Follow-Ups, Give Aways, and NaNoWriMo

Long before I became a blogger myself, I was a person who reads blogs. It should come as no surprise that since I am attempting here to write my own kind of book and literature related blog, I follow more than a few that already exist on the subject. One that I want to mention today is Youth Services Corner. YSC is run by a woman named Whitney who, like me, has a library school background and a genuine passion for youth services. I personally love her insights into the world of YA. Her most recent post is extremely timely given my last one here: I told you about Read it 1st, Whitney has just compiled a list of which upcoming movies are actually based on books or short stories. I highly encourage you to check it out.

There are also blogs out there who are able to provide their readers with more than just thoughts and information - they can give you genuine, tangible stuff as well. Literary Rambles, a fellow blogger.com blog, is a fantastic resource for people interested in children's books authors, agents, and publishing. The information is gold in this blogger's opinion, and they currently have a few ARC giveaways going on right now (ARC as in Advance Readers Copy, not a boat). Readers can currently try for a copy of Crossed by Ally Condie (the second book in her Matched trilogy), Darkfall by Janice Hardy (the final book of The Healing Wars series), and Audition by Stasia Ward Kehoe which is in stores now.

Finally, with October soon coming to a close, I want to briefly mention a huge international event that will be upon many of us for thirty days. November is National Novel Writing Month, but since that can be a mouthful, it's often shortened to NaNoWriMo. The objective is simple in theory if not necessarily in execution: write an entire novel between midnight November 1st and 11:59 p.m. November 30th. And by novel, they mean a minimum of 50,000 words. Is it a daunting challenge? You bet. But I'm really excited for what November brings because this will be my first time participating. If I'm successful, this will actually be the second book I've written this year. (I spent four months this summer writing the first draft of a YA novel that was just over 60,000 words long). I'll be posting my word counts here (I'm actually aiming for 60,000 words again because that's the average length of a YA novel) and let you know how the process is going.

With a few posts here under my belt, questions and comments would really be appreciated. And if you like what you see here, please don't hesitate to tell others about it too!

Happy Reading (and writing)!