Feeling Inspired?

Where does the inspiration come from? It's the question I'm most often asked when interviewed. 

For me, inspiration is found in many places. Almost always it comes when my senses are inflamed. For example:

1. The calming feeling of being outside is naturally inspiring. Walking with leaves at my feet, the sun on my hair and water flowing nearby is always invigorating and consequently, I find myself quickly jotting down notes. But it isn't only nature that does this to me. 

2. I can find inspiration at the local mall as well. I generally find a nice busy spot and people watch. I create stories for the "characters" I see walk by. I listen, (yes, I know it might be considered rude,) to conversations. Some of my most favorite quotes have come from people I don't know.

3. On warm spring days you will often find me laying in a hammock with my eyes closed. If you, like my husband, were to ask me what I'm doing, you'd learn I'm working. Yes, napping, relaxing, long baths, all those also give me inspiration.

4. Music is another way I am inspired. Lately I've been using spa music, but I'm not picky, rock, hip-hop and rap have also worked depending upon what I'm working on. In fact, when I'm struggling with a particular story line, most often music is what will take me through to the other side of the challenge. 

5. I'm surprised, but occasionally when I'm sitting down to a fantastic meal, it also stirs the creative in me.  When food dances on my palate and the taste comes together to create the unforgettable, I can't help but record it all in detail.

6. Where else has inspiration called? Rose gardens, movie theaters, and the kitchen when I'm baking cookies or even washing dishes. It calls when I'm reading non-fiction or watching a documentary.

Really, inspiration is always calling to us. It's just that sometimes we become to busy to listen, to notice, to feel. So inspiration comes when we allow the muse to get our attention. Let your muse speak to you through your senses. The results are amazing. Good luck!    

           ________________________________________________________________

D. Jean Quarles is a writer of Women's Fiction. She loves to tell stories of personal growth – where success has nothing to do with money or fame, but of living life to the fullest. She is the author of Rocky's Mountains, Fire in the Hole and, Perception, her latest book dealing with the subject of death and the afterlife. The Mermaid, an award winning short story was published in the anthology, Tales from a Sweltering City.

She is a wife, mother, grandmother and business coach. In her free time . . . ha! ha! ha! Anyway, you can find more about D. Jean Quarles, her writing and her books at her website at www.djeanquarles.com

Her novels are available in electronic format here, or print format here. 

You can also follower her at www.djeanquarles.blogspot.com or on Facebook

Or you can just contact her at d.jeanquarles@yahoo.com

Media Release Distribution: Why It's Important

Media Release Distribution: Why It's Important

By Donna M. McDine


Call it what you want, a news release, a media release, or a press release. Whichever of the fore mentioned you prefer know that releases are a critical promotional tool for any business, especially in our ever changing technological world.

Suppose for a moment you have achieved the golden moment of signing your first or tenth book contract or your very first byline has been published for the world to read. I know, you are walking on air and you may even envision yourself shouting from the rooftops, “Hello world I’m a published writer!” Go for it, let out your delightful shout of joy. When you are done, it’s now time to get down to business in writing your perfect release.

You may hem and haw a bit and wonder why such a formal announcement is important? For one, with the Internet at our fingertips promotional opportunities are just a click away. And second, just because your latest book or byline is published doesn’t mean a large majority of the population even knows about it. Strengthen your chances in getting your name and platform out there by writing and publishing your releases. It is never too soon to set yourself apart from the pack. Establish yourself as an expert in your field by writing articles on your latest published works that compliments the subject matter. You can then write a release about your published credits and point your readers to your blog, website, and/or Ezine Articles page for your related articles.

Keyword search and implementation into your releases is as critical as when blogging. You will be pleasantly surprised to see how quickly your name and material cross reference each other when doing so.

For instance, as I was writing I conducted the following Google search: “Donna McDine, children’s author and publicist” and the following pulled up on the first Google search page:

WOW! Women On Writing Blog: An Interview with Donna McDine ...

http://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/2011/02/interview-with-donna-mcdine-childrens.html

Feb 17, 2011 – Award-winning children's author Donna McDine published her first book ... She writes, moms, and is the publicist intern for The National Writing ...

Donna McDine
LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/in/donnamcdine

Greater New York City Area - Editor-in-Chief at Guardian Angel Kids Ezine - Guardian Angel Kids Ezine

Donna McDine is an award-winning children's author, Honorable Mention in the ... moms and is the Editor-in-Chief for Guardian Angel Kids and Publicist for the ...

The Golden Pathway: Children's Author, Donna McDine to appear on ...

http://thegoldenpathway.blogspot.com/2011/04/childrens-author-donna-mcdine-to-appear.html

Apr 12, 2011 – Donna McDine is an award-winning children's author, ... Kids and Publicist for the NWFCC from her home in the historical hamlet Tappan, NY. ...

