Lucky 1000!

I was going to find 13 famous "1000s" to commemorate the fact that the Beyond the Veil Facebook page has exceeded 1000 followers. Woo-hoo! Confetti! Champagne! However, I came up short on the 1000s. I did find:

http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/clubfootball/news/newsid=128880.html -- "The date 20 May 2007 will go down in football history after one of the game's greatest ever exponents realised one of its greatest goalscoring achievements. In a 3-1 win over Sport in the Brazilian Championship, according to his 'personal count', Vasco's Romario netted the 1,000th goal of a career that has spanned 22 years, stretched across five continents and returned a stunning collection of titles."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000 -- "Year 1000 (M) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. It was also the last year of the 10th century as well as the last year of the 1st millennium of the Christian era ending on December 31st, but the first year of the 1000s decade. Popular culture sometimes holds the year 1000 as the first year of the 11th century and the 2nd millennium, due to a tendency to group the years according to decimal values, as if a year zero were counted. According to the Gregorian Calendar, this distinction falls to the year 1001, because the 1st century was retroactively said to start with year 1. Since the calendar has no year zero, its first millennium spans from years 1 to 1000, inclusive."

http://www.1000islands.com/ -- "The 1000 Islands Region is an international tourism destination, encompassing communities on both sides of the US and Canada border along the St. Lawrence River and the eastern shores of Lake Ontario. The region takes its name from the more than 1000 islands that dot the lake and river along this international waterway."

http://omega-constellation-collectors.blogspot.com/2009/04/famous-1000-certified-omega.html -- which is a watch collector's blog wherein he discusses an advertisement for and friend's purchase of an Omega brand watch.

and

http://www.onethousandpaintings.com/home/ -- "One thousand numbers = one thousand paintings. All beautifully painted on canvas (approx. 12 x 12 x 1.5 inches). Each number is unique - the number is the art is the price is the limit."

Of course my idea for the post was also motivated by the fact my novel One Thousand Kisses was recently awarded finalist status in the 2012 EPPIEs as well.

But alas, I am falling short on the Thursday Thirteen motif tonight (well, today, actually, as I googled on and off at different times).

Anybody else want to share some famous 1000s? Because, seriously, 1001 seems to be a lot more famous than 1000.

Jody W.
www.jodywallace.com * www.meankitty.com

Doubly Blessed

I think one of my biggest problems as a writer is that I love to read.

You wouldn’t think that’d be an issue, would you? Well, it is…especially when your thought process goes like mine.

Wow, this book is good.
(reads more)
No, this story is AMAZING.
(reads to the end, looks at her own current WIP)
What am I doing? Nothing I write will ever be as good as [insert title or author here].
(Is sorely tempted to hit the delete button and go back to her day job.)

Then, out of the blue, a bright little ray of validation appears. An email from a fan. A royalty statement that showed an unexpected uptick in sales. This week, a squee from my editor – I’d received my second RT Reviewer’s Choice nomination.

What makes this doubly sweet is that it’s for book 2 of my Legends series, A Ghost of a Chance. Book 1, Beaudry’s Ghost was also an RT nominee. The more I think about it, the more I’m simply…floored.

In this, the second holiday season since my father died, the initial numbness is wearing off. The good: the urge to write is coming back. The bad: missing him seems more acute since last year, which sometimes freezes my fingers over the keyboard with thoughts of "WWDT" - what would Daddy think? Then some of his last words to me come back, especially when I confided to him my hesitancy to write what I really want to write, for fear of the shock it might cause among people who know me: "I will be just as proud of you as I am no, no matter what."

Guess it’s time to dig that WIP out of the recycle bin, eh? :)

Carolan
www.carolanivey.com

More than 13 RITA Winners

Each year the Romance Writers of America hold a contest to choose the "best" romances of the previous year in a number of categories. "Best" gets the air-quotes because RWA's judges don't choose the best from all books but from among the books that actually get entered. Regardless, the nominees are usually great examples of their subgenre.

The 2010 RITA calls are going out today, right now. As part of the excitement, I thought it would be fun to list past RITA winners from the Paranormal category, or whatever name it had at the time. Also, in other categories, I noticed books with paranormal elements. It was interesting to see how, as the years went by, paranormal offerings became more and more prevalent. The books that won, moreover, became more cross-genre. Some of the earlier paranormal winners had less involved worldbuilding and were certainly not the beginnings of series! With this small retrospective, we can kind of see a snapshot of how our paranormal reading material has changed through the years.

If you happen to know I missed a book with paranormal elements or included one that didn't have them, please let me know in the comments.

