Linktopia: Contests A-Popping Edition

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to. 

Therese and I are reading the entries for our first Writer Unboxed contest, and man, it’s going to be hard to choose a winner.  We’ll announce soon.

In the meantime, the gals over at Risky Regencies have a contest of their own to announce.  Fans of regencies and historical romances need to check this one out . . . Paperback Writer’s contest invites readers to come up with their best opening lines.  The prize is pretty cool, too.

Chatter is up over the writers’ blogosphere regarding Harlequin’s decision to retool their LUNA imprint.  The story broke over at Smart Bitches and quickly went viral on the romance blogs.  Scuttlebutt indicates that the powers over at LUNA want to move away from the Celtic-inspired, folkloric fantasy stories toward grittier urban fantasies.  I asked my own agent about LUNA’s retool, and she says that pubs and agents have known about this for awhile.  So while it’s heartbreaking for authors who have had three-book deals have the contract for their third book canceled, it’s opportunity for others like Jeri Smith-Ready.  Here’s another lesson in why chasing trends is a fool’s game.

Folks, it’s been a while since I’ve read a blog and loved it so much I picked through the archive, but that’s what I did when someone mentioned I should check out Rachel Vater’s Agent X blog.  It’s fascinating . . . . Agent Kristen on cover blurb etiquette . . . Victoria and A.C. muse over the coincidence that many scam artists are themselves failed writers . . . . Melly blogs about fear of writing a one-dimensional character . . . MJ Rose has a must-read post up about writer overload . . . . if you think your writing sucks, never fear.  The Irish are hosting a festival to honor their “worst writer ever” . . . oh, those Irish (wipes tear); they have the best AND the worst writers of the English language.  Somehow, that doesn’t seem fair . . . .

Back to the contest.  Write on, folks.

Kathleen Bolton

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton.

She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter–both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.

staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud