Community Spotlight

Hi, everyone! Sorry I'm late. Let me squeeze by so I can get to my chair.

Don't you just love it when your favorite relative comes to town? My sister and I get to see each other only a couple of times a year, so her visit was a real treat. Unfortunately, catching up with my writing responsibilities afterwards always take more time than I think it will.

I see the table got bigger while I was gone. I want to welcome Jennifer Ortolano. Jennifer writes Blogging It Out and Through the Eyes of a Bulimic. Check out her blogs, but watch out for her sense of humor. She got me with her video.

Lori Calabrese has also pulled a chair up to our table. Link here for her web page. Lori is an award winning children's writer with lots to offer writers of children's books on her web site. Right now, she has a "Fishing for a Free Book" thing going on that looks like lots of fun.

Berta is the third new member of our community. I'd like to put Berta in the spotlight, too. From the list of blogs she's joined, I'm guessing that she lives and writes in Kentucky, but she has no links for me to connect and share. Berta, would you care to leave a comment and tell us more about yourself?

Do you remember what I wrote about not re-inventing the wheel? (Scroll down and read Day 7 if you don't know what I'm talking about.) While I was researching publishers, I found two more places of interest for our community: Funds for Writers , which is full of leads to paying jobs, contests, and grants for writers.

The second one is Selling Books. Don't let the title fool you. Along with marketing savvy, the site calls itself the "guide to writing, publishing and marketing books and ebooks" and it's not an empty boast. While I was exploring the web page, I took the opportunity to participate in their "blog carnival." That was new to me, too. Link here then scroll down until you find the paragraph about Ethel Herr's research article on our community blog. Look for me to use this again for other posts.

I also have a new nonfiction agent for our list (aka "The N-F A-List"). Loren Grossman represents a wide array of nonfiction book topics. To quote the news article, "The Paul S. Levine Agency is pleased to announce that Ms. Loren R. Grossman has joined the Agency. She will primarily handle non-fiction books in the areas of Archeology, Art/Photography/Architecture, Child Guidance/Parenting, Coffee Table Books, Education, Gardening, Health/Medicine/Science, Memoirs, and Sociology." So if you have a book idea in one of those categories, think about querying Ms. Grossman.

Links to Funds for Writers, Selling Books, and Ms. Grossman have been added in the column on the right for future reference.

That's it for today. Sorry I can't stay longer, but I still haven't caught up with everything. See you soon.