If you haven't already, check out eBook Diva, South Africa's first dedicated romance eBook website. You can purchase and download a wide range of Harlequin books, including crime novels from Black Star, main stream books from Mira, the full range of category novels, and also shorter reads for under R20.
Spice Briefs and Historical Undones are not available in book stores, and they're short enough to read in your lunch break, so they're a great way to start if you're new to eBooks.
You can also add reviews and visit the community for aspiring writers, Tales of the Diva.
(And sssshh! Don't tell anyone else, but there are also free books available for download here.)
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Debut for a new South African romance publisher
Kwela Books has recently opened a new imprint, Sapphire Press, which is dedicated to publishing local romance novels. The publisher, which has links to the True Love book club, will be introducing a new book each month. The series debuts with two novels: Lauri Kubuitsile’s Kwaito
Love and
Shukie Nkosana’s Cherry
Marbles.
If you're interested in writing for Sapphire Press, you can check out the submission guidelines here: Kwela / Sapphire Press Writing Guidelines.
If you're interested in writing for Sapphire Press, you can check out the submission guidelines here: Kwela / Sapphire Press Writing Guidelines.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Fool for Love Contest
Virginia Romance Writers, a division of the RWA, is holding a writing contest called 'Fool for Love' which closes at the end of April. This contest is open to writers from around the world but does charge an entry fee. The fee is worth it though if you want to get your work in front of one of this year's judges.
For more information on the contest categories, judges or how to enter, click here.
For more information on the contest categories, judges or how to enter, click here.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
London Book Fair - call for help
The market focus of this year's London Book Fair next week is South Africa. Yay for us!
Sadly, the showcase has been seriously jeopardised by the grounding of all flights in and out of the UK due to the volcanic ash cloud currently sweeping across Europe. (For more on that, click here). The LBF organisers have come up with a plan to charter a plane to get key people to London in time for the book fair, but they need money. If you, or anyone you know, is in a position to help out, you can find out more here: http://news.book.co.za/blog/2010/04/17/the-sa-lit-london-book-fair-rearguard-effort-needs-150-000/
And for more information on the LBF itself: http://www.londonbookfair.co.uk/
Sadly, the showcase has been seriously jeopardised by the grounding of all flights in and out of the UK due to the volcanic ash cloud currently sweeping across Europe. (For more on that, click here). The LBF organisers have come up with a plan to charter a plane to get key people to London in time for the book fair, but they need money. If you, or anyone you know, is in a position to help out, you can find out more here: http://news.book.co.za/blog/2010/04/17/the-sa-lit-london-book-fair-rearguard-effort-needs-150-000/
And for more information on the LBF itself: http://www.londonbookfair.co.uk/
Monday, April 12, 2010
Head Space
Most writing courses, online writing sites and books on writing focus on teaching aspiring writers 'how to write'. From the basics of correct punctuation to more complex concepts such as narrative structure. These are important tools of the trade, but in the years since I started writing I've learned that there are other things that are just as important for aspiring writers to learn.
Before you can write, you need to get in the right head space.
Writing is a lot like sports psychology - you can train for the toughest race, but if your head isn't in the right place, you're not going to win.
The first lesson I've had to learn is to treat writing like a profession. One day, a couple of years ago, I made a conscious decision that this wasn't just a hobby any more. I was serious about writing and I began to take it seriously. In my head, I made the switch from being an amateur to being a pro. It didn't matter that I hadn't yet sold a manuscript, I saw myself as a professonal writer. So far, it's working pretty well for me. Since then, I've completed two full length novels and contracted a novella to Wild Rose Press.
The second lesson is to believe in yourself. Multi published writers will tell you that the crows of doubt never stop circling [just listen to Penny Jordan in this interview] but what separates the successful writers from those who never finish a book is that the successful writers don't let the doubts defeat them. Give yourself a pat on the back every now and then. You wrote a whole page, a whole chapter, a whole book ... celebrate your achievements. With each baby step your belief in yourself will grow. Only if you have faith in yourself, will you conquer those crows.
