Scrivener Giveaway Winner!

And our winner of the one-sentence story contest, and a free copy of Scrivener, is...

Natasha York!

Her winning story submission was:

They didn't say not to drink the water; I guess they haven't noticed it yet.

There were many wonderful submissions from so many awesome readers! Thank you to Natasha and everyone else for your participation; this was a great contest!

Scrivener Giveaway!

That's right, dear readers... we have another giveaway for you! This time, it's to get you geared up for NaNoWriMo!

As you probably remember from last year, November is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you write 50,000 words of your very own novel between 12:01am on November 1 and 11:59pm on November 30.

One of the great prizes for winners (anyone who meets that goal) is a discount on a writing tool called Scrivener.

Scrivener is a great software that helps you organize your thoughts (characters, plot points, settings, quotes, whatever else you want to organize for your novel/play/movie script/short story/whatever you're writing) and it's entirely adaptable to whatever you want. You can get a free trial at literatureandlatte.com. Cassy and I have both used Scrivener, and we think it's the bee's knees.

The cat's pajamas, if you will.

So! To the point... we're going to GIVE AWAY a copy of Scrivener! For you to use for NaNoWriMo or any other writing projects your heart desires! Here's what you have to do...

Write us a one-sentence story.

That's it! We'll pick our favorite, and its author will be the winner! Here are the important details:

- You can submit as many stories as you want!

- You can submit your stories by email (reviewmetwice [at] gmail [dot] com), as a comment on our Facebook wall, or as a tweet @reviewmetwice

- Please only submit each story ONCE. (Don't submit the same story by email, Facebook, AND Twitter... just pick one.) You can submit different stories by different methods, though. (If you submit three stories, you could do one in each method, or all by one method... totally up to you!)

- You have until 11:59pm EST on Saturday, November 2, 2013 to submit your stories.

- You don't have to adhere to any genre; we want comedy, horror, romance, drama, tragedy, history, sci-fi, fantasy... anything you come up with!

- The winning story will be shared on Sunday, November 3, 2013 here on the blog. The author will also be notified in the manner in which the winning story was submitted. (If the winning story was emailed to us, we'll email you. If you tweeted it, we'll tweet you. If it was on Facebook, you'll get a Facebook PM from us.)

- The winner will have to provide us with a valid email address to which we can send the information on claiming their prize.

- There are no geographic boundaries to this contest! We don't have to mail anything to you, so you DON'T have to be from the contiguous U.S.!

Confused as to what we want to read? Here's a fine example of a story you might submit (this one happens to be from a story that may-or-may-not be true, about Ernest Hemingway winning a bet by writing a six-word story):

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

That's a particularly sad example, but do you get the idea? One sentence that tells (or even hints at) an entire story.

Anniversary Contest Winner!

Anna is our contest winner, with her copy of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver!

Anna has won a copy of Going Bovine by Libba Bray, and bragging rights over the rest of you.

She has now also earned the title of our favorite.  I know.  Be jealous.

Congratulations to Anna!!! Woo-hoo!!

Secret Contest Winner: 200th Comment!

You guys didn't know it, but we were running a secret contest to see who would post our 200th comment! (Bet you wish you had commented now, huh?  Maybe you should comment more, just incase we decide to do another SECRET CONTEST). Our winner was annapeg88 with this comment on our June 12 post about our favorite historical fiction:

Was The Kitchen Boy the inspiration for the Dreamworks movie "Anastasia?" Just wondering.

I also love historical fiction, so its hard to pick just one. Gregory's books are probably my favorites. Now, the question is, do you define historical fiction as fiction about a real life family/event, or fiction about a time period where the story is totally made up but details about the time period (such as clothing, language, character values etc) are based one truth? If the latter is correct then I must include Atonement and The Girl With the Pearl Earing as my other favorite books.

The prize for this contest is that annapeg88 gets to choose a book for us to review! We'll be reviewing her book of choice on August 2.

Congratulations, annapeg88!

Amazon Book Publishing

Amazon does a lot of great things for people who write books.  For instance, you can essential publish your own book with their self-publishing franchise, CreateSpace.  CreateSpace essentially gives you all the tools you would ever need to publish your book online.  No agents or Publishers required.  Of course, it's all electronic (they don't deal in hardcopies), but for people just looking to get their names out there, this is a great way to to.

Amazon is also all about the free books.  Now, I'll grant you that most of these books aren't really something most of us here at ReviewMeTwice would read, that doesn't change the fact that you find a rare gem every once in awhile.  Not to mention, if the book is out of copyright, there's probably a free eCopy of it on Amazon.

I think, probably the best of all though, is Amazon giving out free money to up and coming writers.  It's a contest they've been doing for six years now that gives new writers the opportunity to get not only a full publishing contract, but also a $50,000 advance.  Five runner ups will receive a $15,000 advance.  Not so shabby for a day's work.  You can visit Amazon's Prize Page for more details of the many things you could win!

At worst, nothing will happen but this at least forces you to get a real manuscript together.  At best, you could have $50,000. :)

Happy Writing!