I had a great day today, but first, I wanted to make everyone aware of a good writing contest if anyone is interested.
If you haven’t heard of The Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest, it is a free contest that many of you would be eligible for. They select winners quarterly and there are cash prizes. The top winners of each quarter are flown out to Hollywood for a pretty cool ceremony that rivals the Oscars in terms of production value. The winners’ stories are also compiled in a yearly anthology called The Writers of the Future. The contest is a launching pad for many writers’ careers.
I don’t normally recommend writing contests, but the terms of this one are extremely fair and ethical. No cost to submit, they don’t take your copyright, and they respond quickly in a few months so if you don’t win, you can do other things with your story, like self-publish or submit it to other markets.
Some of you knew of Dave Farland. Professional author, great teacher, and great editor. He was the editor for the contest, but he sadly passed away earlier this year. Dean Wesley Smith has taken his place.
So not only do you have a no-brainer contest, you’ve also got an editor there who is a long-time pro and has a great appetite for science fiction & fantasy. You can submit stories every quarter.
Anyway, check it out at https://www.writersofthefuture.com. I submitted a story this quarter so we’ll see what happens.
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OK, on to my R.A.M.P. updates. As a reminder, I measure my productivity using R.A.M.P.—reading, data analysis, marketing, and production. It’s how I’ve been reporting my daily progress.
For reading, I am almost done with IDW’s TMNT Vol 3. Very, very good so far. Probably the best volume so far in the series.
For data analysis, I worked with a developer to fine-tune one of my Microsoft Excel sales macros. There was a weird quirk in it that was bothering me. It now works well. This will allow me to gather cleaner data from my sales reports so that I can analyze them properly.
For marketing, my current promotion continues. There are only a few days left to grab Shadow Deal at $0.99: https://www.michaellaronn.com/shadowdeal. The place that featured my book today was a keeper and one I’ll definitely submit to again.
For production, I wrote 3500 words today. I’m officially at the 70% mark of my current novel Year of the Rat (Chicago Rat Shifter Book 3).
I was looking at the calendar and realized I might be able to get this novel done before my speaking engagement next Saturday. I can do this if I write an extra 1,000 words per day (or better).
So, I am now officially in a new phase of this novel’s production. Before, I was writing at a steady pace and just seeing where everything went. Now, I’m accelerating.
Anyway, that’s my goal and I’m racing toward it now.