The third lesson is one I still struggle with. Discipline. Writing novels isn't a sporadic thing that you can do for an hour a week, or a week on and two weeks off. You can't wait for the muse to strike. You need to work at it every day and get into a writing routine. At the start of last year's Nanowrimo, I was writing about 800-900 words an hour. At the end of the month I was averaging 1,200 words an hour. I achieved that because I wrote for at least an hour every day. Then I let life intervene and the routine was broken. Right now I'm struggling to write 500 words an hour. My muse has deserted me because I haven't been giving her enough attention.
More recently, I've learned that sometimes life really does take precedence over everything else. We all have moments in our lives where there are other things we need to accomplish. We still need to sleep, to eat, to take care of our loved ones, to be sociable human beings, to earn a living. Don't beat yourself up because you didn't get a chance to write today. Get through the day, live life to the full, and when those other pressing needs have been taken care of, then sit down and start to write, with a clear head.
But in my experience, the most valuable lesson any writer can learn is this: don't ever give up. Take a break if you need it, but don't let it be a permanent one. After all, you have to be in it to win it.
Before you can write, you need to get in the right head space.
Writing is a lot like sports psychology - you can train for the toughest race, but if your head isn't in the right place, you're not going to win.
The first lesson I've had to learn is to treat writing like a profession. One day, a couple of years ago, I made a conscious decision that this wasn't just a hobby any more. I was serious about writing and I began to take it seriously. In my head, I made the switch from being an amateur to being a pro. It didn't matter that I hadn't yet sold a manuscript, I saw myself as a professonal writer. So far, it's working pretty well for me. Since then, I've completed two full length novels and contracted a novella to Wild Rose Press.
The second lesson is to believe in yourself. Multi published writers will tell you that the crows of doubt never stop circling [just listen to Penny Jordan in this interview] but what separates the successful writers from those who never finish a book is that the successful writers don't let the doubts defeat them. Give yourself a pat on the back every now and then. You wrote a whole page, a whole chapter, a whole book ... celebrate your achievements. With each baby step your belief in yourself will grow. Only if you have faith in yourself, will you conquer those crows.
The third lesson is one I still struggle with. Discipline. Writing novels isn't a sporadic thing that you can do for an hour a week, or a week on and two weeks off. You can't wait for the muse to strike. You need to work at it every day and get into a writing routine. At the start of last year's Nanowrimo, I was writing about 800-900 words an hour. At the end of the month I was averaging 1,200 words an hour. I achieved that because I wrote for at least an hour every day. Then I let life intervene and the routine was broken. Right now I'm struggling to write 500 words an hour. My muse has deserted me because I haven't been giving her enough attention.
More recently, I've learned that sometimes life really does take precedence over everything else. We all have moments in our lives where there are other things we need to accomplish. We still need to sleep, to eat, to take care of our loved ones, to be sociable human beings, to earn a living. Don't beat yourself up because you didn't get a chance to write today. Get through the day, live life to the full, and when those other pressing needs have been taken care of, then sit down and start to write, with a clear head.
But in my experience, the most valuable lesson any writer can learn is this: don't ever give up. Take a break if you need it, but don't let it be a permanent one. After all, you have to be in it to win it.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Last Day for Voice of Africa Entries!
Take note that today is the last day you can submit your entry for the Voice of Africa writing competition run by Essentials Magazine in conjunction with Mills and Boon!
If this is the first you've heard about it ... get all the info here! But hurry - you only have a few hours left before the deadline!
So how many of you have entered? I know I have! Let us know if you've entered - so we can all celebrate our courage together!
Fingers crossed for everyone!
If this is the first you've heard about it ... get all the info here! But hurry - you only have a few hours left before the deadline!
