Are you enjoying the new design on the new WordPress blog/website? I hope so! As the McDonald’s people say, I’m loving it.

I was a bad blogger for a bit as I waited for my new design to go up, and a few things have happened since we last met. For one thing, I finaled in another contest (I first finaled in the Cleveland Rocks Romance Contest), the Winter Rose Romance Contest. I also entered more contests because I have Contest Fever, apparently. I entered a contest sponsored by the Alaska Romance Writers called the Break-Up Contest. You send in your best break-up scene–how fun is that? How could I possibly resist? I rewrote the big break-up in THROWN and liked it even better, so I might use the contest entry as the real thing. I find out about this one in early July.

I also entered the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers contest, another contest where you send in the first 25-30 pages of your manuscript. And finally, I plan to enter a similar contest sponsored by another local Romance Writers of America chapter, the Denver Romance Writers. That deadline’s in mid-May.

But that’s IT, I swear. No more contests for a while. Honest. No really. I mean it.

Besides the contests, guess what else is going on? I’m now an RWA PRO! PRO status means you’ve gotten to the point where you’re ready to send your story out to agents. I sent my query letter to an RWA-approved agent, sent in the application to the RWA (along with my manuscript), and voila! Now I get to sign up for pitch sessions at the RWA conference in Manhattan in June a week earlier than non-PRO members, and I can attend a PRO workshop at the conference where they will doubtless teach me the secret handshake.

And finally, Joanne Kennedy, RITA Award nominee and all-around fabulous author, has finished reading THROWN! We are going to meet for lunch in Fort Collins (halfway between Cheyenne–where Joanne lives–and Denver), and I’m going to pay for a lavish lunch and Joanne is going to share her vast wisdom with me. I will then revise my manuscript if I agree with her suggestions, which I’m guessing I undoubtedly will, as we share sensibilities. And then I will be ready to submit to agents and editors, and pitch to those agents and editors at the RWA conference.

All this also means I haven’t been writing all that much. I’ve been revising LOVE IN THE TIME OF COLIC some, but my real focus is on THROWN and making a serious push to get it published.

Oh, and today I met a little girl at the barn where Brooke lives who looks exactly like Wave, the 8-year-old in THROWN! How weird is that?

Hope you enjoyed reading this update, and thanks for your support, as always.

This is today’s post on Roni Loren’s most excellent blog, Fiction Groupie. I thought y’all might be interested.

A New Way to Find Critique Partners

I get a good bit of email via this blog asking me questions. And I have to say one of the most popular questions I get asked is–can you critique my work? This is closely followed by–where do I find beta readers/crit partners?

These are tough questions to answer because, well, on the first one the answer is usually no. For me to thoroughly crit one chapter for someone, I usually need 1-2 hours. Seriously. I’m detailed. You’ll feel like you’ve had a proctology exam. And between blogging, writing on a deadline, being a mom and wife, I just honestly don’t have the time these days. I even had to leave my own crit group last year because I couldn’t dedicate enough time to be an active participant. So now I just exchange with a few trusted betas when I can.

However, just as a sidenote and a shameless self-promotion, Kat Brauer will be auctioning off a crit from me over at Crits for Water in May. All proceeds will go to an awesome charity that provides clean water to countries where that is hard to find. Deets coming soon. But I hope some of you will bid on little ol’ me.

*back from our commercial break* Okay, so I need to address the follow up question of–where the heck do I find crit partners? (Because you need them, you here? NEED them. Do not go submit your work without having beta readers WHO ARE NOT RELATED TO YOU, ARE NOT YOUR BEST FRIEND, AND ARE NOT SLEEPING WITH YOU give you feedback. Don’t do it.)

In the past, I’ve referred people to message boards, I’ve done matchmaking here on the blog and on Twitter (rather successfully in fact. *waves at all the crit lovebirds*), but really my advice usually came down to “you have to network”. Get to know people through writing groups, your blog, twitter, whatever.

But now there is a new option that I’m so excited about. Penguin has launched Book Country. This website is a new place for writers (and readers) to go to post parts of your work (only members can view it) and get feedback from other writers. It’s social networking and critiquing all wrapped into one.

For any of you following Colleen Lindsey on Twitter, this is the Sekrit Projekt she was always talking about. I had the opportunity to see her speak about it a few months ago when she presented at the DFW Writer’s Workshop, so I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the public launch so I could share the info with you guys.

I’m not going to go into how the site works (more info on that here), but the cool thing about it is this awesome genre map that lets you code your work on genre, heat level, and humor level. So people who are looking for what you write can easily find it. Also, it’s a setup that forces give and take because you can’t get crits until you give some. Love that.

And….it’s free! Yay for that.

So go check it out. Maybe you’ll find a crit partner match made in heaven. 🙂 If nothing else, playing with the genre map alone is super entertaining.

So have you had trouble finding crit partners? If you have some where do you find yours? Anyone try Book Country yet? And if you’re looking for a crit partner, feel free to put your genre and email address in a comment below–maybe this can act as some more matchmaking!

Welcome to my newly designed blog/website! I’ll write a proper post soon–I haven’t had new posts lately due to my new design. But I wanted to check out the new digs before too much time passed.
And a big THANK YOU to Jean Ditslear of Redwall Communications (redwallcom.com), who customized this so beautifully for me. Ain’t it the coolest? (Like Jean herself.)
Check back soon, and I’ll post the announcement of a new post on Facebook and email.
As always, thanks for visiting.