Catching Up

Haven't promo'd in a while...I've been buried under edits and I can't seem to find my way out.

Interesting tidbit: "figlioccio" may be my favorite word to say. It means godson and it just rolls off your tongue. Go on. Try it.

Back to the pimpage...

There's an interview, contest, and chat with Larissa Ione going on at BBB. Here’s how to enter the contest: You can do just ONE or ALL of these things, and each thing you do will give you additional entries at a chance to WIN. REMEMBER you have Until 1/28/10 at 11:59 pm Central to do the different things that YOU choose to do. It is NOT mandatory you make a purchase to enter the contest. There are plenty of free ways to get entries as well.

She is also giving away several AMAZING prizes!
Prize 1: Apple iPod shuffle 2 GB Green (4th Generation) with a $25.00 iTunes Gift Card.
Prize 2: A killer Demonica shopping bag filled with Demonica goodies in it.
Prize 3: A swanky Demonica Mug with Demonica goodies in it.
The open to US residents only unless you have a US shipping address we can send your prize too.

You can RSVP for the event with Jenna MacLaine here. She will be giving away a copy of her book to FIVE lucky readers. Readers choice!

Angie Fox's blowout is going until midnight tonight.

Go here for a chance to win a free copy of Allison Brennan's Original Sin. (Beautiful cover. All it's missing is a snake...) Contest ends tonight.

You can RSVP for the event with Faith Hunter here. She is also giving away several AMAZING prizes! 2 each $25 gift cards from Amazon5 each pair of earrings2 each wire-wrapped stone pendants1 each necklace

That should do it for now!

Buona Notte

It's been one hell of a week, but I wanted to continue with a small lesson. And when I say small, I'm not kidding.

Phrase from Monday: La zia Marie e lo zio Nunzio abitano a Parigi.

This sentence is full of learning possibilities, but let's focus on the nouns--la zia and lo zio. As I explained earlier, pronouns change to fit the noun they represent. By looking at "zia" and "zio", you know the words are similar. If you couldn't already tell which was masculine and which feminine, the pronoun would help you.

What do you think "zia" and "zio" mean? If you speak Spanish, it may be obvious. After all, when you say the words, they sound like "tia" and "tio", don't they?

Aunt and uncle are among the easiest of relative nouns to remember. To change the word to represent the opposite gender, you simply drop the ending vowel and switch it to suit your needs. Not all nouns are so easily swamped, but that's a story for another day.

More events at Bitten by Books

I left my day-by-day Italian phrases at work, so the lessons will resume on Monday! For now, this week's fun at BBB.

RSVP For: 1/11 Release Party, Contest and Chat with Author Helen Scott Taylor. Event starts at 12:00 pm Central and runs all day and into the night. Contest runs until 11:59 pm Central on 1/12/10.

Description: Join us with author Helen Scott Taylor for a release party, chat and contest at http://bittenbybooks.com/. She will also be talking about her newest release The Phoenix Charm.

She is also giving away an AMAZING prize! Open to international readers:

A $100.00 Amazon Gift Card!!

RSVP below and get 25 entries to the contest when you show up on the day of the event. If you don’t show up and mention your RSVP AND ask a question, you won’t be entered into the contest.

Check out her website here and get your questions ready for her event.
http://www.helenscotttaylor.com/

Be SURE to give your friends this link: http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=16597 so they can RSVP too!

RSVP For: 1/12 Release Party, Contest and Chat with Author Joss Ware. Event starts at 12:00 pm Central and runs all day and into the night. Contest runs until 11:59 pm Central on 1/13/10.

Join us with author Joss Ware for a release party, chat and contest at http://bittenbybooks.com/. She will also be talking about her upcoming release Beyond the Night.

She is also giving away SEVEN AMAZING prizes! Open to US/Canadian readers:

Prize 1: A $100.00 gift certificate to BN.com, Borders.com, or Amazon.com (winners choice) and a copy of the DVD series The Real Las Vegas.

Prize 2: 6 sets of the DVD series The Real Las Vegas. Produced by The History Channel, this series pulls the curtain back on Vegas’s sometimes bloody past, while The Envy Chronicles reveals a far more frightening Vegas of the future.

RSVP below and get 25 entries to the contest when you show up on the day of the event. If you don’t show up and mention your RSVP AND ask a question, you won’t be entered into the contest.

