I’ve always been fascinated by rainbows. As a child I was obsessed with chasing them, inconsolable when they disappeared into an empty sky. In adulthood they still make me smile, presenting a colourful element of mystery, magic and opportunity.

This week my time has been consumed with my website: meeting my web designer, discussing layout, writing content. A very exciting and engaging time (occasionally I pinch myself to make sure it’s real), but then he asked me that question – what about you?

Hmm. I love every aspect of writing. I’m in my element, filling my brain with new characters for a novel or researching, plotting and planning a new story. But ask about me, my own life, my inspirations, and I want to crawl into a little hole and hibernate.

After my recent interview with Peter Hobbs, many of you may be surprised to hear this. But it is so much easier to answer direct questions, especially if they’re asked in a humorous and quirky way. Being asked to sit down and write something about myself, makes my stomach fold.

It led me to think about my stories. When writing fiction we share our lives with imaginary characters, characters that are formed on the basis of what we have learnt, experienced, read, observed. Pieces of those characters inhabit our world, in some small way. We may not share their traits, but we researched them, formed them, know them inside out. (Depending on your genre, this can be quite a scary prospect.)

I considered this. If I can share my fictitious characters, a part of the world that only occupied my head previously, then why not myself? I am much more grounded (and a lot less interesting) than my major characters, that’s for sure.  So, I grasped my pen and wrote a few lines.

 As my website is finished, my book comes out and I bare a part my soul to the world, I think back to my little fascination and it gives me great comfort. I’m still chasing rainbows. Part of me hopes that I’ll never reach the end.

Jane Isaac’s first novel, An Unfamiliar Murder, will be released by Rainstorm Press in February 2012. Jane is still very much a Newbie and with a day job, a family and a very demanding black Labrador, she squeezes her writing into every spare moment she gets. Join her on the rocky road from pen to publication!

I know Halloween has been and gone this year, but I popped over to visit my mum yesterday and somehow the conversation turned to horror movies and books. We laughed at one of my many peculiarities, this one in relation to the horror and supernatural genres.

We discussed how my mother prefers the supernatural theme and dislikes ‘real’, human, murderous, evil killers, yet I find the more gruesome, gory, torturous deaths encountered in the book or film, the better. Whatever your opinion of the plot in the Saw film franchise, I can’t get enough of the ingenious methods that ‘Jigsaw’ comes up with to extinguish those he deems undeserving of life.

Fictional, sadistic, serial killers who are crueller than the human mind can contemplate; can’t put the book down!

Average, ordinary people killed and then raised from the dead to become brainless, flesh-eating creatures (zombies or otherwise); love it!

Demons, monsters, vampires, aliens; bring ‘em on.

But, sneak in a ghostly presence—even the kind, innocent, Casper-like type—and my heart races. I’m constantly spinning around to catch a glimpse of what might be behind me. I have to tuck my feet and legs up onto the lounge, too afraid to let them hang down within easy reach of the evil presence lurking below. As a child I didn’t have monsters in my cupboards, I had ghosts in my room – and it didn’t matter whether the lights were on or off. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why I’m so troubled by just this one particular aspect of the supernatural realm.

I’ve been addicted to reading for as long as I can remember. My mum tells me that she didn’t have to teach me to read – I demanded tuition from her at an early age. Later, in my ‘tween’ and teenage years, scary stories were my favourite. Admittedly, children’s horror is pretty mild, but I always enjoyed scaring myself silly.

After our conversation yesterday, I scolded myself. I’m an adult now, ‘ghost stories’ shouldn’t have this effect on me. But then this morning I was making a sandwich for myself and, completely out of nowhere, my glass cake stand (coincidentally a gift from my mother) toppled over and spun around on the benchtop after sitting securely in place for days without incident. Fortunately, I managed to leap across the room and prevent it from wobbling onto the floor and smashing into pieces. Was this a ghost trying to tell me something, or just an eerie coincidence?

I find this happens a lot when I’m reading. It doesn’t seem to depend on what the subject matter is—often something innocuous that I usually wouldn’t pay any attention to—but all of sudden my world is saturated with it. The first time I consciously realised this was when I was around 9 or 10 years old and addicted to The Baby-sitters Club books. One of the characters took up synchronised swimming which I had not previously heard of, but began to consider it to be quite elegant. Then, I started noticing the sport everywhere I looked. I think that the Commonwealth Games may have been happening around that time which could partially explain it, but I’ve found this phenomenon happens to me on a fairly regular basis and can originate from a main character’s interest or hobby, the location of a murder, a quirky personality trait of one of the characters… just about anything really.