Children's author, Donna McDine ~ guest speaker at Westchester ...

http://www.gatekeeperspost.com/autoposts/childrens-author-donna-mcdine-guest-speaker-at-westchester-reading-council/ Children's author, Donna McDine ~ guest speaker at Westchester Reading Council ... Best wishes, Donna M. McDine. Award-winning Children's Author ...
Interview with Award-winning Author Donna McDine, Author of The ...

http://mymcbooks.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/interview-with-award-winning-author-donna-mcdine-author-of-the-golden-pathway/ May 13, 2011 – Donna McDine is an award-winning children's author, Honorable ... She writes, moms and is the Publicist Intern for The National Writing for ...

Donna McDines Biography - Donna M. McDine

www.donnamcdine.com/bio.html  

Donna McDine is an award-winning children's author, Honorable Mention in the ... Guardian Angel Kids, Publicist for the Children's Writers' Coaching Club and ...
Donna M. McDine's - News & Announcements

www.donnamcdine.com/newsannouncements.html

Donna M. McDine, Children's Author .... the children's publishing industry ...

Show more results from donnamcdine.com
Award-Winning Children's Author, Donna McDine Visits With Stephen ...

http://pressexposure.com/Award-Winning_Childrens_Author,_Donna_McDine_Visits_With_Stephen_Tremp_-_July_7th_and_8th-320577.html Jul 6, 2011 – PressExposure.com Allows Public Relations Professionals To Distribute Their Press Releases To Reach Their Target Audience For Free.
CREATIVE CREW - GUARDIAN ANGEL KIDS online ezine for Kids!

www.guardian-angel-kids.com/creative-crew.htm

Donna McDine is an award-winning children's author, Honorable Mention in the ... Editor-in-Chief and The National Writing for Children Center, Publicist from ...

Donna McDine – Media Releases & Social ... - Working Writer's Club

http://www.workingwritersclub.com/writers-for-hire/donna-mcdine/

Coupled with her Publicist experience at the Working Writer's Coach and as ... Donna McDine is an award-winning children's author, Honorable Mention in the ...

The above is a mixture of my blogs, website, press release sites, interview stops, our very own Working Writer’s Club, and Guardian Angel Kids Ezine. See how all my work intertwines with the other?
The proof is in the Google search! Don’t wait. Get down to the business side of writing and create your release today. Are you still hesitating because you don’t have published credits yet, how about you write up a media release of an interview or article you have posted on your blog. This is what I did early on in my writing career and still do. It’s imperative you get the momentum going or your rankings will steadily drop.

Visit me at http://donnamcdine.com/dynamicmediareleases.html for a listing of preferred media release sites I regularly post to online and of course when announcing new business products or your latest book release don’t forget to send your release to your local media.

Bio:
Donna McDine is an award-winning children's author, Honorable Mention in the 77th and two Honorable Mentions in the 78th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competitions, Preditors & Editors Readers Poll 2010 Top Ten Children’s Books, Global eBook Awards Finalist Children’s Picture Book Fiction, and Literary Classics Seal of Approval Picture Book Early Reader ~ The Golden Pathway.


Her stories, articles, and book reviews have been published in over 100 print and online publications. Her interest in American History resulted in writing and publishing The Golden Pathway. Donna has three more books under contract with Guardian Angel Publishing, Hockey Agony, Powder Monkey, and A Sandy Grave. She writes, moms and is the Editor-in-Chief for Guardian Angel Kids, Publicist for the Working Writer’s Club, and owner of Dynamic Media Release Services from her home in the historical hamlet Tappan, NY. McDine is a member of the SCBWI.

Further information:

http://www.donnamcdine.com/
http://www.donna-mcdine.blogspot.com/
http://www.thegoldenpathway.blogspot.com/

A Big Thank You to Our Followers and Subscribers

With the end of the year at our door step, we'd like to take the time to thank you for your support. We do appreciate that you take time out of your busy schedules to stop by and visit with us.

And, we'd like to wish everyone a healthy, safe, and happy holiday season and a healthy and prosperous new year.

There are two ways we thought of to show our appreciation and they both have to do with writing and marketing. Well, what'd you think they'd be on? :)

First, we have a new Writers on the Move Holiday Season 2011 eBook from our members, it's on the sidebar as a free gift to you and to all who visit.

The second gift will be in the next A Writer's World newsletter, they'll be an exclusive link to one of my new e-books, Editing Books Like a Pro. Please, DO NOT SHARE the link or the e-book. It is meant as a gift to A Writer's World subscribers and is for sale to everyone else.