Check out her website here and get your questions ready for her event.
http://www.josswarebooks.com/

Be SURE to give your friends this link: http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=16598 so they can RSVP too!

If I must learn, then so shall you

Since I oh-so-wisely quit college (again) when I was pregnant (::cough cough:: he is now two years-old ::cough cough::), I figured it was time I re-learned some of those nuggets of wisdom. Namely, the foreign languages. I learned Spanish, Italian, and French, and can't write a complete paragraph in either. Okay...probably in Spanish...but not the others! So I bought a Living Language Daily Phrase and Culture Calendar for Italian!! It cames with a new phrase or cultural tidbit per day plus a language CD.

Today's offering: Il tuo pap a è davvero simpatico. Meaning: Your dad is really nice.

Let's break it down so we can learn it/I can remember the proper grammar. Today we'll focus on the possessive pronoun "your" and the verb form "he is".

Who is our subject? Your dad. The word for dad is easy: pap a (there should be an accent mark over the last a, but I can't get it to come over correctly). Next question: whose dad? Yours! Let's look at our list of possessive pronouns:

Singular
mio
tuo
suo

Plural
nostro
vostro
loro

Since there is only one of you, not many of you, the correct choice is "tuo". If we were talking about your mother, you would use the feminine version of the pronoun "tua".

The verb "to be" (one of them...I won't get into the other one right now) in Italian is "essere". The first thing you must do is find the appropriate conjugation depending on your subject and tense. In this case, the subject is "your dad" or "he" and the tense is present. Below are the different present-tense conjugations with the appropriate pronouns:

Singular
io sono
tu sei
lui è

Plural
noi siamo
voi siete
loro sono

Since we're only talking about one dad, the correct choice is è.

Release Party, Contest and Chat with Author Donna Grant

Join us with author Donna Grant for a release party, chat and contest at http://bittenbybooks.com/. She will also be talking about her newest release Dangerous Highlander.She is also giving away an AMAZING prize! Open to international readers:
The Barnes & Noble nook eReader! Please note that the nook is currently on back order until February. As soon as it is available your prize will ship directly from Barnes & Noble.

The event is going on now. Haven't heard too much about the Nook but an eReader is an eReader!

Rejection and the blame game

(It really isn't their fault, but they aren't here so I'm totally blaming them, LOL)

I just received a very lovely rejection letter (I'm being serious, not sarcastic) from a publisher in which many negative things in my manuscript were pointed out. Like, kind of big things. You know, things that a critique group of seven and a beta reader should have caught. (Note I do not blame myself at this point. Let me be selfish!) But NOOOOO. Do you think anyone told me that my main characters show distinct traits of TSTL??? Nope. Or that my heroine has Bella Swan tendencies when I refuse to read that series because I HATE those kind of heroines? Nope. Or that my ending totally doesn't work? Nope. They said nothing. Nothing, I say! They let me sub this thing to agents and a publisher! Bastards! Ingrates! Wretches!

See the above rant? That is the exact opposite of how you should act when your manuscript is rejected, but it is honestly the first reaction I had. I'm a whiny bitch and I admit it. Now, I have two choices: I can continue to pout and stew and mope around whining about how my critique group screwed me by blowing "you're awesome" smoke up my ass, or I can suck it up, admit that I wrote the damn thing so **I** should have noticed the negative aspects, and fix it.

After a cigarette, I guess I'll be a big girl and start turning my POS into a masterpiece. I'm posting this because I know a lot of us are at this stage in the game--we've been told that our work is great and we should start sub'ing, but we're afraid of rejection. Well, guess what. We're all going to get rejected at some time or another. It's okay to rant and rave and blame everyone under the sun as long as you get it out of your system and learn from the experience. A rejection letter is not the end of the world. It's a chance to grow as a writer and make your story stronger. Remember that as you're browsing through a word document chock full of comments like "this doesn't make sense".

Overabundance of obnoxious adjectives

Being broke as hell has never stopped me from buying books. Now that job number two is in a bookstore, my nasty habit is getting even worse. One of my favorite new buys is The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. I have a ton of "industry" books, but am just now realizing how important they are, especially to those of us with that nasty little "aspiring" tag in front of the author designation.

One of the end-of-chapter exercises is to remove every adjective and adverb from a one of your pages. After that, you are supposed to evaluate the words you removed and evaluate their originality and usefulness. Then, do the same with all the nouns and verbs.

Tonight, I dissect a page. I'll post the results later.