These days, my book of choice is a good old whodunnit. My shelves are crammed with murder mysteries, but I will read just about any piece of writing I can get my hands on. I treasure the way reading can highlight things all around us that we may otherwise remain oblivious to because of the constant bombardment of stimuli from all directions. So much can be hidden in plain sight. Reading encourages you to recognise and appreciate much more than you could ever hope to otherwise experience.

Now that I’ve had this spooky conversation with my mother, and spent today concentrating on the horror genre, I’m sure to notice (even if it’s only in my imagination) all sorts of creepy, ghostly happenings in the coming days. Thanks Mum!

————————————————————————————
Emma is a freelance editor and writer who got her start at Newbie Writers two years ago. In her previous career she was an accountant, but escaped the numbers game to envelop herself in the literary world.

Emma’s Exceptional Editing & Proofreading
info@exceptionalediting.com.au
www.exceptionalediting.com.au
Follow me on Twitter: @EEEandP

Episode 10- Newbie Writers Podcast- Promotion! ‘If you write it, they will come?’

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/ten-great-ways-to-promote-your-book.html

http://www.ariionkathleenbrindley.com/5books.shtml

We have social media, which we discussed but how can you promote your work, or even just promote yourself and still stay comfortable in your own skin?
If you’ve paid attention, some attention to social media, featured in pod cast  Episode 6, you know that you need to build up friends and readers to help promote you and/or your books.
So what is the next step?

Go where the interest is.
Promotion is far more specific than just mailing or email press releases. And as much as my publicist friends swear by their elaborate Press Release packages, I’m not so sure that’s as effective as better placed, specifically placed promotion or notices.

Where are your readers?  Go there and post information or a conversation about your book or yourself.
Examples:  if your book features fishing, then promote to fishing groups, fishing outlets, fishing web sites.
Is your book about haunted houses?
Is it about new worlds?
Is it about real estate divas?
Figure out who your readers are, and then target those readers.

A strong piece of promotion is your bio.
Your bio, make it interesting and personal
In other words don’t list what you do, talk about why you do it.

Focus on how you are unique and what the message of your book is.

Prompting- Episode prompt.

Prompt:

When I travel, one of the activities I enjoy is touring castles, homes, museums and the like.
After one too many sincere tours however, I start itching to make up my own stories about the history of the castle, who fought there, who slept there, and what exactly do the images in the coat of arms mean.
What kind of stories do you think of when you tour a stately home?  Or even a stranger’s home?
What stories come to mind when you see a castle?

Bring Out Your Dead-

Listener submission/our own personal early piece of writing dredged up from the dust pile.

Catharine Bramkamp.
Miss Behaved guide to getting old:
The first is to die young. Say at 75 or so.
The second option is to live. If you are like some of us, one look at the C shape of many women in their 90s should send you screaming to the gym right now. So as counter intuitive as it may seem, if you think you’re going to live that long, you may want to take better care of yourself. Why? Because spending five to ten years sitting in a wheel chair in the hallway of a rest home is very, very boring.
Schedule the acquisition of bad habits. Start eating fatty food at 78. At 84 take up smoking. 89 pick an attractive illegal substance the effects of which you’ve always wanted to experience. At 97 stand on unstable chairs while changing the ceiling fixture light bulbs.
Insist on wearing your mink coat during a trip to San Francisco. It’s cold there in June.
Eat dessert after every meal, okay, you can start that one right now. We know a lovely Miss Behaved woman who, at 80, had diabetes. So she ate the right food and took very good care of herself, while being watched. When she escaped to have lunch at the Club, she ordered two margaritas and dessert with a small salad wedged between. She lived far longer than her children would have liked.

Word of the week

Wanion

In itself, wanion means “in the waning of the moon”. It’s from the Old English verb wanian, to lessen, from which we get wane. You may feel wanion is too mild and agreeable a word to be attached to a curse, but in bygone centuries the waning of the moon was thought to be an unlucky time. Various fixed expressions took on the word and the idea, such as with a (wild) wanion (with a plague or with a vengeance), a wanion on (a curse on) and fetch one a wanion (bring one a misfortune).

