MJ Greenway

There is a Twitter pitch contest for writers coming up on June 4th.  Writer, Brenda Drake organizes it.  Authors may pitch their MS in 140 characters and Editors and Agents may favorite your tweet and request a partial or full MS.  Here is the link with more info: #PitMad

My husband and I watched this last night and had a good laugh.  It seemed timely as I'm waiting to hear back from publishers about my first novel.  I remind my husband of Lucy, not totally sure that's a compliment. Enjoy:)

I was researching topics in women's fiction and stumbled across this blog by literary agent Scott Eagan.  There were informative posts about writing a good query letter and other "business of writing posts." At the moment I don't have an agent and am not looking for one for my first project.  It is currently sitting in slush or being pulled out of it.  However, going forward as a long term professional writer, I think an agent would likely be worth every penny. Here's the link to his blog: Scott Eagan-Greyhaus Literary Agent Blog

This is a great article by Bronwen Evans about how to choose a beta reader.  She gives tips for how to find good readers as well as a list of questions to ask them to consider when reviewing a manuscript.  I was lucky to have one thoughtful beta reading for the book I submitted.  I'd love to have a few more when I finish the next one.  Here is Romance University's article .

I recently discovered a page that compiles Tweets from Literary Agents and Editors that throw out the types of stories they'd like to see.  There seems to be a very wide variety of specific types of manuscripts that they would love to get their hands on.  Here is the link if you want to check it out: #MSWL

  I thought fellow writers would get a laugh out of this parody video!

If you are a local to Portland and interested in joining my writers critique group, feel free to drop me a line or leave a note in the comments.  This is specifically for women's fiction, romance and chick-lit/rom-com writers.  We may open it up to writers outside of Portland if it becomes a more virtual group in the future.

I have done a fair amount of research on digital first publishers and thought I would share my list for other authors in the process of deciding where to submit.  These three have been mentioned by other authors as being very writer friendly and offering fair contracts. I always like to double check with the Preditors and Editors site before choosing where to submit. Entangled Publishing Samhain Publishing The Wild Rose Press Lyrical Press

Recently I used Meetup to find writers critique groups in my neighborhood.  So far I have tried two and have been so impressed by the hard working writers and the thoughtful critiques.  I also started my own Facebook group for women's fiction and romance writers.  Writing can be so solitary, it's nice to connect with others who are working with words!