Bookshop Santa Cruz Annual Short Story Contest

From Bookshop Santa Cruz: Bookshop Santa Cruz is sponsoring a short story contest to showcase our local talent. We are not looking for any particular theme or style — just great writing. The winning story will be published in our summer 2014 newsletter, with a circulation of more than 12,000 readers, and on our website, …

Moon Shot: Murder and Mayhem on the Edge of Space Anthology Call for Submissions

Untreed Reads is pleased to announce a call for submissions. Moon Shot: Murder and Mayhem on the Edge of Space will be a short story anthology showcasing mystery and crime stories that combine the genres of science fiction and mystery/crime/suspense. We’re looking for great stories that take these genres into new territory, whether on our …

One Hip World Event

I’m happy to announce that as part of the One Hip World Event, from June 15 through June 30, 2012 all sales of my book The Parents’ Guide to Hip Dysplasia and sales of my short stories in ebook format at the Untreed Reads Store will benefit the International Hip Dysplasia Institute (IDHI). To participate …

My Author Copies of The Parents’ Guide to Clubfoot Are Here

As many of you know, my book The Parents’ Guide to Clubfoot was originally published as a print-on-demand (POD) book through a small publisher last year. Then Hunter House Publishers acquired my book. Hunter House specializes in health information, and they are better able to deal with international orders, translation rights, ebooks, and so on …

Creating Your Own Style Guide and Editing List

In this post, I’m passing along some thoughts about tools that work for me and might help some of you too—creating your own style guide and editing list. Style Guide One of the most well-known style guides is the Chicago Manual of Style. You can use the book or the online version to look up …

Script Frenzy: Coming Your Way in April

If you like to set big writing goals and then dive in, you might want to check out the Script Frenzy event that runs April 1-30. Script Frenzy is an annual event sponsored by the nonprofit organization the Office of Letters and Light to encourage creative writing. The goal is to write 100 pages of …

Doing Medical Research as an Author

I’m a technical writer, but I also write books for families who are coping with children’s medical issues (The Parents’ Guide to Clubfoot  and The Parents’ Guide to Hip Dysplasia). If you’re a writer who is researching a medical topic, it’s important to find accurate, reliable sources of information. I often start with the National …

How to Run Beta Reading Cycles

So you’ve written your piece, read through it and revised it, worked on it some more, and now it’s reached the point where you’re thinking of submitting it for publication. Before you do that, consider rounding up some beta readers and having a beta reading cycle. Beta Readers What are beta readers? They are people …