WordVixen.com

I’ve always said that she’s one of the best writers that I know. Several of her short stories have been published in magazines, she runs a Christian Book/Music/Movie review site along with her twin sister who writes freelance for several popular Christian teen mags.

And this past weekend, it was announced that she won the Operation First Novel Contest hosted by the Christian Writers Guild (you may notice their ads in Writers Digest). The prize? A contract with Tyndale House (if you’re familiar with Christian publishing, you’ll know that this isn’t small potatoes!), and an advance, or possibly prize, of $20,000. Yup. You know all those popular novel contests that offer a prize of a token $5k and a consideration at a major house? Yeah… this isn’t one of those.

You can imagine that with stakes that high that the competition is probably quite fierce. We were all ecstatic when we found out that she was one of the 4 finalists, but when I got that text? Yeah, I screamed out loud.

It’s funny- with the publishing contract and the nice advance, you’d think that would be the tops. But to be honest? I thought the coolest part was that the book cover art was finished and presented when the contest winner was announced. Seriously! I think that is just awesome.

So if you want to go meet the next NY Times Best Selling Author, go check out her blog, take a look at the awesome cover art, and then tell her how pretty she is. And tell her I sent you- I’m angling for a position on her marketing team.

I found these awesome crosses made out of cultured pearls. I mean- they’re A pearl that forms A cross. Not little pearls set into a cross. Seriously. Don’t know how they do it, but very cool.

Anyway. I showed them to my mother who then asked me to make her a pair of earrings. So, I found two sets of crosses that were similar enough to count as pairs, and made some earrings.

And then I made a pretty pretty necklace. At least, I like it.

I’ll be listing one pair of earrings and the necklace on Etsy once mom picks the earrings she likes best. Now to figure out pricing. I usually base it on how long it takes me to make them and how much the supplies cost. The only problem is- I was watching bad TV and dropping things. Somehow it doesn’t seem fair to charge people for that!

I chanced upon an interesting comment on another blog today. Since I’d missed the beginning of the conversation, I may have misunderstood, but it sounded as though there’s a book making its rounds through the blogosphere.

What I believe they’re doing is, someone picks a book, reviews it, and sends it out to a fellow blogger. That person reviews it, links to the person who sent it, and then sends it out to another blogger, and on and on it goes (and when the reviews go up, so do the links to the person they sent the book to).

That sounds like fun to me! I don’t actually have a book in mind, but I’m thinking a debut author of some sort. Someone who could use the publicity.

So, is anyone interested? And if so, anyone have suggestions?  I’m thinking of a historical romance novella that I’m reviewing for Christian book reviews site.  It’s a pretty good historical romance, non-offensive without being preachy (wide appeal, perhaps?), and is only around 150 pages- so it won’t take up much time as it makes the rounds.  Only problem is that it’s not a debut author.