Well, there are less than two weeks until Christmas and, while I did my online shopping early, there are still a few undelivered gifts floating around out there somewhere. I placed one large order with a company I’ve never shopped at before. They sent me a receipt when I placed my order and I’ve heard nothing since.
A man who claimed to be in Japan contacted the author directly, saying he wanted to purchase 100 copies of her book. He was using a free email account and didn’t provide a company name.
This Week:
Magazines published by hundreds of associations and professional organizations offer lucrative freelance markets. The ‘Associations’ section of WritersMarket.com lists 34 association magazines and there are many more. The ‘Encyclopedia of Associations’ lists over 135,000 nonprofit membership organizations worldwide while the ‘National Organizations of the U.S.’ details over 22,200 national associations.
The Party Line:
You know how when you go to a party, or any get-together for that matter,
and the first question someone asks you is “What do you do?”
This Week:
I’m writing this on Monday. Each year, when we get a good early snow, I drag the children outside for the annual Christmas card photo. We usually get a bit of snow in November but we haven’t had any this year so far. It’s snowing right now, but there’s only a tiny bit on the ground. I prefer a raging snowstorm (heh…) for the photo but it looks like I might have to settle for a dusting this year. I told Ali to ride the bus home if it’s snowing at 2:00 p.m. Richard will pick Frank up and Zach has promised to be here on time, too. I’ll bundle up all the children, drag them outside and make them stand and smile for a good five minutes while I snap a few dozens photos, looking for just the right one. Matt is part of our family now, too, as he lives here when he’s not at school. But, he won’t be home from school until December 20th and it never snowed over the Thanksgiving holiday while he was here. So, I might try to superimpose a photo of him into the snow picture. We love Photoshop!
Some authors are just a bit too big for their britches. We don’t work with people like that. We receive emails from authors all the time telling us they want to use Booklocker.com but, due to their qualifications, title or celebrity status in their field, they expect “special treatment.” We treat all authors the same and don’t show favoritism as that would not be fair to everybody else.
This Week:
Gone are the days when you have to meet up at the bookstore or someone’s home, sit in a circle and be part of a physical writers group to get feedback on your work. Sure, it’s a great luxury if you have the time, and you live in an area with enough writers to create a constructive writers’ circle or support ongoing writing workshops. But if your schedule is already stretched to its limits, if you live outside of a city, or if you’re not quite sure if you’re ready for ‘in-person’ instruction and feedback, you need to look for other alternatives…