So how many of you have entered? I know I have! Let us know if you've entered - so we can all celebrate our courage together!
Fingers crossed for everyone!
Friday, March 26, 2010
Snagging an Agent
Unfortunately I don't have a 10 point flop proof guide - if there's one out there, I'll take two, thank you!
There is a plethora of excellent information out there with any number of excellent agent blogs. So many, in fact, that I've had to limit the blogs I frequent otherwise it all starts to get a bit mind boggling. My personal favourites are:
Bookends
Pub Rants
Nathan Bransford
USA agents are fantastic: they blog, they're accessible, they're fast on the turnaround and they mostly accept email submissions which makes it that much easier (and cheaper) for us to query widely.
UK agents are slower on the mark. Many of the agents still want snail mail submissions, they're quick to close their doors (with regards to my previous post, maybe this is a good thing rather than letting authors query with no chance because they're not currently looking) and their turnaround time is a lot slower - I've currently got a YA under consideration, and although it's gone from query to full request to full request via hard copy, it's been 6 months and counting - that's a long time in the land of agents.
Most agents accept submissions from anywhere in the world, that gives us two continents across which to query, query, query. There seems to be a quirky exception to this, and doesn't apply to all agents, but from my experience it seems like US agents are a a bit antsy about stories set in the UK, and vice versa. But any other country setting and you're fine across the borders.
And now (finally, you might say) we come to the reason that triggered this post...
Firstly, it was a post of the wonderful Kristin Nelson's blog, Pub Rants.
In answering some questions, she had this to say about a question on how long to wait before re-quering an agent with a new project after a rejection:
Of course we all differ on what the answer would be. That’s why publishing is so maddening to writers. For me, I’d say wait 4 weeks, then query with new project. But here’s the kicker. DO NOT mention that you have queried the agency before. Act like this is the first query ever that you are sending us. We get 150 queries a day. Chances are very good we won’t remember your name (unless you have a really unique name that is!) Writers for some reason feel obligated to tell us their whole prior history of our rejecting their queries. Don’t be seduced!
And she had this to say about re-subbing a previously rejected but revised story:
My suggestion? Change the title to something new. Sometimes titles stand out and it will sound familiar. In terms of time span, if you submitted queries and have received mainly rejection responses, I’d revise significantly, wait about 3 weeks, then resend. What can an agent do? Track you down and chastise you for resubmitting? Grin. Be bold. Now if you are rejected numerous times by same agent. Move on. Lots of other agent fishes in the sea.
She is so honest and candid, and this advice can be applied when subbing to publishers as well. Our baby might be precious to us and chiselled into our brains, but to the agent/editor it's one of thousands and there's a good chance they won't remember. Good idea to change the title and maybe even character names - and hopefully it would have been revised to an extent where you have something more/different to offer in the query/partial - basically after revision you do have a new story, so why not re-submit? This is a particularly sensitive topic when it comes to M&B because, let's face it, if they reject your story, you don't have many other options left to place it. But M&B is brilliant about giving decent feedback, enough to show you what is wrong and how you could improve. I've never really understood why they then suggest you send in something new rather than the revised ms (and I'm talking about rejection letter feedback, not revision letter feedback).
And secondly, I'd like to point you to a brilliant site, Miss Snark's First Victim. Every month she hosts a Secret Agent contest, where you post the first page of your ms and the secret agent reviews all the posts, gives feedback on whether she'd request more or why she'd stop reading, etc and the secret agent also selects winners and runner ups and the prizes vary from a critique to requests. The secret agent is revealed and she's had some great agents there, like Ginger Clark and Nathan Bransford from Curtis Brown, Kirstin Nelson, to name a few. Each contest is usually limited to a selection of genres, and throughout the contests most genres are frequently covered.
For me, the benefit here is more for the agent feedback than actually winning (although that would be great too). If you've got a couple of hundred hours to spare, you can also read through the archive of previous contests, and see which agents had what to say about which submissions. It's a great way to get inside an agent's head and understand what they're looking for - and, once again, I think this applies to editors as well.
