jennifer Rardin

For those of you who have been a fan of the Jaz Parks series, you'll be saddened to know that author Jennifer Rardin has passed away. I don't have any information as to how this happened, just that it happened very suddenly & unexpectedly. Jennifer had already completed her series, so the remaining books will still be released.

If you want to do something great in her name, you can donate to the Riley Children's Foundation. We should all try to recommend her books to at least 2-3 other people just so Jennifer's name can live on & still delight audiences for generations to come.