Ten Word Novel Contest Year Three (Maybe)

All right, so now that Keriann and L.T. have posted their contests, it's high time for me to regale you with my offering to this Week of Awesome.

Unfortunately, I don't have any ARCs or books to offer you as prizes ... but I do have a handful of issues of Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, the Steampunk magazine I own, to offer free of charge to winners. And I'm also offering up the chance to have the first 25 pages of any manuscript critiqued by yours truly. Yes, I realize I'm not an agented or published author, but I am the owner of the nascent publishing company Doctor Fantastique Books. And we're happy to be serializing novels from Calliope Strange, Walter Shumate, Katy O'Dowd, and bestselling author Leanna Renee Hieber (The Strangely Beautiful series). So take that as you will.

On to the contest!

In honor of Keriann and Taryn joining our little cult ... I mean family ... I'm resurrecting the famous:

Ten Word Novel Contest

Folks who've been following me for awhile will recognize this contest from its start at Free the Princess and its second incarnation here on the Archives. For those who are new to the blog though, let me restate the purpose. 

We've all heard the story of Ernest Hemingway composing a novel in six words -- For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. Whether the story's true or not is somewhat in doubt, but that's immaterial for my purposes. I feel like six words is too short, so I'm going to give you ten words to write me a novel with a beginning, middle, and end. 

Da Rules!

1.  Each entry must be 10 words or less. 
2. You can enter as many times as you want
3. It must be a complete story in 10 words.

Your deadline, should you choose to enter, is August 30th at 12 midnight U.S. Pacific Time. Winner gets  choice of either a copy of the magazine or a critique of the first 25 pages of their manuscript by yours truly.

Enter in the comments below and HAPPY WRITING!

Happy Monday everyone! Oh, and, some contest results or something?

Ah, weather in Southern California... how I love thee. Listening to the rain strum on the roof top, putting buckets in the garage to catch the leak from the hole in the roof we've been trying to find for a year, watching the cats watch the rain fall. The siren song of... sirens from the freeway. It all adds up to be-- well, my morning so far.

So it's Monday, which means I'm usually supposed to write something here at the Archives. Except I can't remember what I was supposed to write today. There was something important, something that a lot of people were waiting for...

*Goes and checks last week's post*

Oh, right, the contest! I bet you all want to know who won, don't you? I know I would, had I been able to enter. Which would have been cheating, you know, it's not fair for the person running the contest to enter, and I wouldn't have wanted to anyway, seeing how I already own copies of all of the awesome books I'm giving--

Get on with it!

Okay, okay. Well, without further ado, I present to you, the winner of my Week of Awesomeness Awesome Giveaway prize pack:




That's right, lucky number 16!!

Oh, wait, you guys probably need a name. Well, after adding in all the extra blogs/ tweets, that's--

AUTUM FRAILEY!!!!!

Congratulations Autum! E-mail me your address to wickedmoon921 at gmail and I will get your prizes mailed (although probably not until after Christmas as I rather like not losing my temper in post office lines).

Thanks to everyone else who entered, and don't forget to click on the bar up top to see the other two contests still going on here at the Archives!

Week of Awesome Continues...Giveaway Extravaganza!

Happy Holidays, all! The giveaway continues here at the archives with your host...er...me! In a few weeks, I've got a great interview and giveaway lined up with the amazing Pam Bachorz (CANDOR, DROUGHT) but in the meeeeeeeantime...

2010 was a GREAT year for books! I've got a total of EIGHT ARCs of books that came out this year, some that you may have heard of, some that may be new and wonderful to you. I'm giving away TWO sets of four ARCs each:

First Pack:
THE DEAD TOSSED WAVES by Carrie Ryan
TIPS ON HAVING A GAY EX-BOYFRIEND by Carrie Jones
THE LAST SUMMER OF THE DEATH WARRIORS by Fransisco X. Stork
TO COME AND GO LIKE MAGIC by Katie Pickard Fawcett


Second Pack:
THE SPACE BETWEEN TREES by Katie Williams
HOLD ME CLOSER, NECROMANCER by Lish McBride
RUSH by Jonathan Friesen
THE GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO GETTING KIDNAPPED by Yxta Maya Murray


In addition, I'm throwing in one of favorite books this year (even though it didn't come out this year...although I've read some John Green before, I'm late to the Nerdfighter's party. DFTBA, guys!): PAPER TOWNS by John Green!