There is a plethora of excellent information out there with any number of excellent agent blogs. So many, in fact, that I've had to limit the blogs I frequent otherwise it all starts to get a bit mind boggling. My personal favourites are:
Bookends
Pub Rants
Nathan Bransford
USA agents are fantastic: they blog, they're accessible, they're fast on the turnaround and they mostly accept email submissions which makes it that much easier (and cheaper) for us to query widely.
UK agents are slower on the mark. Many of the agents still want snail mail submissions, they're quick to close their doors (with regards to my previous post, maybe this is a good thing rather than letting authors query with no chance because they're not currently looking) and their turnaround time is a lot slower - I've currently got a YA under consideration, and although it's gone from query to full request to full request via hard copy, it's been 6 months and counting - that's a long time in the land of agents.
Most agents accept submissions from anywhere in the world, that gives us two continents across which to query, query, query. There seems to be a quirky exception to this, and doesn't apply to all agents, but from my experience it seems like US agents are a a bit antsy about stories set in the UK, and vice versa. But any other country setting and you're fine across the borders.
And now (finally, you might say) we come to the reason that triggered this post...
Firstly, it was a post of the wonderful Kristin Nelson's blog, Pub Rants.
In answering some questions, she had this to say about a question on how long to wait before re-quering an agent with a new project after a rejection:
Of course we all differ on what the answer would be. That’s why publishing is so maddening to writers. For me, I’d say wait 4 weeks, then query with new project. But here’s the kicker. DO NOT mention that you have queried the agency before. Act like this is the first query ever that you are sending us. We get 150 queries a day. Chances are very good we won’t remember your name (unless you have a really unique name that is!) Writers for some reason feel obligated to tell us their whole prior history of our rejecting their queries. Don’t be seduced!
And she had this to say about re-subbing a previously rejected but revised story:
My suggestion? Change the title to something new. Sometimes titles stand out and it will sound familiar. In terms of time span, if you submitted queries and have received mainly rejection responses, I’d revise significantly, wait about 3 weeks, then resend. What can an agent do? Track you down and chastise you for resubmitting? Grin. Be bold. Now if you are rejected numerous times by same agent. Move on. Lots of other agent fishes in the sea.
She is so honest and candid, and this advice can be applied when subbing to publishers as well. Our baby might be precious to us and chiselled into our brains, but to the agent/editor it's one of thousands and there's a good chance they won't remember. Good idea to change the title and maybe even character names - and hopefully it would have been revised to an extent where you have something more/different to offer in the query/partial - basically after revision you do have a new story, so why not re-submit? This is a particularly sensitive topic when it comes to M&B because, let's face it, if they reject your story, you don't have many other options left to place it. But M&B is brilliant about giving decent feedback, enough to show you what is wrong and how you could improve. I've never really understood why they then suggest you send in something new rather than the revised ms (and I'm talking about rejection letter feedback, not revision letter feedback).
And secondly, I'd like to point you to a brilliant site, Miss Snark's First Victim. Every month she hosts a Secret Agent contest, where you post the first page of your ms and the secret agent reviews all the posts, gives feedback on whether she'd request more or why she'd stop reading, etc and the secret agent also selects winners and runner ups and the prizes vary from a critique to requests. The secret agent is revealed and she's had some great agents there, like Ginger Clark and Nathan Bransford from Curtis Brown, Kirstin Nelson, to name a few. Each contest is usually limited to a selection of genres, and throughout the contests most genres are frequently covered.
For me, the benefit here is more for the agent feedback than actually winning (although that would be great too). If you've got a couple of hundred hours to spare, you can also read through the archive of previous contests, and see which agents had what to say about which submissions. It's a great way to get inside an agent's head and understand what they're looking for - and, once again, I think this applies to editors as well.
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