Bits of Good News

First the good news:  I only have a month to go before "I Bid One American" is released in paperback!  Whoopee!  Although for the impatient, it is out as an e-book from just about any e-book store you'd care to mention, including:

Fictionwise, Amazon's Kindle, and of course the publisher, The Wild Rose Press.  (Sorry about the lack of active links, but MySpace doesn't seem to want to cooperate with me tonight.)

And on December 3, my Christmas novella:  Christmas Mishaps, comes out from Cerridwen Press.  I just wish I had a cover to show you.  But I should get one soon.

I don't have a release date yet on my short story:  Outrageous Behavior, but it ought to be fairly soon.  We already finished the edits.  And during that process, I think my editor at The Wild Rose Press put some sort of brainwashing device into her e-mails because I went insane and gave them a second short story:  Rose Wars, to publish FOR FREE!

Yes, folks, another of my stories will soon be let loose upon the world and you won't even have to pay for it.  What the heck was I thinking?

Almost last, but not least: Writers and Readers of Distinctive Fiction are featuring me in their Spotlight feature this week--which is really, really nice of them.  (If you get the chance to visit their site it is at:  http://romancewriterandreader.ning.com .)  I always love to babble about myself and they gave me plenty of room to do so.  I just hope I didn't say anything terminally embarrassing.

Nearly forgot--I'm also featuring a new contest during the month of October: The Unluckiest Heroine contest.  The prize is a gorgeous, multi-strand carnelian necklace.  All you have to do to enter is visit my website at:  http://www.amycorwin.com to find the name of the poor heroine in "Christmas Mishaps" who just can't seem to stay out of trouble.  Then send an e-mail to contest@amycorwin.com with her name. 

Pretty easy, right?

Finally, I got three rejections--two of which were submissions I was really "counting on".  Nonetheless, I'm putting that in the "good news" category because it should complete the set of three.  Not that I'm superstitious or anything, but I need to make a little lemonade here because my office is overflowing with lemons.

Oh, I finally got my eeePC updated, and I can now reload my writing software (Writer's Cafe).  This has been a bit of a trial for me because every time I tried to update my eeePC, it would start misbehaving and gradually reach a point where it just stopped working.

The nice eeePC folks, though, let you restore it in "factory fresh" condition by pressing the F9 key when you turn it on.  I hate to do that because then I have to reconfigure everything to be the way I want it, but I really had no choice the first four times I did it.

However now it looks like I may have found the right combination of updates to do, so later tonight I shall reload Writer's Cafe and get back to work on The Necklace.  I really want to submit that to my publisher next week.  I actually hope to someday earn royalties on this one. :-)

As far as writerly things and news (not so good)...this last spate of rejections really nailed something for me.  If you write a book, but deep down inside you sort of feel "ho-hum" about the characters, then chances are good your readers--and more importantly your editors--will feel the same.  This problem often occurs if you're like me, and you really, really want to please some editor/publisher by writing to their guidelines.

Some of us don't fit in, follow the rules, or play well with others.  You'd think I'd know by now how to disguise that a little better.

Anyway, not a day goes by when I don't learn something new. 

And I like it that way.