What's an Appositive?/Digital Fiction Imprint

Writer’s Thought for the Week: Writing is like touching old scar tissue. ~ Anonymous

APPOSITIVE VS DESCRIPTION

A noun set off from another noun that refers to the same thing is in apposition. Commas often frame the appositive but not the description. Here are examples of both apposition and description.

BLOOMSBURY SPARK is a digital fiction imprint launching in autumn 2013 from Bloomsbury Publishing. They want teen, YA, and new adult manuscripts in a variety of genres: romance, contemporary, dystopian, paranormal, sci-fi, mystery, thriller, and more. Novels, novellas, and interconnected short stories should be 25,000 to 60,000 words. Read the guidelines carefully – there are different e-mail submission addresses depending on where you live in the world. 

Pitching Agents/Novel and Short Story Markets

Writer’s Thought for the Week: Writing begins with a knot. ~ Margaret Atwood

Pitching Agents: Plan on pitching your book to an agent at a conference? An agent shares some pointers for authors here.
  
HORATIO NELSON FICTION PRIZE
Black Balloon Publishing will award the winner a $5,000 prize as part of their book deal. Must be a work of fiction: a novel or short story collection, minimum word count of 50,000 words. This is a two-tiered process: initial entries include a summary and an excerpt no longer than 4,000 words. Authors who move on to second round of judging will have one week to submit their manuscript after being notified.

CROSSED OUT MAGAZINE #4

Deadline: May 1, 2013

Submit up to three short stories, 2000 words or less each, that are direct, concise, character driven, and socially relevant. This online biannual pays $20 per accepted fiction story for first and one-time rights.

Rejection/Calls for Submission

Writer’s Thought for the Week: Nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectations unless he or she begins with some wild expectations.  ~ Ralph Charell 

REJECTION

The next time you’re having trouble dealing with rejection, read about the story accepted by New Yorker and subsequently rejected by a long list of literary journals and finally by the New Yorker.

A-MINOR PRESS is open for submissions until April 30, 2013.

Seeks 15,000 to 40,000 word novella, flash or short fiction collections and 60 to 120 page mixed-genre or poetry collections. For fiction, they prefer surrealist dreamscapes. Realist fiction is welcome if it's dark and quirky. Their poetry leans toward the “lyrical, eccentric, ambivalent and wildly imaginative.” Pays "industry standard royalties and author's copies."

HENRY HAZLITT CONTEST FOR BUSINESS FICTION
Deadline: April 30, 2013
Prize: $500 and an offer of a publishing contract with a $2,000 advance

No entry fee
You must be an unpublished author and your novel must have a pro-business theme related to business, finance, entrepreneurship or economics.  The novel’s target audience can be any age from middle-grade to adult. The contest is sponsored by Fiscal Press, “an independent publisher of unique and entertaining books related to business, economics, entrepreneurship and finance (BEEF).”

Beware the Contract/Creative Nonfiction

Writer's Thought for the Week: I take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it. ~ Sir Laurence Olivier

BEWARE THE CONTRACT and a New Imprint

 

Last December when I blogged about Random House’s new digital imprints, no one had seen their contracts. As contracts appeared, Writer Beware, Science Fiction Writers of America, Horror Writers of America, and other author group representatives soon criticized the onerous clauses. Last Tuesday morning, Random House announced changes to their contracts for Hydra, Alibi, Flirt, and Loveswept. They will now follow a more traditional contract model as one of two options. You can read the details here.

The situation reminds us that publishing is a business. Writers need to either become familiar with contract jargon and what it means or find an agent or attorney who is. We've all heard about scam publishers and agents preying on writers, but when even Random House is called to task, whom can you trust?

Also this week, Amazon launched imprint called Little A, aimed at novels, memoir, and story collections. Within Little A is a digital-only series called Day One which targets short stories from writers who have not published books yet. I have not heard any bad news about these.

DIANA WOODS MEMORIAL AWARD IN CREATIVE NONFICTION

Deadline: March 31, 2013 for the June issue.

No entry fee

Submit an essay of up to 5,000 words on the subject of your choice to this semi-annual competition. Winners will receive $250 and their work will be featured in the next issue of Lunch Ticket. All submissions for the award will be considered for publication. The reading period for the award is February and March for the issue that publishes in June, and August and September for the issue that publishes in December.

Can a Hippo help your writing?

Thought for the Week: The sages do not consider that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself. ~ Wang Yang-Ming, Chinese Philosopher

Have you discovered Word Hippo? It lets you look up synonyms, antonyms, word meanings, rhyming words, words that start with a certain letter, pronunciations, and translations.

BLACK LAWRENCE PRESS

The month of November is an open reading period for Black Lawrence Press, an imprint of Dzanc Books. They specialize in contemporary literature and creative non-fiction: novels, memoirs, short story collections, poetry, biographies, cultural studies, and translations from the German and French.

Bread Loaf/Iowa Review

Writer’s Thought for the Week: Creative work…is like a faucet: nothing comes unless you turn it on, and the more you turn it on, the more comes. ~  Brenda Ueland

Bread Loaf Conference

If, like me, you did not attend the Bread Loaf conference in Middlebury, Vermont, you can capture some of the experience thanks to Chloe Yelena Miller. 

You may listen to some of the readings and sessions here.

THE IOWA REVIEW
 
Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome during the fall semester only--September, October, and November. The Iowa Review publishes short stories, flash fiction, graphic novels, self-contained novel excerpts, and plays; poetry of all kinds, including verse plays and longer work; and all manner of creative nonfiction, including personal essays, lyric essays, memoirs, and literary journalism. 

Pays $1.50 per line for poetry ($40 minimum) and $0.08 per word for prose ($100 minimum). They also publish 750-1,000 word reviews of book-length fiction, poetry, and nonfiction on their website.