Jordan Summers

I just had to share the good news. One of my critique partners and dear friends, Julia Templeton just received a two book deal from Berkley. Woo Hoo!!! Her first book, a medieval romance (and my personal favorite), will be released in November of this year. YAH JULIE!!! Congratulations!!!

Speaking of Julie, she and I have a new book coming out in Mar. 06 called ‘Somewhere in Time’. Check out our new cover here under the time-travels heading.

Not sure when this started, since I just saw it yesterday, but it’s an interesting concept. I’ll post Amazon’s explanation of the service below.

Your Amazon.com Plog is a personalized web log that appears on your customer home page. Every person’s Plog is different (hence the name) and just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. Each post also gives you the opportunity to provide feedback to the sender as to whether you liked the post or not. This feedback loop means your Plog becomes even more relevant and interesting over time. Your Plog will appear if you are logged into our web site and is visible only to you.

Authors with at least one book for sale on Amazon.com are eligible to participate in Amazon Connect. To learn more about the program and to sign up, visit Amazon.

There were two authors on my homepage talking about their latest releases, but several have already signed up. One gave a bit of info about how she came to write the book. The other put up a blurb and reviews. I think it’s interesting and I’ll probably participate, if there aren’t any hidden catches. What do you all think?

We’ve had a lot of discussions about craft this year and last. Tons of writing books were mentioned on Jo’s Uberchallenge. I own most of them, but I haven’t managed to read a fraction of the titles. Which is why I’ve decided to explore alternatives. I believe it was Alison who mentioned purchasing a DVD from the Writer’s Store on Joss Whedon. I went to the site to check out what else they had and came away with a treasure trove.

I have a lot of writing books that are in various staging of being read. It bothers me that I can’t get through them faster because I read slow, so I decided to see what the store had available on DVD. (It’s more likely that I’ll finish those.) Most of the stuff at the store is geared toward screenwriters. The cool thing is the material can easily apply to novelists too. In fact, I thought switching my approach might actually improve my writing.

So with that in mind, I made a list of the DVD’s I plan to purchase. (Not all at one time.) Here it is: Crafting Complex Characters for Emotional Impact, Brainstorming with 36 Dramatic Situations, Crafting Fresh Dialogue for Emotional Impact, Hero’s Journey 2, Syd Field’s Screenwriting Workshop (it talks about writing in the three-act structure), Plot Planner workshop, Mastering the 2 min. Pitch, Genre works: The Horror Genre, The Art of Writing Romantic Comedy, and So, Is it Done? (a dvd on revising). I figure that should keep me busy for a while.

I’m also considering a few software items (Character Pro, Word Menu, Fiction Master, and WritePro), but I need to check them out further to see if they’ll actually be helpful…or just more items to clutter my desktop.