Variant Giveaway to Celebrate Writing Season

As you might have noticed, it’s November—my most favorite month of the year.

Goodbye farming, and hello writing season! I celebrated by attending an awesome writers retreat by Park City, with twenty other writers including Lisa Mangum, Kirk Shaw, Annette Lyon, Danyelle Ferguson, Ali Cross, C.K. Bryant, and many others from Authors Incognito that I'm grateful to call friends.  

Imagine 4 days in a condo/cabin by Park City, Utah, where everyone has a quiet nook of their own to plug in and write. There were enough of us there that we only had to help with one meal for the whole time. Can you imagine? Meals done, quiet time, no kids, almost no calls, and house full of people who shared your same passion for writing. After months of busting my rear on the farm, it was exactly what I needed. We also had prizes for word count sprints, early birds and night owls.

If you ever have the chance to go to a retreat, do it. You deserve it.

To celebrate writing season, I’m giving away 2 copies of Variant by Robinson Wells, a hot new YA dystopian that has been heralded as having the best YA twist since Enders Game. Also, Publishers Weekly has named Variant as one of the best books of 2011. That’s some high praise, my friends.

You can read the synopsis and some of its great reviews on goodreads here.

There are a couple of other great reasons why I chose to give Variant away. Bottom line: it’s an excellent book from a deserving author. If you’ve ever thought of buying it, today is a good day.

TO ENTER the Variant giveaway:

Follow my blog and leave a comment with your email like myemail AT wherever DOT com so spammers don’t find you.

If you would like to tweet or Facebook about the Book Bomb or this post, then you win good Karma and my appreciation for passing it on. J

I'll draw a winner on November 20th!

So, to all you crazy nanowrimoers out there, good luck! (and don’t forget to occasionally do boring things like eat, sleep, speak to your family, and bathe.) To everyone else, may you have a very excellent writing season. I know I will.

COLORLESS took second...again!

Boy what a busy time this has been for me! I've been picking corn, harvesting other produce, making the corn maze, & hauling pumpkins. This picture shows one of the many loads we did today. Tell you what, the kids fell into their beds as soon as we were done.

But in the middle of all that, I entered the first chapter of COLORLESS into another contest and took 2nd place! This one was hosted by Authors Incognito. The cool part is that the other gals who placed 3rd & 1st are really wonderful, published authors. I'm happy to even be on the same page as they are.

Here's a look at the results...

The good news on the home front is that I'll be done with farming and back to writing full time on November 1st! Yay! I've registered for a writer's retreat that first week of November as my reward for working my rear off for no pay all year long.

It's great to get the feedback that people understand and enjoy my writing.

Have you ever gotten that one special feedback that just made your day?

My IRL Update

Hello all you awesome writer cyber-buddies!

I’m overdue for an update on how things are going here on the farm in real life. Did you forget I farm? The title of my blog was a hint, but you can check out the farm here if you like. Goddess of the Corn sounds so much better than Unpaid Grunt Worker--don't you think? 

Well, since the untimely demise of my laptop, my computer time has been extremely limited due to harvest season. Most of my day is spent outside walking though miles (not an exaggeration) of sweet corn rows and picking hundreds of dozens of corn. When I’m not doing that, I’m selling the corn and other fresh veggies out of the garage. I’m also hustling to get ready for the corn maze since every 4th grader in all of Pocatello will be coming to my farm the last 3 days of September. That’s around 1,200 kids, my friends.

The highlight of the day today was word from my husband (computer wiz extraordinaire) that my new laptop will be delivered Monday! This means that in-between helping customers, I’ll be able to access the computer, write, and catch-up on all the wonderful blog posts from you all that I’ve been missing for the last month and a half.

I’ve discovered that my muse hates writing with pen & ink. My first novel was written on the computer and writing without one feels off to me. The result is that I've been taking notes in the notebooks and reading several books a week. (My husband thinks I'm addicted to books--he may be right)

What about you? Have you found that one way of writing meshes best with your creativity? Do you prefer paper, computer or cave drawings perhaps?