Don’t forget our competition for your chance to be published! http://www.newbiewriters.com/competitions

What’s happening next episode
Where to contact us: podcast@newbiewriters.com
www.yourbookstartshere.com
Outro

These past couple of months I have found myself in unchartered territory.  Honestly, I never expected to get a book deal and, perhaps naively, didn’t research what comes next.

I’ve talked about marketing and developing a platform already. I’m still navigating the learning curve there. I’ve done some more edits and I now understand how that all works.

My latest challenge was the book cover. How important is cover art? I’ve been a voracious reader of crime fiction for many years and it got me thinking – how much does the cover of a book really matter? Does anyone buy a book based on the cover?

My publisher house, Rainstorm Press, have been very supportive. They asked me for my ideas, wanted it to be something I was comfortable with and proud of. Hmmm. An Unfamiliar Murder is a crime thriller. I trawled my bookcases for ideas. But they are all so different, the only overriding theme was that they were all photographic covers and this seemed like a good idea, in keeping with the whole ‘keep it real’ theme.

Rainstorm put me in touch with their photographer. After much pondering, I chose a scene from the book, gave my ideas on colour schemes and sent the artist excerpts so that they could try to emulate the scene. I waited with bated breath.

Luckily, the photographer found an incredibly similar location and a very good likeness for one of my leading characters. We had to wait a few weeks before the leaves dropped off the trees for authenticity (the novel is sent in November in England), but the photos were taken.

The photographer sent me some stills and asked me to pick four photos that I liked best. Then she worked her magic and turned those stills into mock ups with different layouts of header and by-line. And I was able to choose my favourite.

It has been a great experience to be so involved with the cover art of my book and I’m delighted with the results. I can’t wait to share it with you all.

Jane Isaac’s first novel, An Unfamiliar Murder, will be released by Rainstorm Press in February 2012. Jane is still very much a Newbie, she doesn’t even have a website yet (one day…) and with a day job, a family and a very demanding black Labrador, she squeezes her writing into every spare moment she gets. Join her on the rocky road from pen to publication!

I took my children to swimming lessons today. My youngest, Peyton, is a water baby. She is only seven months old but seems to love everything about it. She splashes, kicks, giggles, coos—just does her best to look adorable really. Since I’ve been ill lately, it was hubby’s job to swim with her. Wouldn’t you know it, all the other mum’s fawned over him like he was Superdad. He certainly seemed to enjoy the attention too!

I, of course, was sitting responsibly by the other end of the pool where four year old, Lachlan, and two year old, Violet, were swimming in the ‘big kids’ class, without parents. Usually this is an extremely embarrassing experience for me on the side-lines because Violet has the most high-pitched wail you could imagine and in previous classes she didn’t let up for the entire lesson.

Today however, she was excited as soon as we arrived and hopped eagerly into the pool. She kicked, paddled, splashed, and went under the water—all with a big grin on her face. It was such a turnaround from last week that I couldn’t believe she was the same child.

This got me thinking that sometimes when we are too scared to try something new, we make excuses to avoid it (or, if you’re a toddler, throw a tantrum) But once we’ve done it for a while, we realise it’s actually not that bad, and could even be sort of fun.

This is how I’m starting to feel about blogging for Newbie Writers. Perhaps a lot of the reason that I kept putting it off and ‘not getting around to it’ was because I was too scared; too scared that I would fail. Worried that people would laugh at me. Terrified that I’d never recover from the embarrassment. What I found, however, is that the more I do it, the more fun it becomes.

I’ve ghostwritten hundreds of articles and columns for other people, but they paid to put their name on the work. If I wrote absolute garbage, nobody except my client would know. The worst that could happen would be to lose them as a client. I kept telling myself that when I finally had something that was ‘good enough’ to publish, I would.

As I look back over work I’ve done for clients over the past few years I realise that it’s actually not too bad. Obviously, I’m not Dickens or Hemingway, but who cares? What was I so worried about? The world is full of haters, and even if you were precise and perfect, there would be plenty of people who don’t love what you do – but so what? I enjoy reading, writing, editing, and words in general … and I’m doing this for me! So to all the newbies out there, don’t be afraid to let your manuscript out from under lock and key. Don’t be tempted to hide your work away until it’s ‘just right’. Get it out there. Listen to opinions and take advice on board, but don’t be crushed if people aren’t overenthusiastically exclaiming that you’re the best thing that happened to writing since Shakespeare. Imperfect writing can always be improved through your own revision and editing process or you could hire an independent editor to share their technical skills and offer an objective point of view.