I should have the newsletter out by this weekend. As usual I'm running behind. :)

We hope you'll continue to be a part of our writing world in 2012, and we hope to make lots of more friends and followers. We're doing our best to provide informative and practical writing and marketing information on a daily basis. And, we now have webinars as a new informational tool to use to offer more engaging workshops.

Our goal for 2012 is to do our best to bring you fresh and useful information, tips, and advice to help you on your writing and marketing journey.

So, again, have a healthy, safe, and happy Holiday Season and a healthy and prosperous New Year.

~~~~~
PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE, and SIGN-UP FOR A Writer’s World FREE MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!

And to be sure you don’t miss any posts here, simply subscribe to this blog (RSS feed).

~~~~~~~~~~~
Until next time,

Karen Cioffi
Author, Ghostwriter, Freelance Writer, Editor

Karen’s Books Page:
http://www.karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com/p/karens-books.html

Karen Cioffi Writing and Marketing
http://KarenCioffi.com
DKV Writing 4 U

A GOOD STORY IS A GOOD STORY - HOST MARSHA COOK 12/09 by WorldOfInkNetwork | Blog Talk Radio

Join Host Marsha Cook on December 9 - 2 PM EST 1 PM CST NOON MT 11AM PST as she welcomes writers from DANCING WITH BEAR PUBLISHING when they will be discussing their very special new work - Just Klutzing Around Christmas Anthology and The Latke Hound Holiday Anthology. This is going to be a great show with wonderful authors. You can listen live or on demand.

FOR MORE INFO - www.michiganavenuemedia.com

Listen to the show here:
A GOOD STORY IS A GOOD STORY - HOST MARSHA COOK 12/09 by WorldOfInkNetwork | Blog Talk Radio

Kindlegraph

What is a kindlegraph?
by Elysabeth Eldering

According to the website, kindlegraphs are a way of making ebooks a little more personal. As an author, no matter what type of event we do, we usually sign our books and personalize them for the person buying the book. So what about those folks who don't have the opportunity to visit us in person at these events? How do they go about getting something e-autographed? Kindlegraph.

This is an easy-to-use site and is free to all authors and readers. All the instructions on how to set up your own author page are on the website. To explore the site, one does not need to sign in via their twitter account but to request a kindlegraph or to set up your own author page, you do need to sign in with your twitter account.

What does one need to list books on the site? A Twitter account, a valid email address and your books' AISNs or 10-digit ISBNs (AISNs are exclusively amazon's numbering system). Can one only list ebooks on kindlegraph? No. You only need your 10-digit ISBN to list any title you have available for sale.

Do readers need to have a kindle to receive kindlegraphs? No. As long as they have a twitter account and a valid email address, they can request and receive kindlegraphs from you. The kindlegraphs are PDFs sent to either a kindle email addy or a regular email addy as set up by the requester of the kindlegraph.

At the moment, Evan is working on making kindlegraphs available to other ereader systems but that is in the works. He has many changes and updates planned and is working on them as fast as he can. Evan used to work for amazon.com and felt something was needed to connect readers to authors when they are purchasing books other than directly from the author.

Why would an author want to promote kindlegraph? for this author, it is a way of trying to get in touch with readers and followers who purchase copies of my books from an online source and would like a personalized message and a signature of some sort. Technically they are electronic signatures and I haven't really signed anything, so I'm not concerned about others using these signatures to forge my name on any documents. I haven't had many online sales or requests for kindlegraphs but keep hoping that one of these days, I will have many requests. If you have purchased any of my state books from an online source or my YA paranormal mystery, Finally Home, or even my other ebooks available ("The Proposal" (an April Fools Day story), a humorous romance ebook; "Butterfly Halves", a YA fantasy ebook; "The Tulip Kiss", a paranormal romance ebook; or "Bride-and-Seek", a paranormal romance ebook) and would like a personalized e-signed message from me, please check out my kindlegraph page and request yours today.

Check out Elysabeth's blog for an upcoming Christmas special on three of her stories. The special is good only for the week of December 17th through December 24th. For any of the books available, please don't forget to stop by my kindlegraph page and request your free e-signature.

---------------

Ms. Eldering is the award winning author of the Junior Geography Detective Squad (JGDS), 50-state, mystery, trivia series. Her stories "Train of Clues" (shared 2nd place story), "The Proposal" (third place winning story, now available as an ebook), "Tulip Kiss" (1st place winning story, now available as an ebook), and "Butterfly Halves" (runner up, now available as an ebook) all placed first, second, or runner up in various contests to include two for Armchair Interviews and two for Echelon Press (Fast and ... themed type contests). Her story "Bride-and-Seek" (now available as an ebook) was selected for the South Carolina Writers' Workshop (SCWW) anthology, the Petigru Review. Ms. Eldering makes her home in upper state South Carolina and loves to travel, read, cross stitch and crochet. When she's not busy with teenaged children still living at home, she can be found at various homeschool or book events promoting her state series and her YA paranormal mystery, Finally Home.

