As you may know from seeing my profile I am, by day, a Graphic & Interactive Designer. If anyone would like a website creating, a logo or even a book cover then feel free to get in touch for a chat about it - times are tight with the credit crunch :) If you would like to see some of my previous clients and work then just visit:…
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Added by AB on June 29, 2009 at 9:27am —
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I came across this link whilst on a design website but some of these tools may be useful for non-technical writing:
50-free-resources-that-will-improve-your-writing-skills Continue
Added by AB on June 29, 2009 at 9:21am —
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I recently came across a site that allows you to upload t shirt designs and art work and they sell it on the site and you get a small commission but they deal with all production and packaging. There is a writing section as well where you can sell you written works if anyone wants a look. Be careful though as some competitions will not allow you to enter if you have a printed piece before for sale whi…
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Added by AB on November 14, 2008 at 12:20pm —
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This competition is up and running again and the deadline is next Monday. Make sure you read the terms and conditions carefully as there is a change to how they would like it submitting this year.
http://ent…
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Added by AB on October 6, 2008 at 9:30am —
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Many publishing houses do no longer accept manuscripts that have not first been dealt with by an agent. These are called unsolicited manuscripts. This often makes it harder to get past the first hurdle when sending your work out to be considered and brings in a whole new level of complication in finding an agent you can trust.
However, I recently spotted on the Pan Macmillan site that they have an area for authors who have written a book for adults (this does not include young adults) and has n…
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Added by AB on April 10, 2008 at 1:24pm —
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As mentioned in an earlier post I recently entered into the times online competition to become a childrens author. Unfortunately i didn't make the shortlist but thought I'd post a link to an interview with the winner and an extract from the winning book.
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Added by AB on April 10, 2008 at 10:18am —
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Seems like the site has picked up again after a quiet spell. Just checked the latest stats and the average time on the site is slowly creeping back up. The highest it's been is about 10 mins which is pretty good to be honest. It dropped to about 2 mins over Christmas and is now back up to 5:30. Yay!
Also, the number of new visitors coming to the site is on an upward trend as well. Yesterday we had 22 new people who have never visited the site before coming for a look around.
Anyways, hope ever…
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Added by AB on February 22, 2008 at 12:11pm —
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The shortlist for the Timesonline Children's Author competition has been announced and, alas, I do not feature in it. Awwwww man. I was sooo hopeful as well. At least it might give me a kick up the arse to start editing and refining again. Since entering the comp I've been hopeful and, therefore, pretty much left it alone. Time to go back to the drawing board I think :)
http://e…
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Added by AB on February 9, 2008 at 10:25pm —
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With probably everyone knowing we all like reading it is likely the majority of you may have received books for Christmas. Just wondering if anyone got any interesting ones. I received the Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan that start with The Magicians Guild. Started reading it last night and it's pretty good so far. Has good descriptions of locations etc.
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Added by AB on January 2, 2008 at 9:57am —
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Hey guys... hope you've not missed me too much. It's been a very hectic month for me with plenty to keep pulling me away from my machine and my writing. First was the very drunken trip to Bucharest followed by preparing for Christmas, a load of stuff to do at work, Christmas drinkies and, mainly, a new misses so apologies but I'm definitely going to try and put some time in this weekend to catch up on everything and welcome any new members I may have missed.
Anyone have anything in part…
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Added by AB on December 28, 2007 at 8:44pm —
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Hi there, just want to introduce you to this site. It was actually PenfriendsUK on this site that introduced me to it and I've told a couple of you about it so far but I think you will all find it very useful.
Well, what is it? I hear you all cry. It is a website that allows you to critique other peoples work and have your own reviewed as w…
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Added by AB on December 6, 2007 at 1:41pm —
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I could think of a link to writing somehow - an excuse to put this up here - but I can't be bothered.
Basically, she's cute and I want to show her off.
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Added by AB on November 26, 2007 at 12:32pm —
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Hey guys, just wondering what people have done in the past for cover designs (if anyone has indeed ventured this far yet.) This isn't a blatant plug for work as I often do stuff like this for nowt as I love it so much but if anyone wants me to look at a cover for them just give me a yell.
You can find my own cover art in the Cover Art Group or you can see some of my other stuff at my own website
http://www.nypocreative.co.ukIf any of…
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Added by AB on November 25, 2007 at 9:53pm —
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I just spotted a quick test on about.com. Some of the questions are a bit vague but are interesting to know the answers. I got 7 out of 10 on the difficult setting. See how you do . . .
http://fictionwriting.about.com/library/PubQuiz/bl_pub_quiz.htm?Let me know how you do.
Cheers, Andy
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Added by AB on November 24, 2007 at 12:28am —
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Hi there, just wanted to give a quick talk about formatting your own pages. I'm glad to see loads of you have done a really good job and tried experimenting. Not sure how many of you are familiar with web design and coding but thought I'd share my tips.
You can either select from the pre-defined options and alter individual elements in these styles or you can add your own css (found in the advanced section). CSS stands for cascading style sheet and it is basically just a loads of bits a…
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Added by AB on November 21, 2007 at 1:12pm —
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Just found a post on the BBC site about this. I'm not sure if this is Amazon's first own brand product. I can't remember seeing any others. It looks really minimal which is what you want I suppose. You don;t want the actual gadget distracting you from the book. It can convert word and pdf docs to the right format
…
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Added by AB on November 20, 2007 at 9:38am —
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As everyone was thinking she was sat in a mansion, sipping tea and laughing at her own success from this simple thing we called writing, she has apparently being ferreting away at the fairy tale book mentioned in HP7 - The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
Unfortunately, these won't be published and onl…
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Added by AB on November 1, 2007 at 12:54pm —
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I watched a programme last night with Richard and Judy as part of the 'Lost for Words' season. Firstly, can I say I think it's a great idea that Channel 4 are doing this as kids have enough distractions with PS3's, XBoxes, PSP, Nintendo Wii (man, the list is endless) not to mention TV. It's good to encourage them to read and write from an early age and I was surprised at the level some of them were at. For example, I've recently read a book called…
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Added by AB on October 26, 2007 at 11:46am —
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Oh my good god! Who'd have thought writing a few measly little words after slogging through sixty odd thousand of them would be so hard. I'm currently trying to get my stuff together to start sending off to publishers etc but have fallen at the last hurdle. It seems that conveying the ideas and underlying storylines of a 60,000 word novel into a page or two is, well, impossible :(
I'm finding it really difficult to break each chapter down and know where to put stuff. For example, I get…
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Added by AB on October 19, 2007 at 12:47pm —
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Hello everybody. After reading a
blog post from Blair I realised the importance of deadlines. I have never really had any deadlines with my book and this is probably the reason why I've been writing it for three years. I think when you set yourself deadlines (e.g. 'I'm going to finish a page a day for a week' or 'I want to have my first draft completed by October') you push yourself harder to get things…
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Added by AB on October 8, 2007 at 1:15pm —
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