What’s the point of creating outstanding writing and hiding it from the world? If you poured your heart and soul into a masterpiece that is never intended to be seen by anyone other than yourself, that’s okay. If you purposefully write purely to enjoy yourself, that’s okay too. By all means keep your work private and treasure it. But, if the reason you’re not putting yourself out there is fear, nerves, or intimidation, take the first step and you’ll probably find that once you get over that initial hesitation it’s a liberating experience. It won’t be long before the high-pitched wailing is replaced by an ear-to-ear grin and you look forward to that which you once feared.

————————————————————————————
Emma is a freelance editor and writer who got her start at Newbie Writers two years ago. In her previous career she was an accountant, but escaped the numbers game to envelop herself in the literary world.

Emma’s Exceptional Editing & Proofreading
info@exceptionalediting.com.au
www.exceptionalediting.com.au
Follow me on Twitter: @EEEandP

Newbie Writer’s Podcast- Show Notes

Episode 9: Nanowrimo and why it doesn’t involve your Nanna.

November 12, 2011

How to start your novel
With a nod to NaNoWriMo.

Damien is starting a novel
Catharine is starting a novel.
And we approach the start and the writing in two different ways.

Damien:  Explain how he starts his work which is  commonly referred to as the outline method.
Catharine starts hers by just writing whatever starts to come into her head. This is known – apparently officially – as seat of the pants writing.

Neither is better, but knowing how you manage your work at least helps validate your process.

NaNoWriMo.org is a International movement based on the idea that if we just get out of our own way, we can write a novel.

The very first NaNoWriMo took place in July, 1999, in the San Francisco Bay Area. That first year there were 21 of us, and our July noveling binge had little to do with any ambitions we might have harbored on the literary front. Nor did it reflect any hopes we had about tapping more fully into our creative selves. No, we wanted to write novels for the same dumb reasons twentysomethings start bands. Because we wanted to make noise. Because we didn’t have anything better to do. And because we thought that, as novelists, we would have an easier time getting dates than we did as non-novelists.
So sad. But so, so true.
The first year’s trials and tribulations are laid out in the introduction to No Plot? No Problem!, but the short version is that our novels, despite our questionable motives and pitiful experience, came out okay. Not great. But not horrible, either. And, more surprising than that, the writing process had been really, really fun.
Fun was something we hadn’t expected. Pain? Sure. Embarrassment? Yes. Crippling self-doubt followed by a quiet distancing of ourselves from the entire project? You bet.
But fun? Fun was a revelation. Novel-writing, we had discovered, was just like watching TV. You get a bunch of friends together, load up on caffeine and junk food, and stare at a glowing screen for a couple hours. And a story spins itself out in front of you.
I think the scene—full of smack-talk and muffin crumbs on our keyboards—would have rightly horrified professional writers. We had taken the cloistered, agonized novel-writing process and transformed it into something that was half literary marathon and half block party.
We called it noveling. And after the noveling ended on August 1, my sense of what was possible for myself, and those around me, was forever changed. If my friends and I could write passable novels in a month, I knew, anyone could do it.
Quick stats for NaNoWriMo:

1999: 21 participants and six winners

2010: 200,500 participants and 37, 500 winners.  Catharine won last year and is editing that manuscript as we speak, but she’s dragging her feet.

NaNoWriMo works well for both the outliner and the seat of the pants writer.  The idea of banging out 50,000 words, regardless of their worth, is both scary and exhilarating.
The seat of the pantser will  discover what some of her characters really want to say because she’s not overthinking.
The outliner will get something written rather than creating and plotting but not actually writing.

Prompt:

I love eating in a foreign country because I really do know I will never taste this food again, so I eat as much as I want.  It’s a great excuse.  Have you enjoyed the perfect food?  Have you experienced a meal you knew  you’d never encounter  again?  Where were you?  What was it like?