For more information about the JGDS series, please visit the JGDS blog or the JGDS website.

For more information about Elysabeth's other writings, please visit her general writing and family blog or her website.

Using video to promote poetry

Once upon a time poetry was seen as an elitist occupation.  The more obscure and inaccessible the better.  Well to be honest I'm not sure it was ever like that, but certainly that perception is still bandied about among those (perhaps in some publishing quarters and certainly among those with little exposure) who would have poets marginalised as the unprofitable, effete cousin of prose.  Multimedia puts paid to that, bringing in the very visual, modern reader as participant.  For poets, the process of writing is all about meaning and connection, and so whatever works to create that moment of awakening; the shiver of recognition in a reader (or viewer), is good.  Using multimedia is a perfect way to promote poetry as I feel very lucky as a poet to find myself in a world where there are so many different ways to transform each poem to awaken something different in a reader.  These little videos can be made quite easily by culling freely licensed public domain  images that seem to pick up the meaning in each stanza, and with some voice work, good music, and a neat video program or webcam, there's really no limit to what you can do.

There are a few free software packages that can help you achieve different effects and for poets with a visual flair, it's quite fun (if a little time consuming) to play around with tools like Prezi, Movie Maker, 64studio, and Animoto which I used to make the following video, from a poem taken from the collection Deeper Into the Pond by Carolyn Howard-Johnson and me.  The music came from Moby and their amazing gratis artists resource site.  You have to request it and tell them what you're doing but they're really generous and in the end you get something totally unique that functions as a completely new piece of art. It's something I feel that most poets should consider to take their work out to a broader audience, and also, and maybe mainly, because it's a lot of fun to do.  Text of the poem follows the video.

Only a Dress

Down beneath the dirty cobwebs
wet and torn
neglect and weathering
damaging the social fabric
your pretty silk dress
discarded
into landfill.

Yes there are racks full
in the shiny mall of your dreams
or is that nightmares
corridors and white teeth
loom against your loss.

It was only a dress
sheer floral organza floating
above real satin
forties style
neatly fitted against your narrow hips
flowing with possibilities
now shrunk into mere threads
shot through with stains
disintegrating
amidst other detritus
carrying, like silver sequins
a weight of desire
shrugged off.

You could just buy
another
re-align yourself
on the hampster wheel
run run run
back
the route you’ve travelled
detached, near complete
or you could sit, breath in the fresh salty air
and let the dress go.

About the author: Magdalena Ball is the author of Sleep Before Evening, Repulsion Thrust, Quark Soup, and a number of collaborations and anthologies. Find out more about Magdalena and grab a free copy of her book The Literary Lunch at www.magdalenaball.com.

Give the Gift of Reading This Holiday Season!

Toys are broken and clothes are outgrown ... 
but the impact of books lasts a lifetime.

The volunteer organization “Write On! For Literacy” is holding its Tenth Annual Holiday Book Drive to benefit underprivileged children! Last year we collected nearly 1,000 books (bringing our grand total to more than 12,000 books!) that were distributed to various schools and charities including the Boys & Girls Club, Casa Pacifica, and Project Understanding. Please do your part to help children have a better holiday season. Help beat illiteracy and give the gift that lasts forever: the gift of reading!

Want to get involved?

• Mail book donations to the Write On! chapter headquarters: 400 Roosevelt Court, Ventura, CA, 93003

• You can also mail monetary donations that will be used to purchase books to the above address. (Checks made out to Dallas Woodburn.)

• Start a chapter in your area! Donate books to a local charity -- Boys & Girls Clubs are usually very grateful for donations -- and then e-mail me the total number of books donated which will be added to our grand-total. 

Many thanks to our recent generous contributors!

* Barry Kibrick, host of the Emmy-award-winning PBS television show "Between the Lines," annually donates 400-500 books to charity.

* Raeanne Alliapoulos donated 30 books to the Boys & Girls Club in Pomona, California.

* A. William Benitez and his company Positive Imaging, LLC, shipped out 20 copies of Lottie's Adventure, a marvelous and imaginative book for kids and middle-graders: http://lottiesadventure.com

About Write On!

“Write On! For Literacy” is a volunteer-run organization founded by author Dallas Woodburn in 2001. The goal is to encourage kids to discover confidence, happiness, a means of self-expression, and connection to others through reading and writing. The Write On! website features writing contests, book reviews, author interviews, writing tips and ideas, and ways for everyone to get involved. http://www.writeonbooks.org 

The past nine years, Write On's Holiday Book Drive has donated 12,106 books to disadvantaged children across the nation.