Okay, the only secret I'm talking about here is in the title of the eighth book in my Silver Rush series, THE SECRET IN THE WALL. So please feel free to share the news! First, it has been showing up on a number of awards lists (all of which warm the cockles of my little writerly heart): Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Traditional Novel (awards will be presented on June 24, at the WWA convention in Rapid City, South Dakota) Finalist for the Foreword INDIES Award for Mystery (winners will be announced online June 15) Nominee for Left Coast Crime's Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery (attendees vote at the conference, and winners are announced at the banquet on March 18) Second, you certainly have a chance to win (and keep!) a copy of SECRET by entering a Goodreads giveaway contest (sponsored by my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press / Sourcebooks), which runs through March 25. Just go here , click on the "Enter Giveaway" button, and fil...

My life has always been about the word busy . Being busy with so many things often keeps me away from writing creatively. In 2012, the word busy  has literally taken on a life of its own. Among other things, my Ph.D. work, my teaching load, and my editorial work keep me plenty busy. After struggling to write well academically, to teach students to write well, and to assist clients with their stories, I have had no get up and go to delve into my own creative spaces. In July, I tried to give myself time to think about my own stories and was failing miserably until the end of July when I learned of Esquire 's short short fiction contest . On a whim, I thought, Surely, I can put together 79 words that don't suck too badly, right? It took some time to write the piece, for as we all know, the shorter a piece, the more important each word becomes. In the writing of that first piece, a fire was lit inside me to write more. So, I did. [ my 79-worders ] Since July ...

Please welcome Dr. John Yeoman* to the Blood Red Pencil today. John is here to share some tips on improving your chances to win an online writing competition.   After a disappointing experience with an online contest, John decided to use his expertise as a university tutor in creative writing to offer contest entrants feedback on the stories they submit to his Writer's Village contest. He says, "Just for fun I decided to run a contest where every entrant was awarded marks out of 45, across six publishing criteria, and given a brief practical critique on how their story might be improved. That’s how students are treated on MA (MFA) programs. Why not contestants?" The criteria John uses in judging the stories entered in his contest is as follows. "I award the highest marks for ‘emotional engagement with the reader’ (a maximum of 10) and ‘originality of concept’ (10), followed by ‘the power of the first paragraph’ (8) and ‘structure, including conflict and closu...

The Blood Red Pencil is one of the finalists in the Grammar.net Contest for the Best Grammar Blog of 2011. Vote for the blog you like and help us win great prizes from Grammar.net. All votes must be entered between September 26th and October 17th, 2011. The grand-prize winners and two runners-up will be announced on or before October 27th, 2011. We have decided that should we win, if we win, when we win, we will use the gift card to order some books on writing that we will then offer to our readers. So please take a moment to go vote for us, assuming that you really do like the blog enough to do that, and help spread the word via your blogs, Facebook Twitter, etc. You can copy the line below to use in your efforts to help us. Vote for the Best Grammar Blog of 2011- Blood Red Pencil is one of the finalists - English Grammar Newsletter http://t.co/y7pK29de  Thanks, and now back to our regularly scheduled program.   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Maryann Miller is an author and fre...