Bring out your dead

Emma from Exceptional Editing and Proofreading submitted this:
I’ve had an embarrassing search through my old stuff and found something you are free to use for bring out your dead if you like.
I wrote this about 10 years ago when I first got to uni – I think I was about 17/18
============================
Screeeeeeech. Just as I was about to step onto the street, a car screamed past at a million miles an hour. Irritated, I gave the retreating car a dirty glance and started to cross the road, but whirled around upon hearing an almighty crash.
The very same car that had almost run me down was now a crumpled heap – debris scattered all over the road. Without thinking I started running towards the car, hoping that the occupants were okay, but certain there was no way anyone could have survived the crash. All traces of irritation were long gone by the time I reached the mangled wreck. I rang 000 as I was running and, by the time I reached the car, the operator assured me that the ambulance and police were on their way.
I peered through a window of the upside down car and felt relief that the driver was the only person in the car and she appeared to be alive. Hurt – seriously hurt – but alive.
============================
I wrote about 5 chapters and the basic plot was that the lady in the car was on her way to pay a ransom but crashed on the way. My character finds the suitcase full of money and the dying woman begs her to complete the drop-off to save her sister. My character takes the suitcase before the cops arrive and sets out to complete a series of tasks set by the kidnapper. It was a complete fizzer. Lol.

Word of the week.

PANKING POLE

The word is now rare, and requires a person with long memories to bring the details to mind:

Still running the 50-acre orchard at Breinton planted by her father, Miss Bulmer’s lifetime experience of growing and harvesting the apples for the cider mills comes alive in this well-illustrated account. She recalls “gangs” of women in the 40s picking up apples off the ground for a shilling (5p) a sack, or £1 a ton, after the fruit had been shaken off the trees with a “panking pole”.

Contest:

Re-iterate the contest we have. Rainstorm Press yadda yadda

Outro

www.newbiewriters.com
@newbiewriters
@cbramkamp
www.yourbookstartshere.com

Doctors warn against keeping old cosmetics for a very good reason. I’ve just experienced the fallout of not following this advice first hand. Yes, guilty as charged. I used an old tube of mascara and gave myself a nasty eye infection. Don’t I feel stupid.

I dragged myself to the GP who referred me to a specialist after I showed no signs of improvement over four days, and they agreed that the best treatment is to just put up with it until it heals on its own. Perhaps I was just feeling sorry for myself but the specialist appeared almost gleeful when he explained that I hadn’t even reached the peak of the illness yet, and it’s going to get worse for the next four to five days before I start to recover.

What this means is that I’m currently hiding away from the world lest some passerby recoil in horror upon catching a glimpse of what used to be a normal-looking eye. The silver lining I suppose is that I’m getting lots of work done since I’m sitting at home at my computer all day. To the lovely woman whose book I am currently editing, I know you’ve been waiting patiently and these last few days have been a great opportunity to catch up, so you should see the results quite soon.

The other thing I’ve finally had the opportunity to do is to sign up to Twitter. I still don’t quite know how it all works and I’ve already been getting spammed by authors spruiking, “BUY MY BOOK. BUY MY BOOK.” Notice how the spammers always seem to use caps? (Damien – you might like to include “spruiking” as an Australian term in the upcoming podcast on slang.) Regardless of the teething problems, in my initial foray into the world of tweets I did come across a great little tip which I retweeted for my followers:

When you’re sick of editing your own work, you should print it in a different font with different margins. It works!

I love this tip. When you’re reviewing your own writing it’s too easy to read what you want to see, or for your brain to remember what it’s supposed to say, rather than the words that are actually on the page. If, like me, you focus on your manuscript until you’ve basically memorised the whole thing, you’re very likely to miss obvious errors. As an editor, I’m often able to recall odd things like: the protagonist bought an iced coffee at the bottom of the first page of Chapter Eight. Then, when I discover in Chapter Fourteen that the character is severely lactose intolerant, I can flick straight back to the correct section to change that iced coffee into an iced tea – saving the protagonist (and the reader) from a nasty bathroom break. However, the author who described the medical condition often believes they have been consistent the whole way through. By changing the appearance, you artificially put a brand new manuscript in front of you, making it significantly easier to proofread and edit – and yourself less likely to falsely ‘remember’ that you’d changed the type of drink.

Another thing people have a tendency to overlook is mistakes, especially doubled-up or misplaced words, at the end of a line of text. By changing the size of the font, the number of words on each line changes and you may find that the error is moved to the middle of the page, making it much more noticeable.

Whilst this is a great tip when self-editing your work, please, please, please, remember to reformat your manuscript in accordance with the publisher’s or agent’s requirements before you send it away. Believe me, they don’t look favourably on strange, oddly-sized font and most will simply issue an automatic rejection unless you adhere to the submission guidelines.

