Brenda Drake . . . under the influence of coffee: January 2011

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Blogfest Contest! ...with prizes from agent Weronika Janczuk

Hey guys, come join in on the fun for my It was a Dark and Stormy Blogfest Contest. The fabulous agent Weronika Janczuk from D4EO Literary Agency will be handing out prizes!

How we're doing it: Sign up on the linky below. On February 7 and 8, post the first line of your finished manuscript (any genre) on your blog to get critiques from your followers and then hop around to the other participants' sites and give critiques. Polish your line and enter it into the comments of the contest post on February 9 like this:

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Name: Brenda Drake

Title: Annika Britanika: Around the World in 80:45:07

Genre: MG Steampunk

Maximillian Drayson didn't quite like girls, but he figured Annika Britanika was different.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, that's from a work in process and probably isn't a great example, but you get the format, right? Great.

Now about the agent and prizes:

Weronika Janczuk

Weronika (pronounced 'Veronica') Janczuk is a writer and an agent with D4EO Literary. She also writes YA, literary, and historical fiction, and blogs about it here. I'll be posting an interview with Weronika here on the blog sometime before the contest so come back and check it out.

Prizes from Weronika:

1st place -- a critique of the first 50 pages + query

2nd place -- a critique of the first 25 pages + query

3rd place -- a critique of the query

Weronika is definitely one of my favorite agents and she's so generous! Follow her on twitter here.

I <3 my followers! Don't forget to follow me - I'll be doing drawings from my follower list and giving out some awesome gifts during my Birthday month of March (don't bother asking my age). :D

Before you leave, check out a new blog site that I contribute to on every other Monday. CA Marshall, agent intern, freelance editor, and writer extraordinaire has a great post up on revising today. A special editing prize will be drawn from the followers on the DNA WRITERS' site on contest day so go and follow, you'd be glad you did!


Click here to follow and enter for the edit prize: DNA WRITERS

Okay, what are you waiting for? Sign up now!

116 comments

Monday, January 17, 2011

A New Blog Site Launch ...

DNA WRITERS - Writing Is In Our Blood

Today's coffee is from a bag of Starbuck's French Roast without creamer. I don't even want to talk about why I'm foregoing creamer, just saying. *cringes while sipping bland coffee*

My NaNoWriMo buddies, Cassandra, Shelley, Erica, and Kari, along with our newest buds, Diana and Janelle, have launched a new blog site DNA WRITERS - Writing Is In Our Blood. I contribute about my writing journey and all the mistakes that I've made on the blog every other Monday. So check out my post about my first mistake here today. I hope you'll stop by the site and get to know the other contributors and follow us. We're going to have a big launch party with prizes soon!

Check back here on Wednesday for information on my next blogfest. There will be awesome prizes like the last blogfest I held. If you didn't participate in my last fest go here to see what the heck I'm talking about.

Also, I hope to be passing along some awards that I received recently from Chris Ledbetter and Jodi Henry. Thanks guys -- you're awesome!

That's it until Wednesday. Slurp! Ugh.

13 comments

Monday, January 10, 2011

The order of things ... rules are meant to be broken sometimes

Okay, today's coffee is Starbuck's French Roast with vanilla creamer. It's my drug of choice these days, since I was stupid enough to answer the phone and agree to go back to work temporarily part-time at my old company. With all the holiday happenings, adjusting to work, and the mother board on my computer blowing out (sounds like something from Star Wars, yeah?) has put me way behind on posting on my blog and revising my novel. This morning I woke up feeling less stress, since I was able to finish some long promised critiques. Tonight, I hope to get a lot of reading done on blog sites, which I'm excited about. I think I finally have a schedule down.

With that said, my son asked me the other day what syntax was, he actually joked that it sounded like Anthrax, which was close, in my opinion. When I first started writing, syntax was a hard thing to understand. It's simply the order of things in your sentences and phrases. Normal syntax is a basic pattern of subject, verb and object order.

Irregular syntax is like speaking like Yoda, such as "A cup of coffee she did drink." It mixes the normal order of a sentence. As writers we can use irregular syntax sprinkled throughout our novels in a more poetic effect. Such as this, "In a feeling of uncertainty, we looked longingly face to face, my eyes on him as his on me, within our tight embrace." It's probably a poor example, but there you have it, an irregular syntax.

So, if game you are, post a comment in irregular syntax form for fun. I leave you with an irregular syntax quote from a very famous little person, which I feel is perfect for describing our paths to getting published.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
-- Yoda

One more thing, I will be having another blogfest contest coming up with prizes so check back soon.

22 comments