Contest Monday featuring free book giveaways

Literary Rambles pointed me to a fabulous Winter Book Giveaway by Regal Literary. They are giving away some great books, including Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger which I've been dying to read. Enter through the end of November.

Anna Staniszewski is hosting an August/September debut giveaway. Enter to win one of several incredible books by 2011 debut authors. A few of these, which are already on my TBR list, include The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin, and The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson. Check out the link for other great titles and enter by Nov. 28th.


Good luck, and happy Monday!

It's NaNoWriMo Time!

Today, November 1st, is the official start day of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). If you're in need of some great tips and free downloads of things like blank beat sheets, check out the NaNoWriMo posts over at Storyfix.com. Even if you think you know what you're doing, the story-planning advice there is well worth going over. I laid out my entire novel for the month ahead of time, and used many of those posts for guidance.

For those of you NaNo'ing along with me, I wish you the best of luck--it's an exhausting, yet satisfying endeavor. My goal for this year is to make my first draft tighter than in previous years, so that I'm not spending another six months in revisions. It's good to have goals, right? Try to have fun with it, and use a NaNo buddy to keep yourself accountable. Now stop reading and get to writing!

How many others are NaNo'ing this year? If you've done it before, are you approaching it differently this time?