On that note, I must get back to editing this novel – my client is itching to submit it to a publisher, and I also can’t wait to see the completed manuscript. If any readers have specific questions or issues you’d like to hear more about, send me an email or leave a comment here and I’ll try to address it in a future post.

————————————————————————————
Emma is a freelance editor and writer who got her start at Newbie Writers two years ago. In her previous career she was an accountant, but escaped the numbers game to envelop herself in the literary world.

Emma’s Exceptional Editing & Proofreading
info@exceptionalediting.com.au
www.exceptionalediting.com.au
Follow me on Twitter: @EEEandP

Hey here are the show notes to Episode 8- Publishing Part Deux!

Don’t forget our competition! Notes below this one!

Hey we have a permalink to the competition on the sidebar to the right. Can find it here:

http://www.newbiewriters.com/competitions

Intro
Bit of a recap on last show.
Hard copy
Electronic.

Hardcopy:
The Traditional way:
Get an agent (time, about a year)
Agent shops manuscript (time, about a year)
Publishers buys the book (no you will not get a million dollar advance) And it will take about two more years to release the book.
No more guarantees of support, marketing or help
If your first books fails to earn back the advance, you may not get a second chance.
Average royalty is about $1.00 per hard copy book.

Hardcopy
The new way:
POD – Print on Demand
Advantage is there is lower print cost, books are created as they are ordered – save trees!
POD is not necessarily Vanity press, rather a newer model that many different kinds of publishers are employing.
Simple but not necessarily easy
For fiction POD yourself or use Create Space.com

ISBN- What?

International Standard Book Number
For non fiction especially if you are doing your book as an extension of your work, become your own publisher and print with Lightening source.
You will need to go to Browker.com and buy ISBNs and then purchase the actual JPEG of the bar code for that number. Cost is about $175 or so.
And yes, bookstores will take your books, usually on consignment. But that’s pretty much what the deal is with “big” publishers anyway. If the books do not sell, the bookstore sends the books back – to everyone.

Use Smashwords.com to create your ebook format (free) and make sure you have a fabulous book cover – in ebooks, the cover (not the back) sells the book.
Pricing free to 12.99 for download. Depending on your strategy. Make more money per sale on e-books.

Competition Details:

‘Newbie Writers and Rainstorm Press have teamed up to offer the ultimate newbie experience!

We want to read about your worst nightmare! With Halloween still lingering creepily behind us, what a great chance to come up with a short scary story?! Take a dream you’ve had and turn it into a fictional horror story. One way to describe this contest is the idea that any experience can be turned into a story, so in this case, your worst nightmare can become your best story.  Send it to us! Catharine and Damien from the podcast will be the judges!

The best ten entries will be published in a collection by Rainstorm Press, with a copy going to each winning entrant. Current working title is “Newbie Nightmares.”

Out of the ten stories chosen, the top pick will not only be published in the collection but the author will receive the opportunity to submit a full length piece to have a novel published by Rainstorm Press. Final publication and publishing agreement will be at the discretion of Rainstorm Press.

This competition will run from the 10th of November 2011 to 10th of December 2011 with winners notified by email and posted up on www.newbiewriters.com on the 15th of December.

Entries need to be between 3,000 and 10,000 words and submitted in standard word document format. Please ensure the story is in the body of the email and not a file attachment. File attachments will be disregarded. Also ensure your name, the title of the story and the competition name are in the title and body of your email. This allows for better tracking of submissions for us.

Entrants must be previously unpublished (articles in magazines are okay) as we want to appeal to all those new writers out there. This could be your chance to have something published!

All submissions need to be mailed to competition@newbiewriters.com’

Terms and Conditions:

1. All entrants must be 18 years and over unless written consent is provided with submission from parent/guardian.
2. All works submitted will remain the ownership of the author and not Newbie Writers or Rainstorm Press. However, the ten (10) winners of the competition that will have their works collaborated and printed in the Anthology then become exclusive first time world rights for a year from publication date to Rainstorm Press. After that the rights move to non-exclusive rights. This will form part of an agreement contract issued to you upon being selected as one of the ten (10) by Rainstorm Press.
3. By submitting your work to this competition you are agreeing that the works are yours and original. Any copyright infringement will be solely the authors responsibility.
4. This competition contains no actual prize money, the prize(s) are in the form of a published works with each winning entrant receiving their own copy.
5. By submitting work to this competition, you agree that Newbie Writers and Rainstorm Press can use the submissions on their website to further promote not only future competitions but you as an author. If you do not wish for this work to be displayed on either site, then notify us via competition@newbiewriters.com
6. Each winning entry (10 total) will receive a contract from Rainstorm Press that will require your signature as a statement of agreement and to allow your works to be officially published.

