I’m rescheduling and plan on putting up the blog carnival on Monday, April 12th.

Unfortunately, the silly site won’t let me change the dates, so the deadline is still the same (last Friday of March).

Go here to submit your blog posts.

Soundzine is a

literary e-zine that features poetry and prose from around the world accompanied by spoken recordings of each piece by the author or a voice actor, and artwork specifically chosen by an artistic director to complement the imagery present in the piece.

Soundzine is now up to its tenth  issue, and we’re again looking for submissions to join our ever-growing archive of excellent spoken word. To celebrate our milestone we moved into new digs at http://www.soundzine.net where our ‘Green’ themed tenth issue can now be perused, consumed, or ambled through at your leisure. I think you’ll agree that the quality of poetry and prose that can be found throughout all of the issues is of a high standard, and the added bonus of actually hearing the words spoken aloud is one that is rare in e-journals.

Soundzine is now looking for submissions to its eleventh issue, with the theme of ‘Sapphic’. Anything related to Sapphic goes. By Lesbians. About Lesbians. About Sappho. In Sapphics. Be Sapphic.

In my role as prose editor at Soundzine, I’m looking for any short stories or flash fiction you wish to send in. We have an 800 word maximum (mainly to keep reading times, and therefore file sizes, manageable) and we follow the Voiceworks school of thought with respect to the theme, i.e.:

• Themed work = good
• Good work = better
• Good, themed work = BEST

So if you don’t feel like you can write to our theme, don’t worry! Send in your best work and we’ll see what we can do about getting you into our next issue.

Prose submissions can be sent to prose [at] soundzine [dot] net, while everything else (poetry, articles, pitches) can be sent to submissions [at] soundzine [dot] org and we have a pretty quick turnaround on everything. The due date for issue 11 is June 15th.

Please, tell your friends, retweet this, and get the word around. I’ll be posting further calls as we get closer to the deadline. If you have any further questions regarding submissions, feel free to contact me on twitter @toothsoup. Now g’arn, get writing. (:

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Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Positive
101 Inspirational Stories about Counting Your Blessings and Having a Positive Attitude

This title is a continuation of the theme of our very popular past titles – Chicken Soup for the Soul: Count Your Blessings and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tough Times, Tough People. We are looking for stories of optimism, faith and strength to encourage our readers to think positive in these challenging times.

What was the situation that inspired you to think positive? What changes did you make in your attitude — from negative to positive — that turned your life around? These inspirational stories will remind readers to focus on hope and show them that each day holds something to be grateful for.

Here are some suggested topics, but we know you can think of many more:

Attitude! It does make a difference
The unexpected benefits of challenges
Putting things in perspective
Turning negative into positive
How you spread the message of gratitude to others
Lighten up and laugh!
What made you realize that your life is good and that you are grateful
Silver linings that you have discovered
Appreciating the simple pleasures
… Anything else that you think that is interesting and inspirational
If your story is chosen, you will be a published author and your bio will be printed in the book if you so choose. You will also receive a check for $200 and 10 free copies of your book, worth more than $100. You will retain the copyright for your story and you will retain the right to resell it.

SUBMISSIONS GO TO http://chickensoup.com
Select the Submit Your Story link on the left tool bar and follow the directions.

DEADLINE IS APRIL 30, 2010.

So, let’s get to the nitty gritty. What I’m looking for:

*One (to three) guest post/s in the range of 250 – 500 words – with a title, please
*Any pictures that correspond to your post (for example, if you decide to write a ‘my desk/my writing space’ guest post – take a picture of it!) .jpgs please
*A brief biography with a link to your website and/or blog
*A picture of you or your book cover

Easy peasy.

If you’d like to participate but are feeling a bit stuck for a topic(s)…

*Introduce us to your writing space (with pictures, hehe)
*How do you make yourself write when you don’t want to?
*Do you have a daily word count goal or do you go by some other measurement?
*How do you balance your ‘regular’ life with your writing life?
*Finding inspiration
*Anything on character, plot, setting, research, etc
*What has been going on in your mind before you sit down to write the first words of that first draft?
*Are you a ‘planner’ or a ‘pantser’ (outline or no outline)?
*Finally typing ‘The End’ on your first draft…

Please send all guest posts to jmfictionscribe (at) gmail (dot) com.

Dates will be scheduled in the order they come in, so it’s sort of a first come, first serve. When you email me, I will email you back with the ebook and the date you will appear at Life in the First Draft.

Cheers.

PS. The URL is: http://lifeinthefirstdraft.blogspot.com/

Unlike boring real life birthday parties, blogversary parties are awesome because you can get some presents. And, awesome of awesomeness, this is an international contest. (Woot! You don’t find people *cough*likeme*cough* very often who hold international contests.)

The good stuff (what can you win):

Awesomundo Prize Pack No. 1: Superheroes and Their Tight Tight Pants.

1 x Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

1 x Deadpool comic

1 x First Issue of Kill Your Darlings

As you all know, superheroes and supervillains are so cool it’s hard to find the words to describe just how cool. Soon I will be invincible looks like it was meant to be a comic book, but it’s not. It’s an entertaining novel. About superheroes. Me likey.

Deadpool goes in here because, um, I heart Deadpool. He’s such a smartarse. And compares himself to Ryan Reynolds (which is hilarious, if anyone saw a little movie called Wolverine: X-Men Origins). And then later, he teams up with Cable and they get some great banter going. So yep, you get a copy of an issue of Deadpool. Which one? You’ll have to wait and see.

