Winner of the Wednesday Blog Book Review Party and Blog Spotlight!

*all winners are selected by Random Number Generator *

And the winner of the Book Prize Package from Wednesday's Review Party is...

(**Drums Rolling in the Background**)

Congratulations to The New Dork Review of Books!



Be sure to check out The New Dork Review of Books and leave a comment!


Send me your shipping address for the Books.

Warms-
CYM

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Friday's Musings

This weeks edition of books, articles & the internet!

1.  10 Handy Iphone Apps for Better Blogging...Blogging isn’t just writing posts. Blogging means to maintain or update a blog. You need to constantly monitor your blog’s content, images, videos etc. Here is the list of 10 handy iPhone apps which can make your blog more flexible.

2.  Top Five Things I’ve Learned About Working with Book Bloggers...So, here are the top five things I’ve learned working with book bloggers. Maybe it’ll help you, dear reader, when you’re pitching books online. Hope it does!

3. Ten Books Every Woman Should Read...A Chick Lit book, really, by nature, is meant to be a book that is written for a female reader. And I am here today to give you a top ten of sorts; Ten Books I Think Every Woman Should Read. Now, I could probably sit here and spit out about 100 books I think every woman I know should read…but these are the first ten that came to mind, and if you haven’t read them, HOP TO IT.

4. Cute Back to School Printable Book Plate...Hello friends! Can you believe summer is over and a whole new school year has begun? Time flies, doesn’t it? Well, we have some FUN printables to share with you.

~XOXO~

Beachbrights

(guest blogger)

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Book Review Party Wednesday - LIVE!

This week in lieu of an Amazon eGC, I am giving away 4 books!
Sanctus
No Rest for the Dead
Spycatcher
Outlander
+some little extra surprises!

<a href="http://cymlowell.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="CymLowell" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2442/3960797566_f11cfb2f41_o.jpg" /></a>

Welcome to Book Review Party Wednesday.

It is real simple. Link up any (old or new, any genre) book review that you have
written to the below MckLinky.

A couple of things to remember while you're linking.

1. Add a permalink to your specific post, not the main page of your blog (only one review per blog).
2. Add my Book Review Wednesday Badge or a link-back to the party at the end of your review post.
3. List the name of your blog, Title of Book or Genre. Be sure to use spaces and limit characters to 50. For example: The Lost Symbol, thriller

4. Become a follower of my blog, pretty please (not mandatory).
5. Visit the other linked up reviews and leave comments....it's a party, have fun!
6. I will announce the winner in a weekend post. The winner is chosen from the linked up reviewers using Random Number Generator. All included.

I am so excited to be reading all the reviews! This is always so much fun and gives me the opportunity to add new books to my list (& now check out book covers).

-CYM

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AgentFest from Thrillerfest 2011 PART TWO

AgentFest at ThrillerFest 2011

The second part of Thrillerfest was AgentFest, which was conducted on Thursday afternoon, 7 July 2011. The purpose of AgentFest is bring together thriller writers looking for an agent to handle their stories and agents looking for writers who could be attractive investments.

I am an aspiring writer. I do love to write thrillers. But like every other author, I recognize that it is bound to be a slow process. Like a finely crafted plot, escalation from newbie to best-selling author is a journey to be undertaken with patience and persistence.

From the standpoint of agents interested in thriller writers, AgentFest provides an excellent opportunity to interview as many as 30 writers. Agents are largely compensated based on their commission from sales of manuscripts and ancillary rights. Accordingly, decisions on the writers in whom to invest their time and energy are critical for the agents’ own economic success. Betting on writers is a lot like investing in race horses. There is no sure fire way to find the next J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown, and both of them surely had mountains of rejection notices.

In my case, I had an agent with a fine reputation for one year and he then went in-house. Accordingly, I was delighted to participate in AgentFest this year. I did so last year and plainly learned from the experience.

The process spans 2.5 hours with a brief break in the middle. The format is like speed-dating, with each session lasting 3 minutes. Some were faster (where there was little or no interest on either side) and others somewhat longer. There were 65 agents in attendance this year. Their names and biographical information are available on the ThrillerFest 2011 website.

My strategy was to select the agents who seemed to have interest in my type of story (international thriller). Rather than seeing as many as possible, I tried to be patient, waiting in lines as needed to go down my list. I practiced my pitch to get it down to no more than 30 words, which could be said calmly in just a few seconds. Like the opening of a story, success comes from securing the hook early.

My pitch for Dust Scenario: The global economic order will collapse unless a mother and an Aborigine ex-commando can free her children, kidnapped by instigators of the attack to prevent her from revealing the truth.

I was delighted with the results. I pitched to 12 agents, 8 of whom requested a synopsis and portions of the manuscript that I pitched. I also got a lot of fascinating feedback of the concept of the story. I am continuing to revise the manuscript and will send in the requested portions when I have been through it a few more times. In a future blog, I will discuss the writing learning that I derived from ThrillerFest this year. A critical element of the learning is to relentlessly edit and hone the manuscript so that readers turn the pages with their own relentlessness.

I am constantly amazed at how much I have to learn, and how exciting it is to do so.

Warms, Cym

You can read PART ONE here.

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Winner of the Wednesday Blog Book Review Party and Blog Spotlight!

*all winners are selected by Random Number Generator *

And the winner of the Amazon Gift Card ($15 value) from Wednesday's Review Party is...

(**Drums Rolling in the Background**)

Congratulations to Book Diary!



Be sure to check out Book Diary and leave a comment!


Send me your email address for the Amazon eGC.

Warms-
CYM

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Friday's Musings

Another addition of this week's internet findings!

1. Publishing A Book: 7 Cost-Effective Self-Publishing Services: Publishing is always a painful issue for the author, as they might be excellent on writing, but suffers when it comes to decide the publishing format, cover design and budget planning. The great news is, there are quality publishing services arise nowadays to help you to publish your book in a quality yet cost-effective manner.

2. Book Review Clichés I’d Like To See: Every profession has its own peculiar jargon, but the language of book reviewers probably comes under more scrutiny than that of any other group (except politicians).

3. 5 Book Websites That Give You Sample Chapters To Read Online: Online previews replicate the feeling of paging through a book in a bookstore. Well, not exactly, because sometimes you have a cup of coffee to go along with it. I am not complaining because online book stores give you some social joys but they can’t win all the battles when it comes to the convenience of buying and reading books. If you are a book lover, what’s your take on this? Do you know of any other book preview websites?


4. My kind of Book Store...Kate Spade Style!

XOXO-
beachbrights
(guest blogger)

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Book Review Party Wednesday - LIVE!

<a href="http://cymlowell.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="CymLowell" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2442/3960797566_f11cfb2f41_o.jpg" /></a>

Welcome to Book Review Party Wednesday.

It is real simple. Link up any (old or new, any genre) book review that you have
written to the below MckLinky.

A couple of things to remember while you're linking.

1. Add a permalink to your specific post, not the main page of your blog (only one review per blog).
2. Add my Book Review Wednesday Badge or a link-back to the party at the end of your review post.
3. List the name of your blog, Title of Book or Genre. Be sure to use spaces and limit characters to 50. For example: The Lost Symbol, thriller

4. Become a follower of my blog, pretty please (not mandatory).
5. Visit the other linked up reviews and leave comments....it's a party, have fun!
6. I will announce the winner in a weekend post. The winner is chosen from the linked up reviewers using Random Number Generator. All included.

I am so excited to be reading all the reviews! This is always so much fun and gives me the opportunity to add new books to my list (& now check out book covers).

-CYM

Read More