2009:
Best Paranormal Romance: Seducing Mr. Darcy by Gwyn Cready
Best Young Adult Romance: Hell Week by Rosemary Clement-Moore
Best First Book: Oh. My. Gods. by Tera Lynn Childs

2008:
Best First Book: Dead Girls Are Easy by Terri Garey
Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements: Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn
Best Paranormal Romance: Lover Revealed by J.R. Ward
Best Young Adult Romance: Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

2007:
Best Paranormal Romance: A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole

2006:
Best Paranormal Romance: Gabriel's Ghost by Linnea Sinclair

2005:
Best Paranormal Romance: Blue Moon by Lori Handeland
Best Novel With Strong Romantic Elements: A.K.A. Goddess by Evelyn Vaughn

2004:
Best Paranormal Romance: Shades of Midnight by Linda Fallon

2003:
Best Paranormal Romance: Contact by Susan Grant

2002:
Best Paranormal Romance: Heart Mate by Robin D. Owens

2001:
Best Paranormal Romance: The Highlander's Touch by Karen Marie Moning

2000:
Best Paranormal Romance: Nell by Jeanette Baker

1999:
Best Paranormal Romance: The Bride Finder by Susan Carroll

1998:
Best Paranormal Romance: FireHawk by Justine Dare

1997:
Best Paranormal Romance: Stardust of Yesterday by Lynn Kurland (also best first book)

1996:
Best Paranormal Romance: The Covenant by Modean Moon

1995:
Best Paranormal Romance: Lord of the Storm by Justine Davis

1994:
Best Futuristic/Fantasy/Paranormal Romance: Falling Angel by Anne Stuart

1993:
Best Futuristic/Fantasy/Paranormal Romance: Emily’s Ghost by Antoinette Stokenberg

1992:
Best Futuristic/Fantasy/Paranormal Romance: Angel for Hire by Justine Davis

***

Congratulations to all nominees and winners from the past and double congrats to this year's slate. Let me know if you need help picking a dress for the ceremony!

Jody W.
www.jodywallace.com * www.meankitty.com

13 Reasons Why Your Book Didn't Final in the RITAs

Is there anything in our little corner of the internet that evokes more angst -- and more ranting -- than RWA's Golden Heart and RITA Awards? Well, there probably is, but since the nominations were announced today (http://tinyurl.com/dmmfpl) I thought it might be a good time to summarize, in a nice, concise list, the most common reasons why manuscripts do not final in the RITA awards.

[[The Golden Hearts, for those of you who aren't part of Romancelandia, are the awards for unpublished manuscripts, and the RITAs are for published manuscripts. Both awards are judged by RWA volunteers in the initial round, and entries are not nominated from all available books. They must be placed in the contest by their authors (or publishers) along with a fee and enough copies to go around. And yes this introduction may look familiar if you also visited my post about the Golden Hearts at The Otherworld Diner. What can I say? I'm strapped for time.]]

(This list presumes your novel is a romance, btw.)

1) Your book was released from a small press or in electronic format. Those books = not allowed in RITAs.

2) Your book was not entered in the RITAs. Authors have to go out of their way to enter--books don't get nominated by other people like they do in the Hugos or the Nebulas.

3) The use of the word "f*ck" in the book caused 3 or more judges to mark it "Not a Romance."

4) The use of the word "qu*eb" in the book caused 3 or more judges to mark it "Not a Romance".

5) When the heroine died in the end but did not return as a corporeal ghost for future love noogins, several of your judges decided the "HEA" was questionable, which affected the score.

6) The hero and heroine found out 3/4 of the way through the book they have the same father.

7) Your kick-ass heroine actually continued to kick ass after the hero was introduced. Including his.

8) The judges noticed that you scribbled out the copyright date of 1997 and wrote in 2008, even though you were really careful and used a fine tip Sharpie. Your book was dinged for being "stale".

9) The meangirl internet haterz (who are also PAN members) torpedoed your score in a vast conspiracy to make sure you never final because they are jalus. (They killed my book! Those bastards!)

10) You accidentally sent in five copies of that cookbook you had printed at Lulu.com of family recipes, and judges had trouble relating to the hero and heroine.

11) The package containing your books was mailed to Rwanda instead of the RWA offices. (The Rwandans enjoyed it quite a bit but since they were not RWA PAN members, their scores didn't count.) http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/RWA

12) In order to cut postage costs, your book was not, in fact, mailed to judges at all but was instead displayed at the mall where random passers by were asked to rate the hotness of the cover on a scale of 1 to 9.

13) One of the other finalists hired a top secret contest SWAT team to break into the RWA offices the night of March 24, 2009, and switch out your scores with hers.

BONUS!

14) Several of your judges, intimidated by their towering stacks of RITA entries, marked your 100,001 word novel as "TL", or "Too Long".

***

I posted the top 10 reasons why your manuscript didn't final in the Golden Hearts at The Otherworld Diner.

Jody W.
http://www.jodywallace.com/