Awesomundo Prize Pack No. 2: Dirty Stinkin’ Beats

1 x Howl by Allen Ginsberg

a few x Zines from Sticky

1 x Kill Your Darlings

I get made fun of for my *cough*small*cough* obsession with the Beat Generation. You can all shut your faces now, because I’m giving away a free copy of Ginsberg’s Howl and other poems. Put it on your bookshelf or next to your bed. It should impress potential lovers and friends (well, potential lovers and friends with street cred). Or you could, I dunno, read it.

This prize also includes a selection of zines from the Sticky Institute Zine Fair. Don’t think of it as second-hand. Think of it as “personally handpicked for this special prize by the ever so tasteful Elena”. Now, doesn’t that sound much better?

Awesomundo Prize Pack No. 3: Aussie. Sort of.

1 x Romeo of the Underworld by Veny Armanno

1 x handmade zine

1 x Kill Your Darlings

This one’s a little different from the others. I’ve picked one of my favourite reads of 2009, by one of my absolute favourite writers, who happens to be Sicilian-Australian. Romeo of the Underworld by Venero Armanno. This book holds fond memories for me. I bought it on a family trip to Maleny last year from a gorgeous bookshop that could’ve been straight out of a European film, with its wooden floorboards, and its lingering smell of toast. Except it was in Queensland wine country. So it is second hand, but in excellent condition (no doggy ears or post-it rips. Yippee).

How to Win

Well, you can find that out by reading her post about it!

What are you fluent in? What interests you? Can you be fluent in anything other than a language? What is your take on fluency?

I don’t claim fluency in anything.

Haha. That would have been quite the short post, wouldn’t it? Anyway, I really don’t claim fluency in anything. At one point I might have said I was fluent in blogging, but then I was overtaken by the wonderfully talented people who actually create blog templates. At another point, I might have said that I was fluent in fiction writing…but all my published writing is either non-fiction or poetry.

In the end, I think it all comes down to a matter of confidence. Oh, I can do plenty of things and most of them well, but I don’t hold nearly enough confidence in myself to claim that I’m fluent in anything. I don’t know when I would be satisfied that I had enough knowledge in any subject to claim fluency.

And I have had many interests over the years…

Paranormal activity, astrology, palmistry, fiction writing, psychology, body language, blogging, HTML, website building, poetry, Egyptian mythology, ancient history, biology (specifically plant life), powerpoint presentations, computer gaming, console gaming (everything from atari to PS2), scrapbooking, card making, stained glass windows and mirrors (using ‘paints’ rather than actual glass), a number of different religions and philosophies…

I think I’ll leave it off at that.

Fluency is a wonderful thing to have, if you have it in a subject/language/etc you are passionate about. However, I’ll take my bits and bobs from all places. I think it makes my background just a smidge more interesting.

I headed off on a week long writer’s retreat three weeks ago and I haven’t written about it yet.

Well, to be honest, I’ve had some ‘fun’ mental health stuff going on and I pretty much have been slacking since I got caught up with work after arriving back home.

(Wow, that sentence ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would.)

To condense the writing retreat into one word: success.

I came back home with the knowledge that I still have a writer brain (which equates to me simply being a slacker rather than having lost ability), a finished post-apocalyptic short story, a fantasy short story about one third done, a romance novella about three quarters done and a romance novel idea I am very excited about.

Hm. Perhaps another problem is my lack of focus on a single project.

No matter what any of my other problems are, it’s more than obvious that things will rock and roll quite well if I just make time to focus on them. However, even with the super-affordable place I stayed at, running away for weeks at a time is not a financially viable way to get writing done.

I guess I’ll have to be like everyone else and actually, oh, work hard on it.

I’ve already taken steps to help myself, including installing LeechBlock. Now I just have to make some goals to work toward.

In honor of National Grammar Day … it IS “March Fourth” after all … do you have any grammar books? Punctuation? Writing guidelines? Style books?

More importantly, have you read them?

How do you feel about grammar in general? Important? Vital? Unnecessary? Fussy?

If you know me (know I’m a writer), then you won’t be surprised to hear that I have the Strunk and White Elements of Style. I have heaps of other books on writing, etc, but Elements of Style is my only one that focuses specifically on the technical side of writing.

I haven’t read Elements of Style through like a regular book, no. I have used it more like a reference book, picking and choosing when I need.

And this is where I get into a rant…

Especially in this day and age, I feel that grammar (spelling, etc) is very important! I am absolutely disgusted by some of the articles and books that are out today and touted as actual good writing.

Bull! That’s what I say.

I’m not perfect by any means, but it’s not like there is some shortage of editors out there. Heck, these days they can customize down to whether they edit your grammar and punctuation, overall story critique, so on and so forth. I’m a freelance editor with few credits; hire me if you are on a budget!

I have seen words misspelled on restaurant menus, heard radio announcers say things so wrong that they have sent me into fits of giggles, articles that have no point I can decipher in their confusing run-on sentences and self-published books that had so many errors (not to mention plot holes) that my husband had to stop me from sending it back to the author full of red marks.

I don’t know if it is because we just take so little pride in our work these days or if the ‘instant gratification’ society we live in that is causing all this, but I find it amusing – more often annoying.