And if that's not enough, I'm offering up a personalized drawing, subject of your choice! Could be someone from your manuscript or someone else's. Examples of my work are here: kristimariecriddle.blogspot.com...to give you an idea of what might possibly suit your fancy.


SO! Four prizes! The first winner I pick gets first choice, second second and so on as you might imagine things like this would go.

How to win? Easy Peasy Mac & Cheesey.

1. Leave a comment on this here post! That's it!
2. If you'd like to tweet or blog about the contest, send me a link (or post in the comments) and I'll add you in the pool again.
3. Do my Christmas shopping for me. It's easy, really.

You have until WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29th to get your name in! The prizes won't come in time for Christmas, but who doesn't love to start the New Year off with some free books?

Good luck! We always appreciate you coming over to the Archives, we really do. Happy holidays!

The Ten-Word Novel Contest

Yes, ladies and gents, the Ten-Word Novel Contest has made its appearance again! For those of you who follow me at Free the Princess, y'all have seen this contest before.

So here's the contest description once again:

Many years ago, Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a novel in six words. The famous line? "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Since six words seems kind of short to me, I figured I'd add a few on gratis. The challenge to you then, dear readers, is to compose a novel that consists of ten words. It can be quirky, dramatic, funny, introspective, or any other adjective that I can't think of right now.

And the rules:

• Multiple entries are allowed.
• All entries must be received by midnight U.S. Eastern Time on Wednesday, December 29, 2010.
• It must be ten words or less. 
• Put your entry in the comments section of this post.

As to the prize, well you have some options.

Option #1: A review of the effectiveness of your Internet and Social Media presence by yours truly. I run a whole mess of websites, and am very good at building a recognizable brand. I'll leverage those skills for the winner who chooses this prize pack.

Option #2: Rewriting a short story of yours to include Steampunk elements; sort of an alternate history of your fiction.

Option #3: A detailed developmental edit of the first 100 pages of your manuscript. Among my various jobs is a freelance editing business, where I charge $0.02 a word for developmental edits (line-by-line grammar, characterization, plot comments, setting comments, etc included). This third option is that entire package (which can easily be nearly $1,000 for a full-on developmental edit) for absolutely zero cost.

So them's your prize options. I know option 3 sounds a bit like a sales letter, but there really wasn't any other way I could phrase it. The winner of the contest will get their pick from the three options.

Happy writing!

ANNOUNCING: The Week of Awesomeness!

Hello Alliterati readers! We here at the Archives are getting all super-excited and bubbly because we noticed that we're up to-- wait for it--

95 FOLLOWERS

I know, right??!?! We're so excited we can hardly contain ourselves!

Okay, okay. You are probably wondering why 95 is so exciting. The answer is that, well, we love each and every one of you, and we couldn't help but notice that 95 is awful close to 100. So, we're doing what any self-respecting, slightly-round-numbers-obsessed bloggers would do and having a contest to push this blog over 100 followers. Firmly.

So here's the deal:

Next week, that is, the week starting December 13th, 2010, has been declared THE WEEK OF AWESOMENESS. Each Alliteratus (Myself, Matt, and Marie), will give away an awesome! amazing! a-surprising! prize pack on our respective posting days (Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday).

Each contest will have different rules and different prizes, and you can enter one or two or all three or none, though we sincerely hope you WILL enter, because we really, really want people to give free stuff to. Really, really, really. Really, really. Really.

So stay tuned for Monday morning when I kick this thing off with a shebang and prepare for THE AWESOMEST WEEK EVER.

Well, okay, the AWESOMEST WEEK EVER round these parts, at least.