*Bring Out Your Dead*
The Exhumation of Samantha Peterson
Samantha Peterson was the first body to be exhumed. The official cause of death was from natural causes, but the Peterson family didn’t accept the coroner’s explanation. In this day and age no one really dies from natural causes at the age of 52. They knew about Samantha’s secret experimental drug testing occupation and they had reason to believe the medication took her life.After six months of pleading their case to religious authorities and arguing through court spectacles, the Peterson family was granted full exhumation privileges. They were finally able to give their family closer once a private autopsy was conducted. No one expected what happen next.

Lyle Perez.

Writing Prompt:
(Even when away Catharine still comes up with the goods!)
What would you do with a gazillion dollars? (It used to be a billion dollars but we are accounting for inflation). This can be a list, a story, a cautionary tale.

Word of the Week from www.worldwidewords.org
SNOLLYGOSTER
This is another of that set of extroverted and fanciful words that originated in the fast-expanding United States of the nineteenth century. I see a snollygoster as a outsized individual with a carpetbag, flowered waistcoat, expansive demeanour and a large cigar. It actually refers to a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.

Where to contact us: podcast@newbiewriters.com
www.yourbookstartshere.com
www.rainstormpress.com

Outro

Hey we have a permalink to the competition on the sidebar to the right. Can find it here:http://www.newbiewriters.com/competitions

Here is the spiel:

‘Newbie Writers and Rainstorm Press have teamed up to offer the ultimate newbie experience!

We want to read about your worst nightmare! With Halloween still lingering creepily behind us, what a great chance to come up with a short scary story?! Take a dream you’ve had and turn it into a fictional horror story. One way to describe this contest is the idea that any experience can be turned into a story, so in this case, your worst nightmare can become your best story.  Send it to us! Catharine and Damien from the podcast will be the judges!

The best ten entries will be published in a collection by Rainstorm Press, with a copy going to each winning entrant. Current working title is “Newbie Nightmares.”

Out of the ten stories chosen, the top pick will not only be published in the collection but the author will receive the opportunity to submit a full length piece to have a novel published by Rainstorm Press. Final publication and publishing agreement will be at the discretion of Rainstorm Press.

This competition will run from the 10th of November 2011 to 10th of December 2011 with winners notified by email and posted up on www.newbiewriters.com

Entries need to be between 3,000 and 10,000 words and submitted in standard word document format. Please ensure the story is in the body of the email and not a file attachment. File attachments will be disregarded. Also ensure your name, the title of the story and the competition name are in the title and body of your email. This allows for better tracking of submissions for us.

Entrants must be previously unpublished (articles in magazines are okay) as we want to appeal to all those new writers out there. This could be your chance to have something published!

All submissions need to be mailed to competition@newbiewriters.com’

Terms and Conditions:

1. All entrants must be 18 years and over unless written consent is provided with submission from parent/guardian.
2. All works submitted will remain the ownership of the author and not Newbie Writers or Rainstorm Press. However, the ten (10) winners of the competition that will have their works collaborated and printed in the Anthology then become exclusive first time world rights for a year from publication date to Rainstorm Press. After that the rights move to non-exclusive rights. This will form part of an agreement contract issued to you upon being selected as one of the ten (10) by Rainstorm Press.
3. By submitting your work to this competition you are agreeing that the works are yours and original. Any copyright infringement will be solely the authors responsibility.
4. This competition contains no actual prize money, the prize(s) are in the form of a published works with each winning entrant receiving their own copy.
5. By submitting work to this competition, you agree that Newbie Writers and Rainstorm Press can use the submissions on their website to further promote not only future competitions but you as an author. If you do not wish for this work to be displayed on either site, then notify us via competition@newbiewriters.com
6. Each winning entry (10 total) will receive a contract from Rainstorm Press that will require your signature as a statement of agreement and to allow your works to be officially published.

Damien

Hey everyone,

Do yourself a favour and check out this interview with Jane Isaac!

Peter Hobbs interview with Jane Isaac!

Damien