A bit of #randomness to round out the holiday season

One of my favorite things about working at a university is the nice little chunk of paid time off I get for the winter break each year. It’s a little less than two weeks for office staff, but it’s just what the doctor ordered this time of year. Extra sleep, a chance to get over my annual sinus infection, family time, good eats, and a little extra writing time to boot, if I don’t let myself get too lazy!

I don’t use Twitter much, but I found myself yesterday with the urge to narrate my time off on Facebook, where I already probably post a bit too much. So, I got the idea to dust off my Twitter account and started tweeting. Oddly enough, my random posts have netted me several new followers and even a retweet from a Tweeter with more than 3000 followers of science fiction. It will be interesting to see if that generates even more followers. Perhaps I should check out Twitter more often! Check out my Twitter profile to see what I’ve been up to!

At any rate, I’ve been up to random randomness the past two days and am feeling rather accomplished. I literally just ordered my first set of proofs for the print edition of Valley of the Bees! This seems like a good time for a cover reveal, so… TA-DA!

And now… well, I’m just sitting here waiting for the family to show up for our annual cousin cookie baking party and face-stuffing with our favorite finger foods.

Book #Giveaway! Enter to win one of ten free copies of Valley of the Bees #1! #VotB

Yesterday, I wrote a blog post discussing how to set up a Rafflecopter to administer a book giveaway. Well, today the giveaway is live, and I discovered that I did not add a link to the section where entrants can comment on a blog post to enter the giveaway. (OOPS!) So, this blog post right here will be the official post to comment on to enter to win a copy of With Envy Stung: Valley of the Bees #1. Once you have posted your comment below, be sure to click through to the Rafflecopter to check off the box for commenting on the blog post.

You can also click on the Rafflecopter image below for more ways to enter.

Click here to enter!

As long as I’m updating you on what didn’t work when I set up my Rafflecopter, I might as well also tell you what I came up with as a work-around for the fact that you can’t embed the widget in the free version of WordPress. It was really simple, really. All I did was take a screenshot of the widget on my Facebook page and add the image to the blog post. Then, I hyperlinked the image to the mobile-friendly link that I got from the Facebook app, y voila! A somewhat functional Rafflecopter giveaway on my blog post.

Are you on GoodReads?

To give you an idea of what I like to read (It’s an oldie but a goodie!): The Mists of Avalon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for friends to add on GoodReads so you can help me figure out what books I want to read next. That sounds completely self-serving, right? OK, so friend me on GoodReads so I can help you figure out what you want to read next! Either way works for me!

I like fantasy that’s not too science fiction-y (that makes total sense, right?) If you have some suggestions for me, please add me on GoodReads and recommend away!

Why not #likeaboy? Because you don’t bleed from your vagina once a month #likeagirl, dumbass.

Thousands of Twitter #meninists are outraged today because Always – a company that sells FEMININE HYGIENE PRODUCTS – had the nerve to target women in their SuperBowl ad this year. Someone obviously wasn’t paying attention in sex ed class.


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National Poetry Month Collaborative Twitter Poem

Poetry (Photo credit: V. H. Hammer)

Well, here we are. It’s April 1^st, and once again time to celebrate National Poetry Month. I haven’t really been writing much poetry lately, so I thought it might be fun to do a collaborative Twitter poem challenge.

For this challenge, I am going to give you a one-word prompt/Twitter handle. Next, you come up with a poem – either one short poem that will fit into one 140-character Tweet, or a longer poem that you can split up, posting one verse per Tweet – and share it on Twitter using the provided hashtag. I am starting the challenge here today, and then I would love it if some of you would volunteer to host one or a few additional prompts on your blogs throughout the month of April.

How long does it take to become a writing master?

How many words do you think you need to write to become a writing master? | Painting The Writing Master by Thomas Eakins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Facebook friend recently shared a link to an article titled, Here’s A Shocking Truth If You Think You’ve Wasted Your Life. According to this article, it takes a person about seven years to master a particular task. This prompted me to consider how long I have been writing and how close I should expect myself to be to mastering it.

After giving it some thought, it occurred to me that I am probably exactly where I should be in regards to my writing career. Although I have been writing in some capacity for most of my life, it is only in the past five years that I have put my full effort into it. Prior to that, I had taken a ten-year break while I was married because my ex didn’t want me to write at all.

Twitter writing challenge

You can follow me on Twitter @missmandy76.

In a recent blog post, author Hugh Howey said, “Can you entertain someone with a series of 10 Tweets? If you can’t, you won’t make it as a writer.”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a challenge to me! So, how about it? Can you entertain your Twitter followers with a series of just 10 Tweets?

Join the official Write Your Novel this Summer Challenge

Join the Write Your Novel this Summer Challenge and write the first draft of your novel between June 21st and September 21st.

I recently wrote a blog post in which I discussed author Stephen King’s view that you should never take more than a season to write a novel. In that post, I posed a challenge to my readers to “write your novel this summer.” I’ve been thinking about this challenge, and I think it might be fun to make it a real “thing.”

How cool would it be if a bunch of us banded together to support each other in knocking out that first draft of the novels we’ve all been meaning to get around to? It could be kind of like NaNoWriMo, only we get an entire season rather than just one month. I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to write a novel in one month, November is just about the worst month of the year to do it in!

Do you wanna write a guest post for my blog?

Do I look busy to you? Nah, it’s nothing. Really.

I’m teaching six courses this semester and writing a thesis. So yeah, I’m a little busy right now. I want to keep my blog going too, so I’m wondering: Would any of my writer friends and readers be interested in writing a guest blog post or two this semester?

I’m a starving artist (well, not literally, I just stuffed myself on Chinese food at dinner tonight,) so I can’t afford to pay you. But, if I publish your guest post on my blog, you’ll get a by-line and a link to your blog from mine. So, that’s something, right?

Anyway, if you’re interested,

I need to write something

Emergency “Twitter was down so I wrote my tweet on paper and photographed it and posted on flickr” : Satire on internet culture (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I seriously need to write something soon. Or stop calling myself a writer.

Maybe this would have made a better Twitter update than a blog post.