Sheila's Guests and Reviews

Is it really October? How did we get there? The leaves are falling but the sky's still blue. Spiders are blooming... ughghgh! And I spent the morning pulling ivy (and spiders) from the walls of the house, and digging green leaves with yellow flowers (which also have spiders) from round the foundation. Then I curled up on the sofa with a headache and dreamed of spiders. So, October's the month of Halloween isn't it? That explains the Squidboo challenge over on Squidoo, and I actually got myself a trophy yesterday for posting my October drabbles there. Meanwhile I'm writing October dribbles this year, and trying to make stories in fifty words. But here's the absolute best ever news about October: Gypsy Shadow Publishing, who published my eBook Refracted , are one year old this month, and they're celebrating by giving one lucky reader a free eBook each day. How cool is that? So head on over to Gypsy Shadow's Birthday Celebration and read all about it. It...

This one was another gather challenge, from the Genre Shorties group. The piece has to be 100 words or less, and should be a newspaper article about Cell phones, Reality TV shows, High calorie foods, The Weather, or The price of beans. I might use it again sometime, but I wrote my drabble about cell phones. And I emailed a submission to an agent that I met at the Muse Online . If you're not there this year, and you're looking for great writing tips, great internet tips, great connections, great advice, etc... well, I'd certainly recommend you sign up for the next one.

It's Wednesday again. It must be time for Gather's Wednesday Writing Essentials . I feel like I've scarcely got time to think this week, with the Muse conference to attend, but I'm sure I can manage the odd hundred words. So, here's the prompt that I read when I logged on this morning: • include the thoughts of an animal • something needs to be incongruous • use the Visual Thesaurus' Word-of-the-Day on the day that you write to this prompt • use the word happy or sad, but not both A quick trip to the dreaded Visual Thesaurus yielded "swashbuckler" for the word, so, knights and animals... There used to be a swashbuckling fox on childrens' TV in England. I don't remember much about him, except he wore plumes in his hats and he was, well, swashbuckling... But that got me placing my knight on a trusty steed with a fox in the trees. Something incongruous? Well, it is October, and if you've been following my drabble blog, you'll know I've...

I met an editor at Wordstock on Saturday; she said I should send one of my novels to her, so I skipped round the room in delight. Today, at the Muse Online Conference , another editor asked for one of my novellas. (A third said no, but hey; that's okay. I'd rather know upfront that it wouldn't work.) There's also the possibility of sending a children's picture book out, but I'll wait till I've learned a bit more about how from one the Muse's great chats. And then there's my one about math... The Muse is great - you should try it next year. Great chats. Great workshops. Great opportunities. And life is exciting and busy. But one day soon I want to write. Still, I did write a drabble for Halloween - albeit a very quick one: My drabble blog